FRED DTB3 — Daily CSV Download (US 3-Month Treasury Bill)
The 3-month Treasury bill rate is the closest market proxy for the risk-free rate — the theoretical return on an investment with zero credit risk and minimal duration risk. It is the anchor of the entire yield curve and the reference rate for money market instruments, commercial paper, and short-term lending. Daily observations from FRED series DTB3 since 1954.
Dataset: US 3-Month Treasury Bill Rate (1954–2026) · Updated —
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Source: FRED series DTB3 · Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Macro Takeaway
The 3-month T-bill rate tracks the effective Fed Funds rate almost perfectly — both reflect the immediate stance of monetary policy. The spread between the 10-year yield and the 3-month bill (the T10Y3M spread) is actually the recession indicator preferred by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s own probability model, which has outperformed the more popular 10Y-2Y spread in some historical tests.
For asset allocation, the T-bill rate represents the opportunity cost of holding cash. When it exceeds 4-5%, as in 2023-2024, the bar for risk assets rises substantially — investors can earn meaningful real returns in the safest instrument available, reducing the pressure to reach for yield in equities or credit.
Dataset Overview
| Indicator | US 3-Month Treasury Bill Rate (1954–2026) |
|---|---|
| Geography | United States |
| Frequency | Daily (business days) |
| Period | 1954–2026 |
| Variables | date, yield_3m |
| Format | CSV, Excel (XLSX) |
| Sources | Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — FRED |
| Last updated | — |
Dataset Variables
The CSV and Excel files contain the following columns.
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
date | Date (YYYY-MM-DD) | Observation date |
yield_3m | Float | yield_3m value |
Column names match the CSV headers exactly.
Download the Complete Dataset
The full dataset is available in CSV and Excel formats.
FRED Direct CSV Access
The underlying data is available from FRED under series code DTB3:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=DTB3
Direct CSV Access — Eco3min Structured Dataset
https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-3m-treasury-bill.csv
This URL returns the complete dataset in CSV format. It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool.
Using the Dataset in Python
import pandas as pd url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-3m-treasury-bill.csv" df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["date"]) print(df.head()) print(df["dtb3"].describe())
Using the Dataset in R
library(readr) url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-3m-treasury-bill.csv" df <- read_csv(url) head(df) summary(df$dtb3)
Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL — no download or API key required.
Methodology
The DTB3 series reports the secondary market rate for 3-month Treasury bills on a discount basis. This means the rate reflects the annualized percentage difference between the purchase price and face value. The conversion to bond-equivalent yield involves a simple formula, but the discount rate is the standard market quotation.
The series dates back to January 1954, making it one of the longest continuous interest rate series available from FRED. It is published daily by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
This dataset is updated weekly (Saturday 08:00 UTC) via automated pull from the FRED API.
Historical Regimes
1954–1970 — Stable low rates. T-bill rates ranged from 1% to 7%, gradually rising with the economy and inflation. The Bretton Woods gold standard anchor kept short-term rates relatively stable.
1970–1981 — Inflation spiral. T-bill rates surged from 4% to above 16%, tracking the Fed’s increasingly aggressive response to inflation. The March 1980 peak of 17.1% remains the all-time high for this series.
1981–2007 — Long descent. Rates fell from 16% to approximately 5%, with cyclical oscillations around the secular downtrend. Each Fed easing cycle brought T-bill rates to a lower trough.
2008–2015 — Zero-bound era. T-bill rates collapsed to near 0% (as low as 0.01%) as the Fed held the Fed Funds rate at 0-0.25% for seven years. This was the longest sustained period of near-zero short-term rates in US history.
2022–present — Rate normalization. T-bills surged from 0% to above 5% in the fastest tightening cycle since the early 1980s, attracting over $6 trillion into money market funds.
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Macroeconomic Dataset Hub
This dataset is part of the Eco3min macro-financial data repository.
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Sources
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System — H.15 Selected Interest Rates
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — FRED series DTB3