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bowmessage | 1 month ago

> $100 million

Is that a lot? Seems relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but perhaps a warning of larger moves to come.

discuss

order

brookst|1 month ago

It’s the symbolism more than direct financial impact. You get 100 moves like this and it starts to become real money.

nonethewiser|1 month ago

It's not a symbolic move by the pension fund. It's all of the fund's US treasuries.

marcusverus|1 month ago

100 moves of this size (~$10B) would make up 0.1% of foreign-held US treasuries (~$8.5T).

lostlogin|1 month ago

The other thread going on this topic says that Europe could sell about $10 trillion. That’s a lot, but also, it’s only a bit over 10 days trading at normal volumes (according to the numbers being discussed in this thread).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692052

Arnt|1 month ago

The normal trading volume isn't really the key. Rather, it's how elastic the price is.

Suppose these guys sell 10% of the daily trading volume. How do the traders in the market react? One possibility: Buy at current prices. Another: Speculate that there'll be more sales and the price will drop by a couple of per cent in the coming days/weeks, and delay their buying in order to buy the dip.

I'm sure the Americans have laid plans for how to avoid a major Oops.

nonethewiser|1 month ago

For reference, 25-30% of US treasuries are foreign owned. It's still a lot but I think people over-estimate how much of US debt is foreign owned.

hypeatei|1 month ago

It's not a lot. Multiple countries could offload hundreds of billions and the U.S. Treasury would buy them up immediately (and probably ask the Federal Reserve for some help the next day)

I can't find the program name at the moment, but the Treasury plans for situations like this regularly.

lostlogin|1 month ago

> the Treasury plans for situations like this regularly.

For attacking allies?

I know that’s not what you meant but we must be pushing up against scenarios that haven’t been considered possible.

luke5441|1 month ago

The FED can print as much money as it wants. Defaulting this way on US debt won't make the US a more desirable debtor nation.

mythical_39|1 month ago

So if the Treasury is the only entity buying treasuries, what is the USD worth at your local grocery store?

how about at the companies that supply that grocery store?

and so on up the chain.

koolba|1 month ago

It’s hard to put an exact number but it’s on the order of $500-1000 billion daily.

So a drop in the bucket, but we’ll have to see if it’s a domino.

elicash|1 month ago

It's a pension fund of/for teachers in Denmark. That amount in U.S. Treasuries sounds like an expected size to me.

WarmWash|1 month ago

About $1T is traded daily so it's really more a symbolic move.

mywittyname|1 month ago

Two people buying and selling the same dollar a trillion time would hit that trade volume in a day. There's also a huge difference between short term and long term bonds.

So we need a better metric to evaluate this against. If we look at recent auctions, they typically move around 35-40 billion in 10 year notes and about 25-30 billion in 30 year notes. With the rest being short term.

In 2025, the Treasury issued $30 trillion total over 400 auctions.

So yes, $100MM is not a lot, but it's still three or so auctions worth of bonds. There's also the downstream impacts of this, as the Netherlands is likely no longer buying t-bonds in any form. And this is just one country.

Havoc|1 month ago

It’s about the right sizing for a pension fund invest. Most pension fund transactions I see are in roughly that range 50 to 200ish

Rounding error on a global scale.

louthy|1 month ago

Whilst this might be symbolic, money managers don’t tend to do symbolism. Surely it’s more likely that they fear what’s to come: an economic war against the dollar as pushback for the threats from Trump. So selling before the price tanks makes good sense.