Mr. Trend pressed his foot gently on the accelerator this week, with most of the numbers quietly growing by roughly between 5 and 15 percent. The Fed’s own holdings of MBS shrank by a slightly more significant $14.714 billion. Meanwhile cenbanks’ holdings of treasuries grew at a rather more exuberant rate and agencies continued their sell-off, this week at a bit less modest clip.

This week’s Reuters report¹ was, as usual, based on the weekly update from the NY Fed’s H.4.1 table site.² Here is Doom’s updated CSV version³ of the agencies and treasuries foreign central bank holdings data set.

The yellow line continues its moonshot.

Treasury Debt holdings grew by $20.809 billion, yet another big move.

Agencies shrank $2.255 billion, just a bit more than last week.

*Agen-FM: The dotted line is the foreign central banks’ Agency Debt holdings reduced by the level of the Fed’s own MBS holdings. Since the FRBNY itself is a lightly audited peculiar amalgam of foreign & domestic, central and private bank I think it might be useful to consider the hypothesis that for a while starting in January 2009 the Fed’s MBS holdings were being quietly deemed to be “foreign.” That is, for the first half of ’09 the dotted line seems more sensible than the red one.

The net growth in US obligations held rose $18.554 billion, quite a rise from last week’s figure.

Twist’s ratio graphs continued down at just a bit more than last week.  This pattern would suggest we’re heading towards some sort of aftershock of the main 9/18 ’08 panic.

This week the Setser components both nudged up.

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Notes and References

[1]: “Foreign central banks’ US debt holdings rise – Fed”, by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss, Reuters, October 28, 2010.

[2]: “H.4.1 Factors Affecting Reserve Balances”, Federal Reserve Statistical Release (weekly), Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

[3]: The updated data set as a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file is here (includes Fed’s own MBS holdings).

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