The Lemon Fool

TS27 (3.75% Treasury Gilt 07/03/27) seems very illiquid: a few trades per week. That's quite different to TG27 (1.25% Treasury Gilt 22/07/27) which seems to have several trades per hour.

Why is TS27 so much less liquid? It was issued in 2011: was it all bought up by the BoE for quantitative easing?

(This is mostly out of curiosity: I was looking for a gilt with about ~3 years to maturity, but I don't really mind buying TG27 instead.)

londoninvestor wrote:TS27 (3.75% Treasury Gilt 07/03/27) seems very illiquid: a few trades per week. That's quite different to TG27 (1.25% Treasury Gilt 22/07/27) which seems to have several trades per hour.

Why is TS27 so much less liquid? It was issued in 2011: was it all bought up by the BoE for quantitative easing?

(This is mostly out of curiosity: I was looking for a gilt with about ~3 years to maturity, but I don't really mind buying TG27 instead.)

Well neither of my brokers, ii and IWeb, cover it, whereas I can trade TG27 with both. It doesn't look like HL covers it either, so that's at least in part an answer...

mc2fool wrote:Well neither of my brokers, ii and IWeb, cover it, whereas I can trade TG27 with both. It doesn't look like HL covers it either, so that's at least in part an answer...

Thanks for your reply: I noticed that too, but I wonder if the cause/effect is in the other direction, i.e. retail brokers don't cover it because it's illiquid.

For example, looking at TG27 this morning, there are several trades for 8-figure amounts: so there must be plenty of wholesale liquidity there, which presumably would still exist if retail brokers didn't cover this gilt.

londoninvestor wrote:

mc2fool wrote:Well neither of my brokers, ii and IWeb, cover it, whereas I can trade TG27 with both. It doesn't look like HL covers it either, so that's at least in part an answer...

Thanks for your reply: I noticed that too, but I wonder if the cause/effect is in the other direction, i.e. retail brokers don't cover it because it's illiquid.

For example, looking at TG27 this morning, there are several trades for 8-figure amounts: so there must be plenty of wholesale liquidity there, which presumably would still exist if retail brokers didn't cover this gilt.

It is a (relatively) small one, at a mere £9bn in issue (nominal, of course). https://www.dmo.gov.uk/data/pdfdatareport?reportCode=D1A

I think the OP needs to go back and reconsider how he measures the liquidity of a security. A few lines published on a web page doesn't cut it IMO.

GS

GoSeigen wrote:I think the OP needs to go back and reconsider how he measures the liquidity of a security. A few lines published on a web page doesn't cut it IMO.

GS

Could you (or other posters) suggest where I should be looking instead?

(Why "he", btw?)

londoninvestor wrote:(Why "he", btw?)

The patriarchy of course.