Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

di.se

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 192 posts

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#151

Post by vkou »

loeg wrote: post #134
vkou wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can mull all he wants and half the time, that mulling turns into reality. In practice, he has the authority to do anything he wants. Who is going to stop him? You? His pets in Congress? JPow's private hit squad? Clarence Thomas? The first rule of neo-America is that you're playing the Chairman's Game[1], and there are no more rules . Its counterparties should bargain with it accordingly. --- [1] https://en.wikiped…

> Who is going to stop him? You? His pets in Congress? JPow's private hit squad? Clarence Thomas? Yes, ultimately Clarence Thomas and his eight friends, or Congress.

The same Congress that failed to convict him, twice, and the same Clarence Thomas that has ruled him to be above the law?

If you're waiting for Republicans to save you from his madness, you'll be waiting for a long time.

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#152

Post by irishcoffee »

blitzar wrote: post #150
irishcoffee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US paid $8B towards it debt every _day_ it would take over thirteen _years_ (completely ignoring interest accumulation, which isn't realistic) to pay off $38T in debt. I don't see how this is huge in context, it is indeed symbolic. Please don't get me wrong here, I am neither advocating the selling or not selling of US bonds. This specific sale just isn't statically significant in a vacuum. If this precipitate…

> If the US paid $8B towards it debt every _day_ The US currently borrows an additional $9.5B every _day_ to fund itself.

I think we agree with each other. They borrow more than this paltry amount every single day and nothing changes. Selling less than the daily borrow amount, exactly one time, is a rounding error at best.

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#153

Post by blitzar »

zppln wrote: post #9

What are some realistic alternatives to US markets here? Selling is one thing, the question is what to buy instead? I mean, everyone starting to buy european instead would be great for stock prices, but it wouldn't make the underlying assets more valuable, right?

> What are some realistic alternatives to US markets here

There is nothing particularly interesting or sexy about US treasuries. You could replace a holding of $8bn to $80bn with equivalent or better rated bonds in a half hour or so.

Replacing that sort of allocation of stocks or commodities would be way harder as returns on those assets are not as simple as "pays a 4% coupon each year" - finding an equivalent of Apple or Nvidia is not a trivial task.

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#154

Post by toomuchtodo »

loeg wrote: post #139
gambiting wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>especially in the hypothetical scenario where the US is unstable? How does it feel to bury your head in the sand so hard that you can't see what's happening around you?

Do you think if you just sneer hard enough, it makes your viewpoint true or persuasive? There are probably two or three different commenting guidelines this runs afoul of: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You are arguing as if nothing material in the US has changed while at the same time arguing “be more polite towards my ignorance|avoidance of the situation.” It comes across as arguing in bad faith.

The US can no longer be trusted based on the actions of this administration. Other countries are pragmatically and reasonably adjusting accordingly, very publicly. There are other options besides the US from an economic, trade, investment, and defense ally perspective. These are facts. Whether you believe them is a choice.

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#155

Post by jacquesm »

marcyb5st wrote: post #146
vdupras wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, CHF gained 12% on USD YoY, so I guess that it ends up being much better yields than US treasuries.

That is fair. Sorry, colored by the fact that I actually live in Switzerland and so investing them in Swiss treasuries is like keeping the cash for me.

That's an easy mistake to make. When you're looking internationally you always have to take the rates into account. For you it doesn't matter, but a lot of parties are investing in Swiss treasuries exactly because it is like keeping CHF. which tends to do well relative to their own. The long term USD vs CHF rate works out strongly in favor of holding CHF.

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#156

Post by robinsoncrusue »

jacquesm wrote: post #131
robinsoncrusue wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eurozone has a looming debt crisis. ECB is actively capping the yields for countries bonds from Spain and Portugal which are showing stress signals. This will not end well for ECB this time around if they end up something like 2012. https://substack.com/home/post/p-185202466

You're going to make a lot of money then by shorting EU stocks, right?

Stock market is different from bond market, but bond market everywhere is showing stress signal. Just look at Japan. But yeah, eventually it will spill in stocks.

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#157

Post by rishab178 »

stackghost wrote: post #15
onraglanroad wrote: post #3

What would be more serious is if the Norwegian Government Pension Fund started to sell off US investments. That runs around $2 trillion.

Avalanches can start with a single stone. EU together with UK and Canada hold more Treasurys than the entire rest of the world combined, and if they dumped them all at once it would be significantly painful for the average American as interest rates would spike, as would inflation. The Dollar would decline against most other major currencies. However dumping that much debt all at once would require the sellers to hea…

> EU together with UK and Canada hold more Treasurys than the entire rest of the world combined

That is just not true? Out of the $38T, ~75% is held be US Domestic entities. Even of the remaining 25%, these 3 don’t combine together to form a majority. It’ll come out to something like $3.5T out of the $9.1T foreign holding (~38%). Or under 10% of the total debt.

https://economicsinsider.com/top-15-largest-us-treasury-hold...

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#159

Post by stevenwoo »

zrn900 wrote: post #142
zppln wrote: post #9

What are some realistic alternatives to US markets here? Selling is one thing, the question is what to buy instead? I mean, everyone starting to buy european instead would be great for stock prices, but it wouldn't make the underlying assets more valuable, right?

> What are some realistic alternatives to US markets here? It seems to be precious metals. And at this point in time, especially silver. Even Indian government seems to be stockpiling silver.

At first I was leaning toward FGLD but didn't consider that current admin would blow up everything US, there are European alternatives to FGLD that OP might want to investigate that have physical metal reserves (there are many alternatives that represent various tiers of involvement in mining versus just holding precious metals, I'm speculating OP does not want to possess precious metals themselves).

Re: Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds

#160

Post by ethbr1 »

hadlock wrote: post #106
downrightmike wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which explains why the DOJ is going after the FED for not lowerign interest rates. They assume ZIRP will solve their problems, but that just kicks the can down the road, and it won't go far this time. Even Japan, which was our model for yield curve control has abandoned that theory. Bunch of dumb people running the room and no experts.

The only goal right now for a lot of people in Washington is to make "Number Go Up" ahead of November. So far the current strategies haven't been working, so they're going to have to get a lot more aggressive. Medium and long term consequences are a problem for the future.

Skirting close to or breaking the law has substantially worse outcomes in divided government. The GOP paranoia about November smacks of a belated realization that there might be consequences for things that were done.
Post reply on HN