Treasury Buybacks · Methodology
How the Treasury Buyback Data Is Built
Where the figures on the Treasury buyback tracker come from, when they update, how each operation is filed and calculated, and what changed when.
Last changed · Changelog · data.json · latest.json
What the data covers
Every buyback operation in Treasury's record since the first, on March 9, 2000: the 45 operations of 2000 to 2002, the small-value operations Treasury has run since 2014 to keep its systems ready, and the liquidity support and cash management programs that began in 2024. Treasury held no buybacks from May 2002 to September 2014.
Each operation carries Treasury's maximum, the par offered and accepted, the number of securities eligible and bought, and every security bought with its weighted average accepted price. Announced and tentative operations appear in the upcoming schedule until they are held. A past operation with no results (Treasury moved or postponed it) stays in the record as not held, with Treasury's notice.
Sources
- Operations and securities
- Treasury's Fiscal Data Treasury Securities Buybacks dataset: the operations table and the security details table (accepted securities only). Checked when the tracker launched, the accepted securities add up to each operation's total, and their count matches its number of issues accepted, for all 230 operations then in the record.
- Same-day results
- TreasuryDirect's results file for each operation. Treasury names its buyback files after the operation's start time in UTC, so the results file of an announced operation is known before it posts. For an operation from the last 30 days that Fiscal Data has not completed (including schedule-only operations), the tracker reads that file. Fiscal Data is authoritative beyond that window. Validated XML is cached separately and revalidated daily for Treasury corrections; a cold cache refetches Treasury.
- The schedule
- Announced operations come from Fiscal Data, which lists each one once Treasury publishes its preliminary announcement. Tentative dates come from Treasury's tentative buyback schedule, published at each quarterly refunding. A tentative date drops when Treasury announces or holds an operation in the same program, security type and maturity range within 3 days of it, and when it passes. A failed schedule refresh retains the last verified schedule; a stale flag identifies it after the six-hour refresh window.
How operations are filed
Liquidity support and cash management follow Treasury's own label. Small-value covers Treasury's Small Value label and the unlabelled operations from 2014 to 2023, which TreasuryDirect describes as small-value buybacks to test operational readiness. The unlabelled operations from 2000 to 2002 are the 2000 to 2002 program. The open data keeps Treasury's label beside the filing.
One operation is filed differently from Fiscal Data's label, each on Treasury's own word: 2026-03-02: Fiscal Data labels it Liquidity Support; Treasury's notice calls it a small-value buyback to test the move to the New York Fed's FedTrade Plus platform. (notice)
Update schedule
Most operations take offers from 1:40 to 2:00 pm Eastern, and Treasury posts the results file one to three minutes after the close. On weekdays the site checks every two minutes from 2:02 to 2:16 pm Eastern, in both summer and winter time. A check reads the site's own latest.json first and goes no further unless an operation is scheduled that day; on an operation day it reads Treasury's results file and regenerates the pages and both JSON files as soon as a result posts that the site does not show, for up to 15 minutes after Treasury posts it. A full refresh runs at 2:20 pm Eastern every weekday, which also picks up the next day's preliminary announcement, an operation Treasury moved to the morning, and Fiscal Data corrections. Between runs, validated snapshots refresh every six hours. Pages use ISR with a six-hour backstop. Required upstream failures fail the build loudly; runtime regeneration retains the last good page. Raw responses are uncached; only complete, validated snapshots enter the data cache.
Each weekday at 13:00 UTC an automated check confirms the newest operation Fiscal Data has results for is on the tracker and its program page, and that Treasury's tentative schedule has not run out for more than 3 days. At 19:30 UTC a second check confirms that any operation held that day whose results Treasury has posted is already on the page. A miss alerts TFTC the same day.
How the figures are computed
- Par
- Every dollar amount is par (face value), as Treasury reports it.
- Fill
- Par accepted as a share of the announced maximum, to one decimal.
- Offer ratio
- Par offered divided by par accepted, to two decimals. Blank when Treasury accepted nothing.
- Average price
- The par-weighted average of Treasury's weighted average accepted prices across the securities bought, per $100 of par. For TIPS the prices are per $100 of unadjusted principal, before the inflation index ratio.
- Cash cost
- For notes and bonds only: par accepted times price over 100, summed across the securities bought, before accrued interest. It is shown only when every security bought has a price and they add up to the operation's total. TIPS are left out because their settlement price includes an inflation adjustment the results do not carry.
- Comparison
- The latest operation is compared with the previous completed operation in the same program, security type and maturity range.
- Fiscal years and quarters
- The federal fiscal year runs from October to September: fiscal 2027 began on Oct 1, 2026. Totals count completed operations only.
- Anchors
- Every operation has a permanent link: its date, plus its Eastern start time for a second operation on the same day (2024-08-21-1340).
Update dates
Every page and file states one update date, taken from the data: the newest completed operation it shows, stamped at 20:00 UTC that day, after the 2:00 pm Eastern close in both summer and winter time. The same value is each page's structured-data dateModified, its sitemap lastmod and the dateModified in both JSON files, where updatedThrough gives the bare operation date.
Known limitations
- 2000 to 2002 totals
- Fiscal Data's figures for seven operations in 2000 and 2001 are $1 million higher than Treasury's 2000 to 2002 summary page, so the program totals $67.507 billion here against $67.5 billion there. The tracker reports Fiscal Data, whose security details add up to its totals.
- Tentative maximums
- The tentative schedule can lag Treasury's announcements. On Aug 19, 2026 Treasury raised long-end liquidity support maximums to at least $4 billion while the schedule file still showed $2 billion; the tracker shows those tentative rows as at least $4 billion, citing the announcement. The preliminary announcement sets the final figure.
- Moved operations
- When Treasury moves an operation, Fiscal Data keeps the original row without results. The tracker shows it as not held and links Treasury's notice; it does not count toward totals.
- Cash cost
- Par times price, before accrued interest, so it is lower than the cash Treasury paid by the interest accrued since each security's last coupon. Not computed for TIPS.
Corrections
Fiscal Data is authoritative and is re-read on each refresh. For operations in the last 30 days, TreasuryDirect results fill in operations Fiscal Data has not completed. Treasury corrections appear within a day through daily XML revalidation. TFTC is alerted if Fiscal Data still lacks completed results more than 3 calendar days after the operation date. Changes to sources or arithmetic are dated in the changelog below. If you find a figure that does not match Treasury's official results, tell us through the contact page with the operation date.
License and how to cite
Treasury's figures are US government works in the public domain. TFTC's compilation and calculations (the program filing, totals, fill, offer ratio, average price and cash cost) are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0. Credit:
Source: TFTC, Treasury buyback tracker (tftc.io/treasury-buybacks), data through <date>.
The full record is at /treasury-buybacks/data.json, and the latest operation, the last five and the upcoming schedule are at /treasury-buybacks/latest.json.
Changelog
Dated changes to the data, its sources and the method, newest first.
Tracker launched
Every Treasury buyback operation since March 2000 from Treasury's Fiscal Data, with the amount offered and accepted, the maximum, every security bought and its average price, the upcoming schedule, and totals by fiscal year, quarter and program. Same-day results are read from TreasuryDirect's results file within minutes of each close. The full record is open JSON under CC BY 4.0.