Russia Liquidates Its US Treasury Holdings

[schweiz]

in any case, as the old saying goes, if you have to ask the price of the yacht you cannot afford it.

People who can afford a yacht do watch prices all day long. That's how they got rich, not by buying at any price.

 

[Peter10]

China next?

 

[Humpy]

It really worries me that the bastion of the market economies i.e. the US starts such a lot of trouble when markets need calm. Why he has to cozy up to the autocrats I don't know.

 

[bone]

China next?

China can't really liquidate their US Sovereign Debt holdings - it would strengthen the Yuan which is what they are manipulating the markets to avoid. It is Party doctrine to maintain a weakish Yuan relative to the US dollar.

And the Chinese media proclaims on occasion that the Yuan should be a worldwide reserve currency - but the Chinese government will absolutely not allow it to truly 'float' internationally like the US dollar or the Swiss Franc; so that's never really gonna happen.

China is in a tight little box of their own making.

 

[bone]

the overlay of the Russian selling and move up in yields to the 3% level is breath-taking... can you imagine, all that talk of "ooh boy here comes inflation!" was in fact the red bear at work...

Russia selling net $80B in US Treasuries is nothing. Not a even a blip. The notional value of the US Treasury market that trades every day is massive - more than half a trillion dollars.

 

[sle]

Russia selling net $80B in US Treasuries is nothing. Not a even a blip. The notional value of the US Treasury market that trades every day is massive - more than half a trillion dollars.

In fairness, 500bn is a bit high since it includes bills and TIPS. An honest number is closer to 375-400 bn. Also, depending on the duration of Russian holdings (maybe all they had was bonds, right?) they could have moved the market. In any case, this was a non-event.

 

[fordewind]

China actually already sold ~300bn tbonds couple of month ago.

 

[bone]

China actually already sold ~300bn tbonds couple of month ago.

Not according to the Fed. Look at the top row: Mainland China.

It's possible that they re-balanced their portfolio convexity but their net holdings of US Treasury Securities did not decrease.

Taiwan sold a few billion.

http://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt

 

[ironchef]

China next?

China is stuck. They have too much. What are they going to replace it with? The US is "too big to fail".

 

[fordewind]

Not according to the Fed. Look at the top row: Mainland China.

It's possible that they re-balanced their portfolio convexity but their net holdings of US Treasury Securities did not decrease.

Taiwan sold a few billion.

http://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt

Fake news, perhaps.Russia has left the list entierly.