Well, we know that State Street sold a lot of MBS, but it's still a bit confusing, given they're supposed to be re-investing the proceeds into USTs. The other culprit is, apparently, the Japanese MOF that's been selling non-stop. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...n-mortgage-debt-takes-350-million-charge.html
Um... where do you see that? (I'm not challenging - I haven't paid much attention to retail flow) However, I do know that institutional flow (pensions, endowments) have been flowing from fixed into equities and EM.
Retail flow : http://www.ici.org/pressroom Instis have no other "choice"....bond prices at all time highs a couple of weeks ago, QE II announced, risk / reward heavily in favor of shorts. And then comes Obama and his tax deal with the Reps. Halleluja !
Japanese MOF selling non-stop ? I heard some London addresses naming China as non stop seller for a couple of weeks now...?
I heard what martingoul heard; not a peep about china from either dealers with strong london desks or strong japanese desks.
Um... unless I'm looking at the ICI report wrong (which I could, given I glanced at it quickly), it says that in 2010 the (%) of households holding mutual funds rised to 43.9% from 43% in 2009 (45% in 2008, 43.6% in 2007) and equity remains the most popular choice. So it seems to support that retail flow went into risky assets on the margin instead of the other way around. Further, the fact that institutional flow has 'no choice' given the low bond yields is the exact point of Bernanke's 'portfolio channel'. Again, I'm not arguing whether that's going to work or not - just that that's the point of the whole exercise rather than the usual misattributed 'liquidity' motivation for QE2.
Partly it's based on this story: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...06-7-billion-yen-overseas-debt-last-week.html If you go to the Japanese MOF site (here: http://www.mof.go.jp/shoutou/week1047.htm), you'll see that they turned sellers in the second week of Nov and have been selling ever since. Moreover, if I had to guess, they probably stopped showing up at the UST auctions, which didn't help matters. Whatever happened, someone certainly did show up for the 30y affair today. Maybe Mrs Watanabe just can't survive without her weekly US Treasury fix .
Yahoo economic calendar has next Tuesday's FOMC rate decision listed as 3:15pm EST. Can anyone clarify this. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. I checked the CBOT calendar and it's listed as the usual 2:15pm EST. Just thought it was weird because I've never seen an incorrect time on the yahoo calendar which I've used for about eight years. Weird.