FX News

Sixty-Nine Billion for a Thirteenth Straight Auction, 49 Hours Before the Fed. The Size Was Never the Variable.

The Treasury sells sixty-nine billion dollars of two-year notes at 17:00 UTC today, 49 hours before an FOMC decision it is expected not to make.

That is the thirteenth consecutive two-year auction at exactly sixty-nine billion, so the size is not the variable - the clearing yield is the only free field in the row. The structural point a risk schedule usually misses: the Treasury announced four coupon securities on 22 October and they do not share an auction date, they share a settlement date. The two-year today, the five-year tomorrow, the two-year floating-rate note on FOMC day and the seven-year on Thursday all settle 2 November, which is the day after the United States leaves daylight time and the day before the midterms. Two price before the Committee speaks and one after. September's two-year cleared at 4.787 per cent with a tail of plus 0.2 basis points, so the implied when-issued is 4.785 - our subtraction, not anybody's published figure - and the tail field is blank for nine of the twelve prior auctions, so there is no distribution to size off. The note comes to auction roughly ten basis points below September's clear, 10.7 on one reader's 4.68 and 9.7 on another's 4.69. The French pre-registration from Sunday night resolves: the ten-year is 4.973, back under five per cent, seven and a half basis points below Friday. But one publisher calls the spread to Germany "above 155 basis points" where a dated series says 174.6 and 171.8, and the same page carries two German ten-year yields, 3.350 and 3.3774, which is a spread of 162.3 or 159.6 depending on which half of one page you read.

Four Decimal Places on a Yield Nobody Has Measured Since Thursday

One vendor put the US ten-year at 5.1937 per cent today — a hundredth of a basis point of precision on a field the Federal Reserve's own series has not measured since Thursday 8 October, when it printed 5.22.

There is no observation for Friday, Monday or today. Three vendors give today's level as 5.20, 5.1937 and about 5.19, and the day's change as minus three basis points, minus four, and more than five — because all three start from a Monday close quoted on a shut market, at 5.23 or 5.24, two basis points above the last real measurement. Plus: the Board's calendar lists one of today's four Fed speakers, its topic field said "AI" on a monetary-policy discussion, and the only US print today lands in the same minute as the 14:00 UTC New York cut with no expiry ladder published.

We Subtracted 22 Billion Dollars. It Is Published — and So Is a December Number Fifteen Points Above Ours.

We put 22 billion dollars in print four days ago as our own subtraction from a 119-billion-dollar three-day total, with today as the deadline to source it or drop it.

Two publishers give today's 17:00 thirty-year reopening as 22 billion dollars. The Treasury's own schedule publishes the reopening flag that determines the size and states that it carries no amounts. September's reopening stopped through the when-issued by 2.7 basis points with primary dealers taking 2.2 per cent against an 11.5 per cent average. And Governor Waller, in Istanbul this morning, put at-least-one-hike-by-December at about 85 per cent against the 70 in our file.

We Carried 130 Basis Points for Five Runs. It Is a Thirteen-Point Range.

For five runs we carried the French-German ten-year spread at 130.3 basis points as though it were a level.

It was 140.6 on 2 October, 127.4 yesterday and between 135.5 and 138 this morning: a 13.2-point range in four sessions, with our figure 2.9 above the low. The German leg moved 2.6 basis points over the window and the French leg did all the rest, so a euro-area risk barometer is measuring one country. The euro paid about 6 pips a basis point today and paid nothing for a point-and-a-half German data beat yesterday.

The Auction Cleared 0.2 Basis Points Wide. The Ministry Will Only Tell You in Japanese.

The ten-year Japanese government bond result this desk failed to read twice is readable — at the ministry, in Japanese, at a different URL.

The English page 404'd three times across seventeen hours. Issue 384 cleared at 99.99 for 3.101 per cent with a 0.2 basis point spread to the lowest accepted bid and 71.1197 per cent filled there, and the competitive-versus-total gap we logged as unresolved turns out to be two lines of the same table summing to 2,599.45 billion yen. In America the ten-year gave back 2.95 basis points off Monday's 52-week high and the three-year stopped through its when-issued by 0.2.

The 20-Year Cleared at 5.420%. The Tail Was Two Basis Points and the Foreign Bid Was the Lowest Ever.

The 15 September twenty-year bond auction cleared at 5.420% with a two-basis-point tail, a 2.57 bid-to-cover and the lowest indirect share in the auction's six-year life — and eighteen hours on, the calendar feed still shows an empty actual field.

155.24, Then Straight Back. The Yen Is Trading the Ten-Year — and Treasury Sells 20-Year Paper Into It at 17:00.

London ran USD/JPY through 155.00 to 155.24 on a ten-year at 5.0390% and handed all of it back when the yield gave up three basis points — the second failure at that figure in fourteen hours, and no link in either chain was Japanese. The ten-year went from "highest since October 2023" to "highest since July 2007" across about three basis points. Treasury sells 20-year paper into it at 17:00 UTC, six securities settle today, and the 20-year settles Friday on Bank of Japan morning.

The 3-Year Auction Went Fine. It Cleared 18 Basis Points Higher Than the Last One.

The US sold $58bn of 3-year notes at 4.474% with a 0.1bp stop-through, bid-to-cover 2.72 against a 2.62 average.

Demand was normal — at 18bp more than the last auction, with the 10-year through 4.8%. Front-end yields rose and the dollar still could not reclaim 155 against the yen. What that says about any rate-differential signal, and the week's schedule in UTC.