What Is Bills Share?

What is Bills Share?

Treasury Bills Share of Marketable Debt is tracked in our framework because it captures a distinct dimension of US dollar liquidity. The DLI headline is built from the net-liquidity flow — the Fed balance sheet minus TGA minus ON RRP — plus an acute funding-stress override (SOFR-IORB, SRF). Policy and funding inputs drive that headline directly; credit and market-risk inputs are shown as context panels on the liquidity map alongside it.

The indicator uses a "higher_worse" direction, meaning rising values signal tightening liquidity conditions. This directional assignment is based on the historical relationship between the indicator's movement and subsequent risk asset performance.

MSPD Table 1 — Treasury bills (securities maturing in one year or less) as a share of total marketable Treasury debt outstanding, from the Treasury's Monthly Statement of the Public Debt. Treasury's own debt-management advisory committee (TBAC) has recommended keeping this share in a roughly 15–20% band; a higher share means more of the debt stock has to be rolled over in the near term, which raises how sensitive federal borrowing costs are to short-term rate moves and how much bill supply money-market funds have to absorb. Monthly and slow: the point is stamped at month-end and released around the 8th business day of the following month, so the latest stamp can be close to six weeks old before the next one lands. A forward-looking structural indicator, not a coincident one — it speaks to issuance plans, not to current funding stress.

Why Bills Share matters for risk assets

Changes in Bills Share influence the broader liquidity environment through both direct and indirect channels. Directly, it affects the cost or availability of funding. Indirectly, it shifts market expectations about future policy or credit conditions.

For Bitcoin and equities, the impact is most visible when Bills Share moves to extreme z-scores (above +1.5 or below -1.5). At these levels, the historical correlation with risk asset returns strengthens significantly. Moderate moves within the normal range tend to have weaker predictive power.

Cross-reference with National Debt, CP–T-bill Spread, TGA Balance, Debt / GDP for multi-indicator confirmation. The strongest signals come when multiple related indicators move in the same direction.

How to interpret daily updates

On the indicator detail page, follow this 3-step process:

Step 1: Check the percentile (5Y) to understand historical context. Above the 75th percentile is noteworthy; above the 90th is extreme. Step 2: Review the 7-day and 30-day trend direction — trend matters more than any single reading. Step 3: Read it beside the DLI score, not inside it — Bills Share is reference context and never appears as a score driver, so its job is to explain or contradict what the headline is doing, not to move it.

Pay attention to divergence instead: when Bills Share moves hard while the DLI score stays flat, that gap is the signal. A context indicator earns its place precisely when it disagrees with the headline.

Common mistakes and better workflow

Mistake: assuming everything charted on this site feeds the score. Bills Share does not — it carries zero weight in the DLI and can never show up as a listed driver. Reading a move here as "so the score should have changed" is the single most common error with reference indicators.

Better workflow: Start with the score reading on the homepage. Then check the top drivers. Only then drill into Bills Share if it's flagged as significant. This top-down approach prevents single-indicator tunnel vision. Combine with National Debt, CP–T-bill Spread, TGA Balance, Debt / GDP for the most complete assessment.