NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve awarded $186.28 billion in fixed-rate reverse repurchase agreements on Friday, the highest amount in more than four weeks, due to strong investor demand for ultra short-dated, risk-free assets at month-end.
The central bank has been testing them as a tool to drain cash from the financial system to achieve their interest rate target when it decides to tighten monetary policy.
At Friday's operation, the Fed paid 72 bidders including Wall Street firms, money market funds and mortgage finance agencies an interest rate of 0.05 percent for them to borrow its Treasuries holdings until Monday.
This was the highest amount of fixed-rate reverse repos, commonly referred as RRPs, the Fed awarded since the $212.48 billion to 53 bidders on Oct. 1.
On Thursday, the Fed awarded $142.24 billion RRPs to 47 bidders at an interest rate of 0.05 percent.
(Reporting by Richard Leong; editing by Andrew Hay)