Japan one-year bills clear at 1.6322 percent lowest yield

Japan’s Ministry of Finance sold one-year treasury discount bills on Monday at a lowest accepted price of 98.394 per 100 yen, a yield of 1.6322 percent, and a weighted average price of 98.403, a yield of 1.6229 percent. Competitive bids totalled 7,605.0 billion yen against 1,686.7 billion yen accepted, a cover of about 4.5 times, with a further 513.3 billion yen allotted to JGB market special participants on a non-price-competitive basis. The bills, issue 1414, are issued on October 20, 2026 and mature on October 20, 2027.

The allotment ratio at the lowest accepted price was 95.5102 percent, meaning nearly every bid at the stop was filled. That is a strong result at a yield level that would have been unthinkable before Bank of Japan normalisation: the one-year point of the yen cash curve now pays more than 1.6 percent.

The curve context is in Friday’s shorter bill sale, which cleared at a weighted average yield of 1.2803 percent on October 16. The roughly 34 basis point gap between the shorter tenor and Monday’s one-year average is the market’s price for the expected policy path over the coming year, into the Bank of Japan’s October 29 to 30 meeting.