Bids for interest-bearing Treasurys outstripped the $2 trillion sold competitively this year by $3.75 trillion, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The bid-to-cover ratio was almost 20 percent greater than the average 2.44 times from 1997 to 2007.

The three-year note had the highest ratio of 3.35, while demand for five-year debt that protects against consumer-price gains, known as Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, was the weakest with a ratio of 2.29, the data show.

No Worries

Bids for the benchmark 10-year note, used to help set interest rates on everything from car loans to mortgages, exceeded the $264 billion sold in 2013 by 2.71 times. That’s also the fourth-highest on record and eclipsed only in the past three years. Prior to the credit crisis, bids outstripped the amount of 10-year notes sold by an average 2.27 times.

“There’s always going to be those investors that need to invest in fixed income, whether it’s foreign central banks for reserve management, or if it’s pension funds and insurance companies,” Thomas Simons, a government-debt economist at Jefferies Group LLC, a primary dealer, said in a Dec. 27 telephone interview from New York. “I don’t have significant worries about people turning away from auctions just because the Fed is buying slightly fewer Treasurys.”

Fed Taper

The Fed announced plans on Dec. 18 to cut its monthly bond purchases to $75 billion from $85 billion. Based on 41 economists surveyed by Bloomberg on Dec. 19, the central bank will pare its purchases by $10 billion in each of the next seven meetings before ending the program in December 2014 as the economy strengthens and joblessness decreases.

The estimates indicate the Fed will purchase $260 billion of Treasurys next year, a 52 percent decrease from this year’s total, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Debt investors are still clamoring for Treasurys even as they are poised to lose money this year for the only the fourth time since 1978, according to index data compiled by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

U.S. bonds have slumped 3.4 percent in 2013, which would be the first decline since Treasurys posted a record 3.7 percent drop in 2009. Treasurys due in 10 years or more have plummeted more than 12 percent this year, the deepest loss among the 144 government bond indexes globally compiled by Bloomberg and the European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies.