Not much good to say about the just completed 5 Year auction but we'll say it anyway: pricing at a yield of 1.484%, in line with the When Issued, this was the highest auction break for 5 Year paper since July 2011, or just before the great debt ceiling Snafu. What's worse, the Bid To Cover tumbled from 2.79 in May and a 2.81 TTM average to a tiny 2.45, the worst and first sub 2.50 bid to cover since September 2009. And worst was that Direct bidders, until recently some of the most vocal auction participants, and who had been responsible for 15.4% of the average allocation in the last 12 auctions (and a whopping 23.3% in the May edition), crashed to a miniscule 3.6% - the lowest since November 2009. Bid-side demand was frankly terrible with just $85.7 billion in interest tendered, compared to an average number just shy of $100 billion in the past year. This was mostly due to a plunge in Direct tenders from $14 billion to $6.7 billion. The resultant "surge" in Indirect bids was not an indication of interest by foreign bidders, but a collapse of interest by all other classes. Like we said: not much to say here...
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