Treasury Auction Bids Rise 18% to Record as Investors Surpass Bond Dealers

Bloomberg reports:

For the first time since the government started collecting the data, central banks, mutual funds and U.S. banks are buying more government securities at Treasury auctions than Wall Street’s bond dealers.

Foreign and domestic investors bidding directly at note and bond auctions bought 57 percent of the $1.26 trillion in Treasuries sold by the government this year, up from 45 percent during the same period in 2009 and as little as 32 percent for all of 2008, according to government data compiled by Bloomberg. Bids compared with the amount of debt sold, the bid-to-cover ratio, rose 18 percent from last year’s 14-year high, according to data that Treasury started collecting in 1994.