The US Treasury Department in Washington.
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I bonds broke daily, weekly and monthly sales records
The Treasury sold $979 million of I bonds before Friday’s deadline — almost as much in one day as in the three years from 2018 to 2020, when investors bought just over $1 billion, according to the Treasury Department figures shared on Tuesday. Investors opened 95,482 new accounts on Friday, also a record.
Investors bought more than $3 billion in I bonds last week and nearly $7 billion in October — also representing weekly and monthly records, according to early estimates provided Monday by the Treasury Department.
Investors opened 359,822 new accounts last week and 731,336 new accounts in October.
TreasuryDirect.gov – the website where investors buy I bonds – crashed on Friday as volume surged. TreasuryDirect became “one of the federal government’s most visited websites” in the final days of the 9.62% rate window, the Treasury Department said on Friday. It usually only hosts a few thousand simultaneous visitors.
Bond rates change twice a year based on inflation.
There are two parts to the rate: a fixed rate, which remains the same after purchase, and a variable rate, which changes twice a year depending on inflation. The Treasury Department announces new rates each May and November.
Investors can lock in the new rate of 6.89% for six months by buying I bonds any time before the end of April 2023.
You can buy the assets online through TreasuryDirect, limited to $10,000 per calendar year for individuals. You can also use your federal tax refund to purchase an additional $5,000 in paper I bonds.
According to the Treasury Department, there were about 3.6 million total investors holding Series I bonds purchased electronically through October. These bonds have a collective value of $43.4 billion.
These figures exclude I bonds purchased under the Tax Time program, which are paper savings bonds. There were 28.6 million total investors holding these paper I bonds as of September 30, according to the most recent public data available.
The Treasury Department provided updated sales numbers after this story was originally published.
