I cannot find the symbol for the 10 year treasury bond. I find funds, indexes and ETFs. I want the bond! Not a derivative.
I cannot find a symbol anywhere.
Can anyone help.
Qazulight
Wendy seems to be the bond person here, when it comes to buying directly from the Treasury.
When I sold all the stocks in my IRA and was looking for a place to hide, in the summer of 2008, I simply called up the brokerage that holds the IRA and told them to buy 6 month Bills for me.
Steve
@qazulight the simplest way to buy any Treasury security, including the 10 year Treasury bond that you want, is to open an account at Treasury Direct with electronic funds transfer from your savings or checking account.
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/
The government has specific auction dates for these securities. You would place an order in advance of the auction date. The very large banks bid on the Treasuries in order to set their interest rate. Then the small orders (like yours) will be filled at that interest rate.
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/auctions/
I have done this many times. I have bought Treasuries, TIPS and I-Bonds. Itâs all electronic so I print out the orders for my record books.
You can also buy existing bonds on the secondary market through brokers like Fidelity. These are older bonds that may have originally been (say) 30 year bonds which are already 20 years old and will mature in 10 years. Their price will be adjusted to give you a specific yield to maturity. TIPS as well as Treasuries can be bought this way.
For research purposes, the links are:
Wendy
10 Likes
âI want to buy a 10 year treasury bond.â
qazulight,
Actually, you canât buy a 10-year treasury bond, because such a thing doesnât exist. A 10-year note? Yes, they exist, but not 10-year treasury bonds.
Yeah, yeah, Iâm being picky. But terminology matters, as does oneâs understanding of what one is making bets on, and why. So this question needs to be asked:
âWhy the 10-year rather than another maturity? What do you hope to gain?â
Also, if youâre just making a directional bet on interest rates, take a look the futures contracts for the 10-year.
Charlie
5 Likes
They donât have symbols in the sense that stocks do. I mean, CNBC uses âUS10Yâ as a symbol for tracking purposes, but that doesnât refer to any particular 10-year note (The US Treasury is weird with terminology, anything up to a year is called a âbillâ, above a year to 10 years is called a ânoteâ, and over 10 years is called a âbondâ, but they are essentially all bonds).
Here is the auction schedule for all [common] treasury issuance.
You can see that the next 10-year note auction was announced on 1/4/24, and will be auctioned on 1/10/24, and then issued on 1/16/24. That means that starting 1/16, you will own it. It will pay an initial accrued interest, if any. Then it will pay an interest payment every January 15th (or nearest business day) and July 15th (or nearest business day). Usually, 10 years later, on 1/15/34, it will make the last interest payment and will return the entire principal. But sometimes the 10-year note, at purchase, is âreopenedâ which means they sell more of an older 10-year note, so the maturity date wonât be quite 10 years later, but perhaps 9 years and some months later instead.
You can buy this note at your brokerage or at treasurydirect.gov (which requires opening a new account). I use both, but lately I prefer my brokerage. At Fidelity for example, you click on âNews&Researchâ, then select âFixed Income, Bonds, and CDsâ, then once the page opens, choose ânew issuesâ tab, and then open the âTreasuryâ section by pressing on the â+â next to it. Then you will see all the treasuries being offered. Right now there are 6 of them. One of them is a note, the â10-year noteâ maturing on 11/15/33. That means it was a âreopenedâ note. Here is a link to the auction announcement, where they tell you that this is a 9 year, 10 month note maturing on 11/15/33.
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/instit/annceresult/press/preanre/2024/A_20240104_2.pdf
4 Likes
Followup.
This is what the current yield-curve looks like.
Iâll leave it to others to speculate on the tea leaves of yield-curve inversions and such and just point out that 10-year note pays no better than the 5-year, and both are beat by short-term Tâbills.
So, why go long? If one is making a very sophisticated bet that interest-rates will fall, then longer is better, because itâs more responsive, for reasons of duration, convexity, etc., none of which the âaverageâ retail investor is able to make effective use of. OTOH, going shorter gives one greater optionality.
In short, as with any financial instrument, bills, notes, and bonds are just tools that might be useful for specific purposes, or they might not be. It all depends on oneâs means, needs, goals, opportunities, etc. Fortunately, treasuries --any maturity-- are highly liquid, and itâs easy to get out of them if need be.
Charlie
2 Likes
Treasurydirect is the best way. But you should be able to buy it from your brokers bond desk. For ex: at E*Trade, Bond Center, in the front page they have treasuries listed. You donât need to know CUSIP, you can just clik and buy. OTOH if you want to know specific issue, then you can find it on treasury website.
Personally, I recommend treasurydirect. It is easy convenient, safe.
1 Like
âPersonally, I recommend treasurydirect. It is easy,emphasized text convenient, safe.â
Kingran,
âConvenientâ is only true only if one intends to Buy-n-Hold. Else, buying through a broker offers an easier means of exiting. OTOH, min purchase through a broker is $1k, whereas Treasury Direct allows purchases in increments of $100, making it easy for small accounts to set up a T-Bill ladder that could become the basis of oneâs emergency fund and that would generally offer a higher after-tax yield than any MM fund or bank CD, especially if one lives in a state that imposes income taxes.
But, yeah, I totally agree with âeasyâ and âsafeâ. Iâve been dealing with Treasury Direct for nearly 30 years and have never had a problem. That department and the National Parks system is one of the few things our dear govât does well and does get right.
Charlie
1 Like
I can understand why you view that way. However, please note, you can move the bonds to your broker, also, US treasury buys back securities time to time!! Some caveats apply.
I am assuming the original poster wants to make a long-term bond purchase for the purpose of buy-n-hold. If not, IEF, is exchange traded ETF a better vehicle for trading.
Kingran
Yes, the securities can be moved from Treasury Direct to a broker. But have you ever done it? Itâs a hassle and definitely not âconvenientâ.
Charlie
I guess what is convenient is debatable. Here are the steps and it should not take more than 10 to 15 minutes.
- Go to your TreasuryDirect account.
- Choose the Manage Direct tab.
- Identify the security or securities you want to transfer.
- Choose External Transfer.
- Open the link for FS Form 5511, âTreasuryDirect Transfer Request.â
- Fill out the required information and follow the instructions on the form.
1 Like
KinGran,
Whereas if the treasury securities are held in a brokerage account, it takes mere seconds to write the sell order and get a fill, a process that will have to be done anyway once the securities have been transferred, which isnât a real time settlement. Why do the double work? Why suffer the delay?
Letâs say one is managing a small portfolio, just $1 million or so, and one has more productive things to be doing with oneâs time than than filling out forms AND one had the foresight to plan ahead. Then buying those securities through Treasury Direct would have made no sense at all.
But, âChef Choiceâ as you imply.
Charlie
There would be no symbol, only a CUSIP. Bonds donât have symbols like stock or mutual funds - there are frankly too many for us to use a single symbol for each and every bond.
2 Likes
Vanguard lets me buy secondary market Treasuries OR auction new-issue Treasuries. 
Yep. I do this twice a week at my broker. Just this morning I purchased the 26-week Treasury Bill yielding 5.247% and the 13-week T-bill yielding 5.394%.
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Actually, Qazu / everyone - the simplest way to buy into 10 year Treasury bonds is to go to the new investment company offering Treasury ETFs at low cost and build investments with whatever duration you choose.
They issue monthly dividends, and do all the bond sales and buys (rolling, âon the runâ) so we donât have to set up Treasury direct accounts or deal with any of that.
At the moment I am in XBIL (6month), OBIL (12 month) and UTEN (10 years).
It is true that Treasuries, if you buy them yourself, are zero fee. I am willing to pay 15 basis points for the service.
FC
Itâs important to understand that all mutual funds and ETFs do NOT have a maturity date like individual bonds. The Net Asset Value (NAV) of an ETF or bond mutual fund will go down if interest rates go up. Individual bonds can be held to maturity for full return of principal but the NAV of an ETF will not recover and principal can be lost.
This is why I buy a ladder of bonds (CDs, etc) and never an ETF.
Wendy
6 Likes
At 3% yield, 15 basis points is a full 5 percent of your yield. Thatâs not worth it to me. Also, what âserviceâ exactly are they giving in return for 5 percent of your yield? If I buy a 10-year note at my broker, it takes 3 or 4 clicks, and one pull down menu selection, including searching for the note and buying the note. Then, every 6 months the interest payment is deposited automatically to my account, and 10 years later the principal is returned to me automatically into my account. Total 15 to 30 seconds of work over the 10 years.
This is especially important for retirees or others who use bonds for anticipated expenses coming in the future. Usually when you buy a bond, you time its maturity to roughly coincide with the need for funds. Now, of course, many bonds are rolled over ladder-style, but STILL, some arenât because the over the years the funds are needed to fund living expenses. So, when I buy a 1-year bill today, say 50 of them, with the intention of paying for college bills in a year from now, I know that I paid $47,676.97 for them, and they will result in exactly $50,000 being deposited into my account on 12/26/2024. But if instead I bought $47,676.97 of the OBIL ETF, I donât know exactly how much it will be worth on 12/26/2024 when I need the cash to pay college bills. It could be $49,925 ($50,000 minus 15 basis points), or it could be less, or it could be more, all depending on what interest rates, and what other holders of that ETF, have done in the interim.
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