The latest SSB for August 2024 has been released: 3.19% for the first-year rate and 3.22% for the 10-year average rate. While slightly lower than last month’s offering, these rates are still among the most competitive. Let’s look at this month’s offering.
SSB Aug 2024 Details
Here is the summary of the offering:
The average return over ten years is 3.22%, and its first-year rate is 3.19%. Despite the slightly lower rates this month, the current rates are still among the highest in recent years. Most investors would have probably gotten their allocations in the past several months, but for those who haven’t, this can be your opportunity to lock in the higher rates for much longer, up to ten years.
Are you interested in applying to this SSB Aug 2024? Please take note of the following schedule:
How Competitive Is SSB Aug 2024?
Here are the historical SSB rates over the past few years:
Despite the Fed hinting at rate cuts towards the end of this year, the current rates are still hovering at a very competitive level. This month’s rates are among the highest in recent years. Even back in early 2021, they were still hovering below 1%.
If you think the rates may be reversing soon, this month could be your opportunity to lock in the higher rates while they last.
Future Projection
As we mentioned earlier, the Fed and the market expect that we have reached the peak of this rate hike cycle and that rates will start to reverse soon.
The diagram above shows that the market expects a rate cut toward the end of 2024 and further cuts in 2025. In the meantime, rates will stay elevated without any hike or cut.
Because SSB tracks the government bond yield, barring any black swan event, we can expect that next month’s SSB offering will offer roughly similar rates as this month’s. However, please do not get too complacent because as the rates decline, the SSB offering will also track them.
If you have yet to reach your desired SSB allocation, this month can be your opportunity. Note that the last two SSB offerings had a quantity ceiling because of the high demand. If you still have a relatively large amount to deploy into SSB, it may be a good idea to continue deploying over several months to overcome this possible quantity ceiling cap.
What Would We Do?
We have been utilizing SSB to park our short-term cash. We have even migrated some portions of our short-term cash from T-bills into SSB to lock in the higher rates for much longer. SSB allows monthly redemption without penalty, making it a more liquid option than T-bills.
We will continue to migrate more portions of our short-term allocation into SSB this month to benefit from the higher rates for longer.
Will you be applying for this month’s SSB? If so, you may follow our step-by-step guide on how to buy SSB.