I was actually quite worried that interest rates would drop for this round of T-Bills auction.
Mainly because US short and long term interest rates have dropped quite sharply of late.
This led me to go with a conservative estimate of 3.65% – 3.85% in my weekend article.
Thankfully (as I myself applied for this auction), T-Bills yields didn’t drop all that much.
Instead, yields stabilised on the higher end of my projected range.
With a cut-off yield of 3.80% this auction (vs 3.75% the previous auction).
And 100% allotment for non-competitive bidders.
Pretty interesting results, so let’s dive in.
6-month T-Bills yields stabilise at 3.80% (23 Nov 2023 Auction Results)
I’ve extracted the cut-off yield for the latest T-Bills auction below.
This round of 6-month T-Bills are issued at 3.80% yield (an increase from 3.75% the previous auction).
I’ve charted this in graph form below.
T-Bills yields are off the lows from 2023, but still quite fair bit down from the highs hit just a few auctions ago (4.0%+).
Given the sharp drop in US short term and long term interest rates the past few weeks, I had a nagging fear that this might spill over to T-Bills.
However, that fear doesn’t seem to have played out for now, as both demand and yields seem to have stabilised around previous auction’s levels.
Demand for T-Bills stabilises at a high $13.0 billion (close to previous auction)
In chart form below.
Demand for T-Bills stabilises at $13.0 billion
Down slightly from $13.2 billion the previous auction.
For what it’s worth, this is still comfortably above the demand levels we saw for much of 2023.
Still a lot of lowballers? Spread between median and average yield remains near 2023 highs
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 50th 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”.
Spreads absolutely blew out the past auction, to near 2023 highs.
And given the high demand for T-Bills this auction, spreads remain very high.
It does appear that investors are submitting low-ball bids to ensure they get an allotment.
I myself applied for T-Bills this time around
As shared in the weekend article, I myself applied for T-Bills this time around.
While I plan to apply for the 3.4% yielding Singapore Savings Bonds next week.
I doubt if we see that big an allotment, given that last month’s SSBs were less attractive and only saw less than $50,000 allotment.
And given I have a chunk of T-Bills maturing soon, I decided to apply for this T-Bills auction.
Yields at 3.80% are frankly not that bad and better than fixed deposits, so I am not complaining.
How do you know if you have been allotted T-Bills? Full Allotment for Non-Competitive BIds
If you applied Non-Competitive Bid, you will get 100% allotment of whatever you applied for.
Ie. If you applied $10,000, you get $10,000 worth of T-Bills allotted.
If you applied Competitive Bid, then:
Full allotment if you applied below 3.79%
20% allotment (approximately) if you applied 3.80%
No allotment if you applied 3.81% 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).
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Pls do a review on the newly-launched GXS Debit Card. It appears to be usable only in Singapore, and not internationally. Tks.
Ok, will have a look.