With the FOMC members currently huddling deep inside the bowels of the Marriner Eccles building, perhaps scheming how to spook markets by announcing a surprise rate hike tomorrow, one would have assumed demand for 2 Year paper in today’s auction would be less than stellar. One would be wrong, because moments ago the Treasury sold $26bn in 2 year paper to what was clearly an overabundance of demand: the high yield of 1.395% stopped through the When Issued 1.401% by 0.6 bps, and was the highest yield going back to October 2008.
The bid-to-cover rose to 3.06 from 3.03 in June, and was above the six previous auction average of 2.84. It was also the highest Bid to Cover since November 2015.
The internals were also rather impressive, with Indirects taking down 58.5%, above the 56.6% in June, and above the 6MMA of 54.1%. Directs were awarded 16.9%, down slightly from 18.4% last month and above the 6 month average of 13.7%. Combined these two meant record buyside interest, leaving Dealers with just 24.6% of the auction, down from 25.0% and below the 32.1% 6month average. This was the lowest Dealer award on record.
In other words, if anyone was worried about a surprise announcement by the Fed tomorrow, one which would send 2Y yields spiking, it wasn’t to be found among the bidders for today’s auction.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jul 25, 2017.
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