30-year Treasury Bond auction not so hot

The Treasury just sold $14 billion of 30-year bonds. The auction wasn't terrible, but it wasn't so hot, either. Pre-auction talk was for the bonds to sell at a yield of 3.51%. Instead, they sold at 3.54%. The bid-to-cover ratio came in at just 2.02, compared with 2.07 at the last auction and an average of 2.18 over the past 10 sales. Indirect bidding was strong, however, with such bidders scooping up 33.9% of the auction. That was better than the 10-auction average of 27.9% (and up significantly from November's 18.2%).

Long bond futures dropped to the day's low after the results came out. They were recently down 25/32 to 127 30/32.