While this week's two previous auctions were uneventful and very much unimpressive, today's 7 Year $29 billion issue continues [5]to show that the bulk of the curve action continues to be at the belly. Unlike January's spotty 7 Year auction which saw a massive 56.64% in Primary Dealer take down, today's was the opposite, with the auction pricing a whopping 3 bps inside of the When Issued at 1.418%, with Dealers taking down just 38.89%, well below the TTM average 47.46%. This was the lowest Dealer take down since December 2010. The Indirect Bid was well higher than in January when as we already noted previously foreign investors were dumping US paper, yet at 41.85% was just in line with the TTM average of 41.54%. The big outlier however was the Direct Bid take down which soared from 11.59% to a massive 19.27% take down - a low 44% hit rate on the Direct Bid. Why the huge shift in sentiment toward US paper? It hardly has anything to do with the yield rising from a meager 1.36% to a just barely higher 1.42%. And yet, there was a tangible change in Direct interest - is it merely PIMCO buying up more paper? Most likely - this is perfectly aligned with the fund's recent average effective duration so we would not be surprised if Bill Gross is now loading up on the belly. The result of the super strong auction is the entire treasury curve sliding in yield, as it indicates that the wholesale expectation of a shift away from Treasurys and pushing into stocks, is nowhere to be seen. And stepping back from the tree, the forest now stands at just under 101.5% debt/to US GDP. Many more auctions coming.
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