China Raises Treasury Holdings First Time in Three Months - Bloomberg

By Daniel Kruger and Cordell Eddings - 2012-07-17T21:00:53Z

China, the largest foreign U.S. creditor, boosted its holdings of government securities in May to the most in six months as the American economy stalled and Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis deepened.

Chinese holdings rose 0.4 percent to $1.1696 trillion, Treasury Department data released yesterday show. Those of Japan, the U.S.’s second-largest lender, rose 1.4 percent to an all-time high of $1.1052 trillion. Net foreign purchases of Treasuries increased $54.2 billion, or 1 percent, to a record $5.264 trillion in May, the data show.

“Slowing U.S. growth and increasing uncertainty about Greece is what caused more private and official demand,” said Shyam Rajan, an interest-rate strategist in New York at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, one of the 21 primary dealers that trade with the Federal Reserve. “U.S. data has actually gotten weaker since.”

Investors continued to seek a haven in U.S. Treasuries in May as concern mounted regarding the potential need for Spain to seek a bailout and amid uncertainty whether a party seeking to cancel the terms of earlier bailouts would win elections in Greece. The balloting was seen as a referendum on whether the country would stand by its international-bailout commitments.

Yields on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes dropped to a record low of 1.44 percent on June 1 after U.S. employers added the fewest workers in a year in May and as the Fed pledged to keep borrowing costs close to zero to sustain economic growth.

Reporting Change

The data showed China held $1.1644 trillion of Treasuries in April, an increase from the $1.1455 trillion reported for the period on June 15. The Treasury is revising holdings data on a monthly basis rather than annually based on the nationality of the beneficial holder of the debt, while the initial data will still count the location of the purchase. For the year, China’s holdings have risen 1.5 percent.

China’s holdings of short-term Treasury bills increased 97 percent in May to $7.3 billion from $3.7 billion the month before.

Demand from Asia “is another component that’s going to push the Treasury market higher in price,” said Sean Simko, who oversees $8 billion at SEI Investments Co. (SEIC) in Oaks, Pennsylvania. “There’s larger issues in Europe than in the states, and with where our government securities are trading, there’s still more room for Treasuries to run.”

China’s policy makers have advocated diversification of the nation’s foreign-exchange reserves away from U.S. assets after more than doubling its holdings of Treasuries since 2007 in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Treasuries have returned 2.8 percent this year, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Indexes.

Top Holder

The Fed remains the top holder of U.S. debt with $1.66 trillion. The central bank said on June 20 it would increase to $667 billion from $400 billion its program of extending the average maturity of the Treasuries on its balance sheet by selling short-term securities and buying an equal amount of longer-maturity Treasuries. Traders call the program Operation Twist after a similar effort in 1961 to contain borrowing costs for companies and consumers.

Net buying of long-term equities, notes and bonds totaled $55 billion during the month, compared with net purchases of $27.2 billion in April, the Treasury said in Washington. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News projected net buying of $41.3 billion of long-term assets, according to the median estimate.

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Kruger in New York at dkruger1@bloomberg.net; Cordell Eddings in New York at ceddings@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dave Liedtka at dliedtka@bloomberg.net