Foreign Demand Craters For Ugly, Tailing 2Y Treasury Auction Ahead Of Fed Decision

A week that sees a barrage of macro news, earnings, political developments, capital markets events including the massive Anthropic IPO offering doc and a record equity offering by Meta, also has a flood of coupon issuance to contend with starting with today's $69BN in 2Y paper which sold to tepid demand ahead of this week's FOMC decision. 

Let's see how the auction did, starting with the high yield 4.708% which was modestly below last month's 4.787% which was the highest since June 2024. This tailed the When Issued 4.705% by 0.3 bps, the biggest tail since March. 

The bid to cover was  2.589, down from 2.627 last month and the lowest since also March, when it dipped to 2.440.

But it was the internals where the biggest surprise, or rather disappointment, was to be found, as foreigners (Indirects) took down just 45.7%, a sharp drop from the 57.8% in September and the lowest since November 2021. Offsetting this collapse in foreign demand was a surge in Direct demand which sent the Direct bid sharply higher from 29.0% to 41.3%, the highest on record...

... leaving 13.0% to Dealers, or roughly in line with recent activity.

Overall, this was a surprisingly poor auction, which tailed the 2nd most of 2026, but judging by the dramatic collapse in foreign demand, it is almost surprising the results weren't far worse.