| 1929 |
Dec. 17, 1929: Regular issues of 13- week bills. |
| 1959 |
Mar. 12, 1959: Regular issues of 26-week bills and 1-year bills. |
| 1960 |
Completed establishment of 1-year bill cycle quarterly in addition to 3 and 6-month cycles weekly. |
| 1962 |
Aug. 28, 1962: Awards to a single bidder in an auction of Treasury bills were limited to one quarter of the securities offered. |
| 1963 |
June 1963: Monthly 1-year bills replaced quarterly issues of 1-year bills. |
| 1966 |
Sept. 1966: 9-month bill auctions began in conjunction with regular monthly 12-month bill auctions. Each was a reopening of an outstanding 12-month bill. |
| 1970 |
Raised the minimum bill denomination from $1,000 to $10,000. |
| 1972 |
Sept. 1972: Began the conversion of regular issues of end-of-month 1-year bills to regular issues of 52-week bills with offerings every 4 weeks, and a phase-out of regular issues of 9-month bills. |
| 1974 |
Cash management bills were introduced to raise cash for a few days or several months. The use of STRIPS of bills and tax anticipation bills was discontinued. |
| 1975 |
The maximum amount accepted on a noncompetitive basis from any one bidder for original issues of marketable bills was increased from $200,000 to $500,000. |
| 1979 |
Bidders in bill auctions were required to report the amount of any net long positions in excess of $200 million in the offered bills using the tender form. |
| 1979 |
Transition began to Thursday maturities for all 13, 26, and 52-week and cash management bills, and was completed in 1980. |
| 1979 |
Book-entry form was required for all Treasury bills issued. Paper, or definitive, Treasury bills were no longer issued. |
| 1982 |
Bidding in Treasury bill auctions was converted to a bank discount yield basis, rather than a price basis. This change was made to conform the bidding in Treasury bill auctions to market pricing conventions. |
| 1997 |
November 1997: Three-decimal competitive bidding, in .005 percent increments, was introduced for regular Treasury bills: 13, 26 and 52-week. |
| 1997 |
The net long position reporting threshold for all bill auctions was lowered from $2 billion to $1 billion. |
| 1998 |
March 3, 1998: Treasury announced that they would be issuing smaller amounts for 13-week bills relative to 26-week bills. The announcement called for $7.25 billion of 26-week bills and $6.25 of 13-week bills. Previously, the practice was to split the total amount offered evenly. The reason for the change was to maintain market liquidity in Treasury bills, while reducing the amount of cash raised. |
| 1998 |
August 20, 1998: 13-and 26-week bill announcements moved from Tuesdays to Thursdays. The 52-week bill auction moved to Tuesdays. These changes were made to shorten the When-Issued (WI) Trading periods for bills. |
| 2001 |
February 2001: 52-week bills eliminated after the February 27 auction. |
| 2001 |
July 2001: First auction of 4-week bills. |
| 2002 |
April 2002: The number of decimals for discount rates submitted in cash management bill auctions increased from two to three. |
| 2002 |
December 2002: Net Long Reporting Threshold changed to 35% of the offering amount. Previously, the threshold had been $1 billion for bills and $2 billion for notes |
| 2005 |
October 2005: 4-week bill became eligible for purchase in TreasuryDirect; however, this security was still not available for purchase in Legacy TreasuryDirect. |
| 2008 |
June 2008: 52-week bill reintroduced. |
| 2008 |
September 17, 2008: Treasury announces the introduction of the Supplementary Financing Program. This program was designed to address heightened liquidity pressures faced by the Federal Reserve. The program auctioned a series of Treasury bills, apart from Treasury’s borrowing program, that provided cash for the use of Federal Reserve Initiatives. |
| 2008 |
September 26, 2008: A 101-day cash management bill (CMB) security was auctioned for $60 billion. This is the highest amount ever offered for a Treasury security in U.S. history. The government attracted a record-breaking $205.8 billion in overall public bids for this CMB, and awarded $59.9 billion to successful competitive bidders. (All results of the temporary Supplementary Financing Program.) |
| 2008 |
December 2008: 4-week bill closes at 0.000%, for the first time since the Depression. |
| 2012 |
August 2012: Treasury announced it was in the process of building the operational capabilities to allow for negative rate bidding in Treasury bill auctions, in case of future implementation. |
| 2018 |
October 2018: First auction of 8-week bills. |
| 2022 |
October 2022: First auction of 17-week bills. |
