Bond Auctions

Tail and allotment splits are the Bank of Canada's own published figures — no proxy calculation needed, unlike the US "vs. Prior Yield" signal below. The Bank has only reported the allotment splits on more recent auctions, so older rows in this table may show "—" for those two columns.

vs. Prior Yield (Stop-Through / Tail) — United States. This compares the yield actually awarded at auction to the Treasury's own par yield curve rate for the matching maturity, taken from the prior business day. If the auction prices below that reference (a negative concession), it "stopped through" — demand was stronger than the market had priced in. If it prices above (a positive concession, a "tail"), demand was weaker and the Treasury had to pay up to clear the auction. This is a free proxy for the standard when-issued (WI) comparison traders use — genuine WI trading data is only available through paid terminals (Bloomberg/Refinitiv), so this site uses the public yield curve instead and labels it accordingly rather than calling it "When Issued." Because the comparison needs a day-over-day history of the yield curve that this site only started building recently, signals will show "—" for the first couple of weeks until enough history has accumulated.

Dealer Takedown — United States. Every auction's accepted bids split three ways: primary dealers (the Treasury's designated backstop, required to bid), direct bidders (institutions bidding for their own account), and indirect bidders (typically bidding through a dealer on behalf of someone else — the standard proxy for foreign central bank and institutional demand). A high indirect share suggests real end-demand showed up; a high primary-dealer share suggests dealers had to absorb supply that end-investors didn't want at that yield.

Tail (bps) — Canada. The Bank of Canada publishes this directly: the gap between the average yield and the high (worst) yield accepted at auction, in basis points. A small tail means bids were tightly clustered near the average — strong, confident demand. A wide tail means the range of accepted bids was more spread out — weaker or less certain demand.

Distributor / Customer and Canadian / Foreign — Canada. These are the Bank of Canada's own allotment breakdowns: how much of each auction went to primary distributors (the Canadian equivalent of primary dealers) versus their customers, and how much went to Canadian versus foreign accounts. The Canadian/Foreign split is a direct read on foreign demand — no proxy needed, unlike the indirect-bidder estimate used on the US side.