Online sales of public securities to individuals totaled R$ 4.01 billion in July, the National Treasury announced today (26). The volume is the second largest in history for a month, second only to May 2019 (R$ 5.86 billion).
The securities most sought after by investors were those adjusted by the Selic (basic interest rates for the economy), whose share of sales reached 49.4%. Bonds linked to inflation (Extended National Consumer Price Index – IPCA) corresponded to 37.7% of the total, while fixed-rate bonds, with interest defined at the time of issuance, were 12.9%.
The expectation that the Selic rate will stop rising has diminished investors’ interest in this type of paper. In June, sales of these bonds were at 55.3%. On the other hand, sales of fixed rate papers, which represented 31.8% in June, had a strong increase.
Since March 2021, the Central Bank (BC) has raised the Selic rate. The rate, which was 2% per year, the lowest level in history, jumped to 13.75% per year since then. The last minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee (Copom) meeting indicated that the increases are close to ending.
The total stock of Treasury Direct reached R$ 96.45 billion at the end of July, an increase of 2.5% compared to the previous month (R$ 94.07 billion) and 42.1% compared to July last year (R$ 67.89 billion). This high occurred because sales exceeded redemptions by R$ 1.74 billion last month.
investors
Regarding the number of investors, 535,983 new participants registered in the program last month. The total number of investors reached 20,028,345. In the last 12 months, the number of investors has increased by 67.6%. The total number of active investors (with open operations) reached 2,039,876, an increase of 27.7% in 12 months.
The use of Treasury Direct by small investors can be seen in the considerable number of sales of up to R$ 5 thousand, which corresponded to 82.3% of the total of 648,492 sales operations that took place in July. Only investments of up to R$ 1 thousand represented 59.1%. The average value per operation was R$ 6,178.38.
Investors are preferring short-term bonds. Sales of securities with terms between 1 and 5 years represented 71.9% and those with terms between 5 and 10 years, only 3.5% of the total. Papers with a maturity of more than ten years accounted for 24.6% of sales.
The complete balance sheet of Tesouro Direto is available at Transparent Treasure page.
Fund-raising
Treasury Direct was created in January 2002 to popularize this type of application and allow individuals to purchase government securities directly from the National Treasury, via the internet, without intermediation by financial agents.
The investor only needs to pay a semiannual fee to B3, the Brazilian stock exchange, which has custody of the securities. More information can be obtained from Treasury Direct website.
The sale of bonds is one of the ways that the government has to raise funds to pay debts and honor commitments. In exchange, the National Treasury undertakes to return the amount with a surcharge that may vary according to the Selic, inflation indices, exchange rate or a rate defined in advance in the case of pre-fixed securities.
