High yield vs median yield

Drafted with AI assistance from official sources; checked against the sources listed below.

The high yield is the highest yield Treasury accepted at an auction; every winning bidder gets it. The median yield is the yield at or below which half of the accepted competitive bids, by amount, were made.

Why everyone gets the high yield

A Treasury auction is a single-price auction. Treasury accepts the lowest yields first until the offering is sold, and the last yield it needs is the high yield. A bidder who asked for less still gets the high yield.

What the gap shows

The high yield minus the median yield, in basis points, says how far the cut-off sat above the middle of the winning bids. A small gap means the winning bids were bunched close to the high yield. A wide gap means Treasury had to reach well above the middle to place the whole offering. 500metrics shows this gap on every note, bond and TIPS auction page, and uses it as one of the two official stand-ins for the auction tail.

What it does not tell you

• How the yield compares with the market. That needs the when-issued yield, which is not public.
• Anything about bills or floating rate notes in yield terms. Bills are bid as a discount rate and FRNs as a discount margin; their pages show the high and median of those instead.