Real time Comparison Chart

30 YEAR TREASURY BOND	10 YEAR TREASURY NOTE
5 YEAR TREASURY NOTE	13 WEEK TREASURY BILL

Treasury note
Treasury notes (or T-Notes) mature in two to ten years. They have a coupon payment every six months, and are commonly issued with maturities dates of 2, 5 or 10 years, for denominations from $1,000 to $1,000,000.

T-Notes and T-Bonds are quoted on the secondary market at percentage of par in thirty-seconds of a point. Thus, for example, a quote of 95:07 on a note indicates that it is trading at a discount: $952.19 (i.e. 95 7/32%) for a $1,000 bond. (Several different notations may be used for bond price quotes. The example of 95 and 7/32 points may be written as 95:07, or 95-07, or 95'07, or decimalized as 95.21875.) Other notation includes a +, which indicates 1/64 points and a third digit may be specified to represent 1/256 points. Examples include 95:07+ which equates to (95 + 7/32 + 1/64) and 95:073 which equates to (95 + 7/32 + 3/256). Notation such as 95:073+ is unusual and not typically used.

The 10-year Treasury note has become the security most frequently quoted when discussing the performance of the U.S. government-bond market and is used to convey the market's take on longer-term macroeconomic expectations. It is also important to the U.S. mortgage market, which uses the yield on the 10-year Treasury note as a benchmark for setting mortgage interest rates.


Treasury bond
Treasury bonds (T-Bonds, or the long bond) have the longest maturity, from ten years to thirty years. They have coupon payment every six months like T-Notes, and are commonly issued with maturity of thirty years. The secondary market is highly liquid, so the yield on the most recent T-Bond offering was commonly used as a proxy for long-term interest rates in general. This role has largely been taken over by the 10-year note, as the size and frequency of long-term bond issues declined significantly in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The U.S. Federal government stopped issuing the well-known 30-year Treasury bonds (often called long-bonds) on October 31, 2001. As the U.S. government used its budget surpluses to pay down the Federal debt in the late 1990s, the 10-year Treasury note began to replace the 30-year Treasury bond as the general, most-followed metric of the U.S. bond market. However, due to demand from pension funds and large, long-term institutional investors, along with a need to diversify the Treasury's liabilities - and also because the flatter yield curve meant that the opportunity cost of selling long-dated debt had dropped - the 30-year Treasury bond was re-introduced in February 2006 and is now issued quarterly. This will bring the U.S. in line with Japan and European governments issuing longer-dated maturities amid growing global demand from pension funds. Some countries, including France and the United Kingdom, have begun offering a 50-year bond, known as a Methuselah.


Treasury bill
Treasury bills (or T-bills) mature in one year or less. Like zero-coupon bonds, they do not pay interest prior to maturity; instead they are sold at a discount of the par value to create a positive yield to maturity. Many regard treasury bills to be the most risk-free investment for U.S. investors.

Regular weekly T-Bills are commonly issued with maturity dates of 28 days (or 4 weeks, about 1 month), 91 days (or 13 weeks, about 3 months), and 182 days (or 26 weeks, about 6 months). Treasury Bills are sold by single price auctions held weekly. Offering amounts for 13-week and 26-week bills are announced each Thursday for auction at 1:00 pm on the following Monday and settlement, or issuance, on Thursday. Offering amounts for 4-week bills are announced on Monday for auction the next day, Tuesday, at 1:00 pm and issuance on Thursday. Purchase orders at TreasuryDirect must be entered before 11:30 on the Monday of the auction. The minimum purchase amount is $1,000. (This amount formerly had been $10,000.) Mature T-bills are also redeemed on each Thursday. Banks and financial institutions, especially primary dealers, are the largest purchasers of T-Bills.