Timeline of U.S. Treasury Auctions
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| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1947 | April 25, 1947: Noncompetitive bidders given the weighted average price of accepted competitive tenders. |
| 1960 | Began offering holders of specified outstanding Treasury coupon securities the opportunity to exchange for longer-dated Treasury securities in fixed price advance refunding made possible by tax advance refunding as a nontaxable exchange. |
| 1974 | The uniform price or "Dutch" auction technique was introduced for sales of long-term securities. All successful bidders were awarded securities at the lowest accepted price. |
| 1974 | The yield auction technique was introduced for some coupon securities in which the coupon and price are determined based on accepted yields in the auction. This technique later became applicable to all Treasury coupon and bill auctions. |
| 1975 | The ban was removed from pre-auction trading of marketable Treasury securities. The ban had been in effect since World War II. |
| 1976 | Began working towards issuing all Treasury securities in book-entry form, and by mid-1986, new coupon securities were available only in book-entry form. |
| 1977 | Banned pre-auction trading of Treasury securities. |
| 1979 | Modified the limit on auction awards to any one bidder instituted in 1962 to 25 percent of the total awards for investors other than the Federal Reserve and foreign accounts held in custody by the Federal Reserve. Previously the limit was one quarter of the total offered. |
| 1981 | The limit on awards to any one bidder in an auction was increased from 25 percent to 35 percent of securities sold to the public (excluding Federal Reserve Banks for their own and official foreign custody accounts). |
| 1982 | The yield auction technique was adopted for auctions of reopened coupon securities, replacing the use of price auctions. |
| 1982 | Noncompetitive tender rules were clarified to restrict a noncompetitive bidder from entering into a contract prior to the closing time for receipt of tenders to dispose of securities obtained on a noncompetitive basis. |
| 1983 | Pre-auction trading of securities awarded on a noncompetitive basis was banned. |
| 1984 | The deadline for receipt of tenders in all security auctions was changed from 1:30p.m. ET to 1:00p.m. ET. |
| 1984 | Guidelines for noncompetitive tenders in an auction were clarified to define what comprises a single bidder. |
| 1985 | Treasury published proposed regulations under which new marketable Treasury securities are available only in book-entry form (TREASURY DIRECT for institutions and individuals who do not plan to trade them) and in the commercial book-entry system (TRADES). Holders of coupon securities issued prior to full conversion continue to be able to choose either book-entry or physical form. |
| 1986 | The TREASURY DIRECT book-entry securities system was implemented. All new issues of marketable notes and bonds were henceforward issued exclusively in book-entry form. |
| 1987 | The Coupons Under Book-entry Safekeeping (CUBES) program was successfully conducted. CUBES provided depository institutions a one-time opportunity to convert coupons stripped from definitive Treasury securities to book-entry form. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York was the central processing site. |
| 1990 | The amount that Treasury will recognize as having been bid in Treasury marketable securities auctions at any one yield was limited to 35% of the public offering amount. |
| 1990 | The deadline for receipt of noncompetitive tenders in Treasury marketable securities auctions was changed to 12:00 p.m. ET. |
| 1991 | A standard release time of 2:30 p.m. ET, was established for all announcements of regularly scheduled bill, note, and bond issues. |
| 1991 | Data on Treasury quarterly borrowing needs now released two days prior to each quarterly refunding announcement and prior to the the Public Securities Association (PSA) Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee Meeting. |
| 1991 | All government securities brokers and dealers registered with the SEC became eligible to submit bids for customers in Treasury auctions. Such dealers also became eligible to pay for securities via an "autocharge" agreement with a depository institution. |
| 1992 | The net long position reporting requirement was changed to state that a competitive bidder must report its net long position in the security being offered when the total of all its bids for that security and the bidder's net long position in the security equals or exceeds $2 billion, unless otherwise announced. |
| 1992 | Competitive bidders were prohibited from submitting a noncompetitive bid in the same auction. |
| 1992 | Bidders with any position in when-issued trading or in futures or forward contracts in a security being auctioned were prohibited from submitting noncompetitive bids for that security. |
| 1992 | Customers awarded $500 million or more in an auction were required to furnish, no later than 10:00 a.m. local time the day following the auction, written confirmation of their bids to the FRB where the bids were submitted. |
| 1992 | September 21, 1992: Public Debt successfully implements Public Debt Accounting and Reporting System (PARS). |
| 1993 | Fedline TA implemented. Fedline TA provided approximately 1,000 Federal Reserve FedLine customers with the ability to submit bids electronically over FedLine. Bids printed out at the Federal Reserve Banks (FRBs), were aggregated, and resubmitted to Treasury. No Primary Dealers were involved. |
| 1993 | March 1, 1993: The Uniform Offering Circular (UOC) became effective. The circular consolidated into one document the terms and conditions for the sale of marketable Treasury securities which previously were found in a variety of documents. |
| 1993 | Announcement of Treasury auction results on a regional or Federal Reserve District basis was discontinued. Previously, the amounts tendered and awarded had been broken out by Federal Reserve districts on the auction results. This change in procedure was made because regional auction award information has little value in the worldwide U.S. Government securities market. It also eliminated a step in processing auction award information for release to the public, and may, therefore, have a slight benefit in shortening the time between the deadline for the receipt of tenders and the announcement of the auction results. |
| 1993 | The first auction using the Treasury Automated Auction Processing System (TAAPS) was April 29, 1993 with the 52-week auction. |
| 1993 | Public Debt reopened Coupons Under Book-Entry Safekeeping (CUBES) program from June 1-November 30, 1993. Only noncallable Treasury coupons stripped before March 31, 1993, and with payment dates on or after January 1, 1994 were eligible for conversion. |
| 1993 | December 17, 1993: The "Government Securities Act Amendments of 1993" was signed providing Annual Reports to Congress on Auction Violations and Favored Treatment. |
| 1995 | February 22, 1995: The required number of decimals for competitive bids in note and bond auctions was changed from two to three, e.g. 7.123%. The purpose was to increase participation in Treasury auctions and conform the auctions to market practice for when-issued trading. The Committee felt that smaller bidding increments might induce some market participants to bid more aggressively, with potential for modest savings to Treasury. |
| 1995 | March 1995: Auction results began printing automatically to the Main Treasury press room. The fax of the results was initiated by a fax application on the auction calculation PC. |
| 1995 | May 5, 1995: The responsibility for administering Treasury's auction rules in the UOC for the Sale and Issue of Treasury bills, notes, and bonds was transferred to the Government Securities Regulations Staff (GSRS) from the Office of Financing. |
| 1997 | January 29, 1997: The first inflation-indexed security auction was held. The security was a 10-year note. The issuance schedule for inflation indexed securities was announced: the 15th of January, April, July and October. |
| 1997 | March 1997: Treatment of bill auction awards to the System Open Market Account (SOMA) was changed from being within the announced offering amount to being additions to the announced offering amount. This change was made so that Treasury would be able to provide better information to the market on the amount of bills that will actually be available for sale to the public. |
| 1997 | July 16, 1997: The UOC amended to define the term “Investment Advisor” and to clarify the specific terms and conditions for bidding through investment advisors. The most significant change was the reduction in the net long position reporting amount from $500 million to $100 million. |
| 1998 | Change was made to the UOC to change the rule restricting Noncompetitive bidders from holding a When-Issued (WI) position, futures or forward contracts for a security they will be bidding on. The change affects the timeframe of the restriction on Noncompetitive bidders. Specifically, the amendment states that between the date of the offering announcement and the time of the official results release, a Noncompetitive bidder may not enter into any re-openings, forward or futures contracts for that auction. |
| 1998 | April 1998: TAAPSLink, a browser based application, was implemented for submitting tenders via the Internet. This application was first used to submit noncompetitive tenders and was extended to competitive tenders in 1999. |
| 1998 | July 1998: Began posting all Treasury announcements and auction results press releases on the Public Debt website. |
| 1999 | March 1999: Auction results began breaking out how much of the auction was taken down by Treasury Direct. |
| 1999 | June 1999: First online submission of noncompetitive customer list into an auction through the Automated Auction Customer List (AACL) application. |
| 1999 | Regulations for buying back unmatured debt were finalized. |
| 2000 | Constraints on Treasury's ability to reopen securities from original issue discount rules were lifted, as long as the reopening occurs within a year of the original issuance. |
| 2000 | March 10, 2000: Treasury held first buyback operation. Buybacks were a result of the budget surplus in the late 1990’s. Buybacks functioned as “reverse auctions” where the Treasury bought back securities to reduce the amount of interest paid. |
| 2001 | Treasury began issuing 52-week securities every 13 weeks. Previously 52-week securities were issued every 4 weeks. |
| 2001 | Confirmed 5-year note issuance was changed. Original issues were offered in May and November and were later reopened in August and February |
| 2001 | February: 52-week security eliminated after the February 27 auction. |
| 2001 | February 2001: Foreign and International Monetary Authority (FIMA) bids were limited to non-competitive bids of no more than $200 million per account per auction. Additionally, total noncompetitive FIMA bids were limited to $1 billion per auction per security. |
| 2001 | March 2001: Minimums and multiples for stripping all fixed-principal securities were reduced to $1,000 par amount. This eliminated the high dollar par amounts previously required to strip certain securities. |
| 2001 | April 2001: Allocation percentage for auction awards changed to two decimal places and rounded up to the next hundredth of a percentage point. Previously, allocation percentage was rounded up to the next full percentage point. |
| 2001 | November 2001: Net Long Reporting (NLP) Exclusion amount introduced. The NLP Rule was changed to allow bidders to subtract an exclusion amount from their holdings of a security being offered (applies to reopened securities only). |
| 2002 | January 2002: FIMA account limits were changed to accept more than $100 million per account per auction. The aggregate award amount of $1 billion remained unchanged. Previously, FIMA entities were permitted to bid non-competitively without award limitations. FIMA awards were then added on to total issue amount at each auction. |
| 2002 | April 2002: The number of decimals for discount rates submitted in cash management bill auctions increased from two to three. |
| 2002 | May 2002: Auction release time target changed from 6 to 5 minutes. Any deviations above 60 seconds + or - that time were explained to the public by Treasury. |
| 2003 | January 2003: Auction results began being delivered to the Federal Reserve Information Technology (FRIT) server as an XML file. After the implementation, the official auction release time was considered the recorded time the results XML file was delivered to the FRIT server. |
| 2003 | January 13, 2003: The first auction results were issued electronically to news services. |
| 2003 | February 2003: Regular re-openings of 5-year notes reintroduced. Original issue auctions would take place every quarter and the re-openings would take place one month afterwards. |
| 2003 | May 2003: Treasury began releasing an addendum (Additional Auction Statistics) to the auction results breaking out the types of competitive bids into three categories: Direct bidders, indirect bidders and Primary Dealers. This addendum was published approximately 20 minutes after the auction results release. |
| 2003 | December 2003: Net Long Reporting Threshold changed to 35% of the offering amount. Previously, the threshold had been $1 billion for bills and $2 billion for notes |
| 2004 | April 2004: Internet posting of auction results PDF was completely automated with the implementation of ConnectDirect. ConnectDirect removed manual processing of the PDF file and reduced the risk of human error in the posting process. |
| 2004 | August 2004: Treasury began releasing auction results within 2 minutes + or - 30 seconds. |
| 2004 | September 2004: The calculated auction price for Treasury securities was changed from 3 decimal places to 6 decimal places. |
| 2004 | September 2004: The noncompetitive award limit was changed from $1 million to $5 million. |
| 2004 | September 2004: Additional Auction Statistics became available to the press at the same time auction results were released. |
| 2004 | September 2004: Zero fill on bids implemented. In the event a submitter enters a bid with too few decimals, the system will automatically fill the missing decimal places with a zero. For example, 3.1 would become 3.100. |
| 2004 | December 2004: Treasury began releasing CUSIP information prior to the offering announcements. The release was published every Friday and contained CUSIP numbers, security term and type as well as issue date, auction date and announcement date for all securities set to be announced the following week. |
| 2005 | July 2005: Automated auction results emails implemented. Individuals signed up to receive auction email notifications began to receive emails created and sent automatically. Previously, emails were sent to the listserv manually and contained a hyperlink to the auction results. The new automated emails contained a link to the press release as well as summary auction statistics in the body of the email itself. |
| 2006 | March 2006: Public Debt participated in Treasury’s first repurchase transaction using temporary excess funds. The repo matured the following day with an earnings rate of 4.69%. |
| 2008 | April 2008: Bidding minimum lowered from $1,000 to $100 for all securities. |
| 2008 | April 2008: First auction in the new TAAPS system. This system was the first completely web-based auction application. |
| 2008 | December 2008: Customer confirmation threshold changed from $500 million to $750 million. With this rule change confirmations are sent by email. Customer confirmations were required of any customer awarded $750 million or more who bid in the auction through another institution. |
| 2009 | February 4, 2009: Treasury raised issuance sizes of regular weekly and monthly bills, increased the frequency/issuance sizes of cash management bills, increased the issuance sizes of nominal coupon security offerings, and adjusted the securities offering calendar by adding monthly 3-year notes, new monthly 7-year notes, a second reopening of 10-year notes, newly issued 30-year bonds on a quarterly basis, and a regular reopening of the 30-year bond in the month following the initial quarterly offering. |
| 2009 | April 29, 2009: Treasury announced a second regular reopening of the 30-year bond in the month following the first reopening, resulting in twelve 30-year bond auctions per year. |
| 2009 | June 1, 2009: An amendment to the UOC modified the description of Treasury bills, clarified the competitive bid format for Treasury bills and fixed-principal securities, eliminated a provision related to "guaranteed bid" arrangements, updated an example of the proration of auction awards, and clarified the provision for the notification of auction awards and settlement. |
| 2009 | September 15, 2009: UOC amended to increase the customer confirmation reporting requirement threshold amount from $750 million to $2 billion for all Treasury marketable securities auctions. |
| 2009 | November 4, 2009: Treasury announced two changes to the issuance calendar: (1) reintroduction of 30-year Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), with the first auction to occur in February 2010, and (2) discontinuation of 20-year TIPS auctions, effective immediately. Also, Treasury moved all regularly scheduled Treasury bill auctions to 11:30 a.m. from 1:00 p.m., beginning with bill auctions on November 9. |
| 2010 | January 29, 2010: Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds for Treasury Offering Announcements and Auction Results were manually posted on TreasuryDirect.gov. Then on September 1, 2010, the two auction RSS feeds for announcements and results were posted using a fully automated process. |
| 2010 | July 2010: A second re-opening to the 10-year Treasury Inflation-Protected Security (TIPS) offering was added, resulting in a total of six 10-year TIPS auctions per year. |
| 2011 | April 1, 2011: UOC amended to establish a minimum interest rate of 1/8 of one percent for all new Treasury fixed-principal ("nominal") and inflation-protected note and bond issues. This was utilized for the first time in the 5-year TIPS auction on April 21. |
| 2011 | November 19, 2011: The TAAPS data warehouse was implemented to provide access to detailed Treasury auction information, as well as allow staff to readily perform data analytics. The application now contains preexisting queries as well as an ad hoc querying tool for unique data requests. |
| 2013 | July 31, 2013: UOC amended to accommodate the auction and issuance of Floating Rate Notes (FRNs). |
| 2014 | January 29, 2014: After the auction announcement on January 23, the first auction of the Floating Rate Note (FRN) was held on Wednesday, January 29 and then issued on January 31. This is the first new Treasury marketable security since the Treasury Inflation-Protected Security (TIPS) was introduced in 1997. |
| 2014 | March 2014: Treasury began generating and releasing award notices to direct auction participants at 2 minutes 45 seconds after an auction's competitive close time. Previously, the award notices were not released until 4 minutes after the competitive close time. |
| 2014 | August 2014: Treasury enhanced the auction participant's user experience by upgrading the look and feel of TAAPS, the auction processing system. |
| 2014 | October 2014: Treasury conducted a small-value buyback operation. This was the first buyback operation since April 2002. |
| 2018 | October 18, 2018: Treasury issued the first 8-week bill security. |
| 2018 | December 11, 2018: Treasury introduced a new issuance schedule with the 8-week and 4-week securities issuing on Tuesdays. Previously, the 8-week and 4-week securities were issued on Thursdays. |
| 2022 | August 2022: The noncompetitive award limit was changed from $5 million to $10 million. |
| 2022 | October 25, 2022: Treasury issues the first 17-week bill security. |
| 2023 | March: The Foreign and International Monetary Authority (FIMA) bid limit was increased to $500 million per account per auction. The total noncompetitive FIMA limit was increased to $2 billion per auction. |