Maturity is the date on which a bond's issuer repays the face value (principal) to the bondholder. It defines the time horizon of the investment and determines where a security sits on the yield curve.
These three terms appear interchangeably in practice, but each has a precise meaning.
Maturity refers to the specific calendar date of principal repayment. A 10-year Treasury note issued on July 15, 2025, matures on July 15, 2035. That date is fixed at issuance and does not change.
Term (or original term) is the total contractual life of the instrument measured from issuance to maturity. The note above has a term of 10 years.
Tenor refers to the remaining life of a security, measured from today rather than from issuance. The same note, five years after issuance, has a tenor of five years even though its original term was 10 years. In derivatives markets, tenor is the standard term: a 5-year interest rate swap has a tenor of five years from trade date.
The distinction matters operationally. A portfolio manager who asks "what is the 10-year?" typically means the on-the-run 10-year note. A risk system that reports tenor is telling you how much rate exposure remains, not how long the bond has been outstanding.
The U.S. Treasury issues across a wide range of maturities. The full current schedule:
Bills (zero-coupon, sold at discount, auctioned weekly): 4-week, 8-week, 13-week (3-month), 17-week, 26-week (6-month), 52-week (1-year).
Notes (semiannual coupons, auctioned monthly): 2-year, 3-year, 5-year, 7-year, 10-year.
Bonds (semiannual coupons, auctioned monthly): 20-year, 30-year.
Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS): 5-year, 10-year, 30-year.
Floating Rate Notes (FRNs): 2-year, indexed to the 13-week bill rate.
YCP's yield curve page displays live yields across this full maturity spectrum. Hovering over any point on the curve identifies the specific maturity, current yield, and change from the prior day.
The yield curve is defined by plotting yield as a function of maturity. Under normal conditions, longer maturities carry higher yields, producing an upward-sloping curve. The premium for extending maturity reflects two components: expectations about the future path of short rates, and the term premium, which compensates investors for accepting duration risk over longer horizons.
Maturity is a fixed date, but duration is the risk measure. A 30-year zero-coupon bond has a modified duration equal to approximately its maturity, roughly 28 years at a 4% yield. A 30-year coupon bond at the same yield has a modified duration of roughly 16 to 17 years because intermediate coupon payments return cash earlier. Two bonds with the same maturity can carry very different price sensitivity depending on their coupon structure.
As time passes, a bond's remaining tenor shortens. A 10-year note becomes a 9-year note after one year, then an 8-year note, and so on. This process is called aging or roll-down.
If the yield curve is upward-sloping, aging produces a price gain. The bond rolls from the 10-year point on the curve, where yields are higher, to the 9-year point, where yields are lower. Price rises as yield falls, even if the entire curve remains unchanged. This gain is the roll-down return, and it is a core component of carry analysis for fixed-income portfolios.
The YCP roll-down calculator quantifies this effect across tenors. For a given security, the calculator shows the expected price appreciation from roll-down over a specified horizon, broken out separately from coupon carry.
What is the difference between maturity and duration? Maturity is a fixed date. Duration measures price sensitivity to a parallel shift in yields. A 10-year Treasury at a 4% yield has a modified duration of approximately 8.1 years, meaning a 100 basis point rise in yield produces roughly an 8.1% price decline.
Why does the Treasury issue both 20-year and 30-year bonds? The 20-year bond was reintroduced in May 2020 to extend the maturity spectrum available to investors and to extend the average maturity of the public debt. The 30-year bond has been issued continuously since 1977, with a brief suspension from 2002 to 2006.
What happens to a bill's "yield" if it has no coupon? Bills are quoted on a discount basis and then converted to a bond-equivalent yield for comparison with coupon-bearing securities. The discount rate understates the true annualized return because it uses face value, not purchase price, as the denominator.