The National Treasury Management Agency has sold €500 million of treasury bills, reaching the target set for the sale.

The auction, which covered bills that will mature in September, attracted bids of almost three times what was on offer. That was slightly lower than last month’s auction, which attracted bids of 3.6 times the total available bills.

Senior analyst with Danske Bank Markets Owen Callan said the slight fall was not a surprise.

“This morning’s slightly lower issue levels and bid-to-covers are not unexpected, given the rather volatile and negative reaction to the FOMC last night, as well as the more general sell-off in fixed income, credit markets and risk generally over the past month,” he said.

Today’s auction saw bills sold at an annualised yield of 0.20 per cent, compared with 0.125 per cent last month.