6-month T-Bills yields drop to 3.75% – Demand for T-Bills soars, lots of low-ballers? (8 Nov 2023 Auction Results)

 

6-month T-Bills auction results are out!

And boy… T-Bills application amounts (and yields) have been all over the place these past few auctions.

In the latest T-Bills auction, demand for T-Bills jumped from $11.5 billion to $13.2 billion (14.8% increase).

This led to a big drop in T-Bills cut-off yields.

From 3.95% the past auction, to only 3.75% this auction.

And only 95% allotment for non-competitive bids.

Quite a lot to unpack actually, so let’s dive into it.

6-month T-Bills yields drop to 3.75% (8 Nov 2023 Auction Results)

Cut-off yield for the latest 6-month T-Bills auction below.

This round of 6-month T-Bills are issued at 3.75% yield (a sharp drop from 3.95% the previous auction).

I’ve charted this in graph form below.

This is a big drop from the past few auctions.

At 3.75% yield for the 6-month T-Bills, this is close to the lowest yields hit in all of 2023.

Demand for T-Bills jumps to $13.2 billion?

Now why did T-Bills cut-off yields drop so sharply?

Well I suppose one reason is the big jump in demand for T-Bills.

From $11.5 billion the previous auction, to $13.2 billion this auction.

That’s a massive 14.8% increase in T-Bills demand.

I’ve charted this below.

This round of T-Bills application amounts is close to the highest in all of 2023.

Although still lower than the massive $14.7 billion demand 2 auctions ago.

A LOT of lowballers? Spread between median and average yield

The spread between the median and average yield tells you how many “low-baller” bids there were.

To illustrate what this is:

Imagine you have 100 bids.

The median yield, is if you arrange all the bids from small to high, and take the yield of the 50^th bid.

While average yield, is adding up the yields of all 100 bids and dividing by 100.

So average yields are skewed by lowball bids, while median yields are not.

To put it simply – the bigger the spread between the median yield and average yield, the more “low-ballers”.

You can see the chart of the spread between median and average yields below.

Massive blowout in the spreads this auction, close to the highest in 2023 (and much higher than the past 3 auctions).

In plain English – not only did demand for T-Bills increase massively this auction, those bidding were submitting quite low-ball bids as well.

Why exactly that is the case is not so clear.

I suppose you could argue that maybe some of this is CPF-OA money, and even at 3.75% it’s still higher than CPF-OA’s 2.5% (hence encouraging low-ball bids).

That’s possible, but you never know sometimes.

Love to hear what you think.

How do you know if you have been allotted T-Bills?

If you applied Non-Competitive Bid, you will get approximately 95% allotment of whatever you applied for.

Ie. If you applied $100,000, you get approximately $95,000 worth of T-Bills allotted.

If you applied Competitive Bid, then:

Full allotment if you applied below 3.75%

98% allotment (approximately) if you applied 3.75%

No allotment if you applied 3.76% and above.

If you forgot what you bid, the easiest way is to check if you have any refund from your bank tonight.

Some banks like OCBC will also issue you a confirmation note (but DBS doesn’t).

Did I apply for the T-Bills?

Full disclosure that I applied for this round of T-Bill as well.

However my competitive bid was above 3.75%, so I didn’t get any allotment.

Are you in the same boat?

Do you think next auction will see higher yields?

 

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