How to read a TIPS auction result

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

A TIPS result looks like any other note or bond result, but its yield and its price mean something different. This guide reads one real result line by line: the new 10-year TIPS auctioned on 23 July 2026.

The yield is a real yield

Bidders in a TIPS auction bid a real yield: what the security earns on top of inflation, as measured by the consumer price index. Treasury accepts the lowest yields first, and every winning bidder gets the high yield.

A real yield of 2.438% is not comparable with the 10-year note's nominal yield, which includes inflation. 500metrics publishes no inflation forecast.

The coupon and the price

At a new issue, Treasury sets the coupon from the high yield, rounded down to the nearest eighth of a percentage point: 2.438% gives 2.375%. Because the coupon is a little below the yield, the security sells a little below $100.

A TIPS result shows two prices, and the difference is the inflation adjustment:

• The unadjusted price, $99.444895 per $100, is the price before any inflation adjustment.
• The index ratio on the issue date, 1.003250, says how much the price index has moved since the security's dated date of 15 July 2026.
• The adjusted price, $99.768091, is the unadjusted price times the index ratio. It is what a buyer pays per $100 of original face value, before accrued interest.

(The multiplication is ours, from the published figures.) An index ratio can be below 1 too: at the reopening of the same security on 17 September 2026 it was 0.999850, so the adjusted price, $97.598142, was a little below the unadjusted one.

How much was bid, and who bought

• The bid-to-cover ratio says bids came to 2.30 times what was sold to the public.
• Of the competitive bids accepted, indirect bidders took about 65.2%, direct bidders about 25.0% and primary dealers about 9.9% (our arithmetic from the published amounts).

Comparing TIPS results

TIPS are auctioned less often than nominal notes, a few times a year for each term, and most of those auctions are reopenings of the latest new issue. So each result is worth comparing with the same term's earlier auctions, not with a nominal note's:

At a reopening the coupon stays 2.375%, so a higher yield shows up as a lower price instead. The 10-year TIPS and 30-year TIPS pages list every result of each. The guide to bills, notes, bonds, TIPS and FRNs explains how TIPS principal works over the life of the security.

What this guide cannot tell you

• What a TIPS will pay in total. That depends on inflation until it matures, and 500metrics publishes no inflation forecast.
• Whether a TIPS suits anyone. 500metrics describes securities and their results; it does not compare them as investments.