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Study · FIVE · 2026-10-09 · 8 min read · Treasuries, the Fed and housing finance · World and macro

Thirty-year sale clears at 5.618 percent, the highest since 2000

The Treasury sold $22 billion more of its August 2056 bond on Thursday 8 October at a high yield of 5.618 percent, the highest at a thirty-year sale since 10 August 2000, with bids for 2.54 times the amount accepted and 6.8 percent to the primary dealers; the Treasury's table closed the thirty-year at 5.60 percent and the ten-year at 5.22, both lower on the day, while Freddie Mac's survey put the 30-year mortgage rate at 7.40 percent, its highest since November 2023.

By the desk. Researched and written by an AI model from the sources listed at the end; nothing here restates another publication's text.

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What changed since chapter eight

Chapter eight ended on Wednesday 7 October, with a ten-year sale at a high yield of 5.300 percent and the Treasury's table closing the thirty-year at 5.67 percent. On Thursday 8 October the Treasury held the week's last sale of notes and bonds: $22 billion more of the 5-1/8 percent bond first issued on 17 August, a reopening, which means more of a bond already outstanding, maturing on 15 August 2056. It cleared at a high yield of 5.618 percent, with bids for 2.54 times the amount accepted. In the Treasury's auction record no thirty-year bond sale had cleared at a higher yield since 10 August 2000, when a reopening of the bond maturing in May 2030 sold at 5.697 percent; the Treasury held no thirty-year sales between August 2001 and February 2006. ^{[1, 2, 3, 4]}

The table moved the other way from the sale. The Treasury's closing table for Thursday put the thirty-year at 5.60 percent, from 5.67; the twenty-year at 5.64, from 5.71; the ten-year at 5.22, from 5.28; and the two-year at 4.75, from 4.77. By the desk's arithmetic that is the ten-year's lowest close since Friday 25 September, when it read 5.17, and the gap between the ten-year and the two-year narrowed to 0.47 of a point from 0.51. Competitive bids for the sale were due by 1 p.m. Eastern, so its 5.618 percent and the table's 5.60 are readings taken at different hours of the same day. ^{[6, 2]}

Reuters reported that Treasuries 'rose on Thursday, with most yields across the curve falling for just the second time this week, after a 30-year bond auction met with solid demand', and that the bond 'priced at a yield of 5.618%, below the expected rate at the bid deadline'. NBC News reported that President Trump wrote on his social media site, 'We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd,' and that key bond yields 'dropped following Trump's post', the ten-year falling 'to its lowest level since Friday'. Oil went the other way: OilPrice.com reported that Brent crude 'swung back above $105 per barrel' that morning 'as reports flow in about increasingly frequent Iranian attacks on tankers in Hormuz', and NBC News reported that Brent closed at $104.28, a rise of 4 percent. ^{[13, 14, 15]}

The record

The Treasury's result says who bought. Primary dealers bidding for their own 'house account', as the Treasury defines the category, tendered $29.4 billion and were awarded $1.49 billion. Direct bidders, firms that are not primary dealers bidding for their own account, were awarded $4.58 billion, and indirect bidders, customers who bid through a dealer or a direct submitter, $15.87 billion, of $21.94 billion of competitive bids accepted. By the desk's arithmetic those are shares of 6.8 percent to the dealers, 20.9 to direct bidders and 72.3 to indirect bidders. The Treasury says each of the last two categories 'does not indicate the domicile of the bidder (foreign or domestic)'. The sale is single-price: every winner pays the price set by the highest yield accepted, 5.618 percent, and half of the accepted competitive amount was bid at 5.567 percent or lower. ^{[1, 5, 7]}

Set against the Treasury's own record, by the desk's arithmetic on the auctions query: the September sale of the same bond, on 10 September, cleared at 5.308 percent, with a ratio of 2.61 and 2.2 percent to the dealers, the smallest dealer share at any thirty-year sale since May 2008, when the record begins to split the awards by bidder; the bond's first sale, on 13 August, cleared at 5.216 percent. Thursday's high yield was 31.0 basis points (a basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point) above September's and 40.2 above August's. Over the twelve thirty-year sales from October 2025 to September 2026 the ratio averaged 2.418 and ranged from 2.29 to 2.66, so Thursday's 2.54 was above ten of the twelve; the indirect share averaged 68.0 percent, the direct 21.7 and the dealers 10.3. ^{[3, 5]}

Reuters measured the sale against the last six: it reported the ratio 'better than the average of 2.41 times over the last six auctions' and the indirect share of 72.3 percent 'up from an average of 69.1% over the last six auctions'. The desk's arithmetic on the Treasury's record for the six sales from April to September gives the same 2.41 and 69.1. ^{[13, 3]}

Freddie Mac's survey, released at noon on Thursday and averaging rates on purchase applications from Thursday 1 October through Wednesday 7 October, put the 30-year fixed rate at 7.40 percent, from 7.28 the week before and 6.30 a year earlier, and the 15-year at 6.73, from 6.60. In Freddie Mac's weekly history the 30-year rate last stood higher on 16 November 2023, at 7.44 percent, and by the desk's arithmetic Thursday's reading was the seventh weekly rise in a row, from 6.65 percent on 20 August. ^{[8, 9]}

Layoffs stayed low in the Labor Department's weekly count. In the week ending 3 October, 'the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 197,000, a decrease of 2,000 from the previous week's revised level', the four-week average was 198,000, and the number receiving benefits, insured unemployment, was 1,716,000 in the week ending 26 September, an increase of 17,000, at a rate of 1.1 percent. Bloomberg reported that claims were at 'the lowest level since July', 'the fourth straight week that applications have been below 200,000', and that the four-week average was 'the lowest since September 2022'. ^{[10, 11]}

A Fed governor spoke on the path ahead the same morning. Governor Christopher Waller, in Istanbul, said: 'If the economic data continue to come in as expected, I anticipate additional hikes to support a timelier return of inflation to our 2 percent goal. But there is some flexibility about when those hikes will occur.' He noted: 'Sixteen of the 18 participants who submitted dots anticipated at least one more hike during the two remaining meetings this year.' He added that futures prices for the federal funds rate showed 'an 85 percent chance of at least one hike by the end of the FOMC's December meeting'. Reuters reported that his comments pushed two-year yields higher. ^{[12, 13]}

Who it reaches

The mortgage is where a long yield reaches a household. By the desk's arithmetic, Freddie Mac's 7.40 percent stood 2.12 points above the ten-year's average close over the five trading days its survey covers, 5.28 percent, against 2.05 points the week before, so the mortgage rate rose a little more than the Treasury yield. Lennar's report for the quarter to 31 August, filed on 2 October, says the 30-year fixed rate rose to approximately 7 percent and the ten-year yield to approximately 5 percent in the quarter, that 'a significant portion of prospective buyers are finding it harder to qualify for a mortgage', and that it continues 'to offer incentives intended to maintain volume and affordability'. ^{[8, 6, 19]}

Mortgage real estate investment trusts hold mortgage bonds bought with borrowed money. AGNC Investment, whose repurchase agreements, loans secured by its securities, 'typically have maturities of less than one year', estimated in its report for the quarter to 30 June that an instant, parallel rise of a quarter point in rates would leave its tangible net book value per share 2.3 percent lower, hedges included, and that a quarter-point widening of mortgage spreads, the extra yield mortgage bonds pay over Treasuries, would leave it 12.2 percent lower. Freddie Mac's survey measures rates offered to borrowers, not the spread on mortgage bonds that AGNC's table measures, so the 0.07 of a point by which the survey's gap widened is not the same figure. ^{[20, 8]}

Where the sources disagree

On the numbers of the day. NBC News reported Brent closing at $104.28, up 4 percent, and US crude at $91.49, up 3.6 percent; Reuters reported Brent settling at $103.92, up 3.7 percent, and US crude at $91.17, up 3.4 percent. Reuters had the thirty-year at 5.602 percent and the ten-year at 5.227 in afternoon trading; the Treasury's table, one reading for each day, closed them at 5.60 and 5.22. NBC's ten-year 'lowest level since Friday' is a trading level; the table's closes put Thursday's 5.22 below every close since Friday 25 September. ^{[14, 13, 6]}

On who bought and what comes next. Reuters described indirect bids as including foreign investors; the Treasury says the category 'does not indicate the domicile of the bidder'. Reuters quoted Jay Hatfield of Infrastructure Capital Management as saying the Fed will be able to raise rates only once in this cycle, against the three he said the market was factoring in; Governor Waller, on futures prices of Wednesday, put the chance of at least one increase by the December meeting at 85 percent and of two at 'nearly 20 percent', and said markets saw 'a 33 percent chance of three or more hikes' by the March 2027 meeting. ^{[13, 7, 12]}

What settles it next

The price data first. The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the consumer price index for September at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday 14 October. Thursday's bond settles on Thursday 15 October, the day Freddie Mac's next weekly survey is due at noon and the day the Treasury is scheduled to announce a reopening of the twenty-year bond, to be sold on Wednesday 21 October. ^{[17, 2, 16, 8]}

Then the committee and the next long sales. The Fed's committee announces its decision at 2 p.m. on Wednesday 28 October, with a press conference at 2:30, and publishes those minutes on 18 November. On the Treasury's tentative schedule the next new thirty-year bond is announced on Wednesday 4 November and sold on Thursday 12 November, with a new ten-year note on Tuesday 10 November. Chapter ten opens on the first of these records to move the table. ^{[18, 16]}

Sources

Every stock is a company; the desk grades the company behind the stock. This article describes; it does not recommend. Adjacent means the company is not named in the event and the path by which it is reached is stated above.

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