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I'm attempting to construct a spot rate and forward rate curve from the 2011 daily treasury yield curve rates provided by the US Treasury. All US Treasury securities (1m, 3m, 6m, 1y, 2y, 3y, 5y, 7y, 10y, 20y, 30y) are being taken into consideration.

Using the bootstrapping process, step 1 is to obtain all of the spot rates. In working through this step, I'm getting stuck when calculating the spot rate for the 2y Treasury Note. To get the spot rate for the 2y Treasury Note, I need the spot rates for the 6m, 1y, and 1.5y terms. The problem is that there is no observable 1.5y Treasury security.

How do I work through this? I've spent a great amount of time browsing the web trying to find the answer, and have come up empty. I found this topic while creating this post. Is linear interpolation the answer? Can someone point me to a good resource for learning this technique?

Thank you for your time.

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  • $\begingroup$ Hi, welcome to the site and thanks for participating. $\endgroup$
    – Tal Fishman
    Commented Jun 21, 2012 at 15:31
  • $\begingroup$ That topic provided one technique to obtain the rates (linear interpolation). Is the answer your looking for the industry standard method, the best method, or something else? $\endgroup$
    – John
    Commented Jun 21, 2012 at 17:14
  • $\begingroup$ John - It would be great to hear the industry standard method as well as the best method. Thanks. $\endgroup$
    – qfin_newguy
    Commented Jun 21, 2012 at 17:49

1 Answer 1

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You are going to need to interpolate in some way shape or form....

Linear is the easiest and most basic, however it may not capture the curvature, you can use splines to better capture the curve.

A nice guide to doing so is here:

It's a guide to bootstrapping and it has all the components. http://www.business.mcmaster.ca/finance/deavesr/yieldcur.pdf

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  • $\begingroup$ The link is dead. Someone got a decent replacement? $\endgroup$
    – sashkello
    Commented Aug 1, 2016 at 7:06

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