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Swedish Alecta has sold off an estimated $8B of US Treasury Bonds
- toomuchtodo 8mo agoRelated: Swedish pension fund Alecta cuts US Treasury holdings citing US politics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46705118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46705118 - January 2026 (0 comments) Bessent Shrugs Off 'Irrelevant' Danish Treasuries Sales - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46702927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46702927 - January 2026 (0 comments) Danish Pension Fund AkademikerPension to Exit US Treasuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46693791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46693791 - January 2026 (2 comments) Danish pension fund to divest its U.S. Treasuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692594 - January 2026 (730 comments)
- onraglanroad 8mo agoWhat would be more serious is if the Norwegian Government Pension Fund started to sell off US investments. That runs around $2 trillion.
- IAmGraydon 8mo agoNorway only holds $219 billion in US Treasury bonds. What investments are you talking about?
- wafflemaker 8mo agoMaybe they wanted to say what you did, but accidently used the total worth of the whole Oil Fund (as it's called in Norway, because it was started with money taxed from oil companies extracting in Norwegian seas).
- alecco 8mo ago>> sell off US investments I think he means also US stocks. So most of the wealth fund.
- blitzar 8mo agohttps://www.nbim.no/en/investments/all-investments/ https://www.nbim.no/en/investments/all-investments/ I make it only 1.5 trillion equities - they run about a 70 / 30 split stocks to bonds. They could easily trim up their $50bn of Nvidia or their $50bn of Microsoft or their $40bn of Apple etc and put it to better use.
- stackghost 8mo agoAvalanches 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 heavily discount a large portion of their bonds, earning them increasingly fewer, and paying in (depreciating) dollars. It's exceedingly likely that de-dollarization accelerates from here, but it's also unlikely that even the Norwegian government sells it all at once. Rather than mass selling, expect EU entities to curtail or even cease buying US bonds altogether if the geopolitical situation doesn't improve.
- JanisErdmanis 8mo ago> However dumping that much debt all at once would require the sellers to heavily discount a large portion of their bonds, earning them increasingly fewer, and paying in (depreciating) dollars. I think all investors are now looking at this with this foresight. Being the first to dump seems to be the winning game here.
- stackghost 8mo ago>I think all investors are now looking at this with this foresight. Being the first to dump seems to be the winning game here. When you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars worth of bonds you simply can't move that much in one go. That's an elephant-in-the-bathtub situation where your moves disturb the market because of their size. Even the first entity to dump would still have to discount a lot of their bonds. Nobody on the bond market is going to make a $200B snap purchase.
- jacquesm 8mo agoThat's exactly what will drive the sell-off. Speed is key. Being the last one to sell is going to leave you with the worst of it.
- 8mo ago
- christkv 8mo agoYou have no idea how that would destroy the Norwegian State. They are addicted to money from that fund. A collapse in it's value would have direct impact on the finances of the state. Nearly 1/4 of the budget is funded from that found a year.
- onraglanroad 8mo agoThat's got to be a tiny amount relative to the fund size though. Anyway, how would that destroy the fund? They'd be selling it not giving it away.
- magicalhippo 8mo ago> That's got to be a tiny amount relative to the fund size though. Current total market value is about $2136B, of which ~$912B is invested in the US[1]. [1]: https://www.nbim.no/en/investments/the-funds-value/ https://www.nbim.no/en/investments/the-funds-value/ (see map at bottom for regional figures)
- onraglanroad 8mo agoNo, I mean the 25% of the Norway Government Budget must be a tiny amount of the fund.
- magicalhippo 8mo agoThe politicians have set a self-imposed limit[1] on how much they can use per year. It's currently 3% of the funds value, to ensure we don't need to reign in too much during hard times[2]. However politicians have tried to use less, for 2026 they plan[3] to use 452B NOK which is roughly 2.13%. However as OP points out, the total budget is around 2100B NOK, so the oil money pays for roughly a quarter. And that's becoming a bit of a problem in my view as well. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_budgetary_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_budgetary_rule [2]: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/okonomi-og-budsjett/norsk_okonomi/bruk-av-oljepenger-/handlingsregelen/id444338/ https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/okonomi-og-budsjett/norsk... [2]: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/statsbudsjett/2026/statsbudsjettet-2026-statens-inntekter-og-utgifter/id3123348/ https://www.regjeringen.no/no/statsbudsjett/2026/statsbudsje...
- jakobnissen 8mo agoA brief search suggests this is around 1/4000th of the total US treasury market, so if this has any significance at all, it's symbolic.
- deadbabe 8mo agoEvery waterfall begins with a drop.
- zeroonetwothree 8mo agoBut 99.99% of drops do not cause a waterfall
- gulfofamerica 8mo ago[dead]
- willturman 8mo agoDrops don't cause waterfalls. Gravity does.
- oulipo2 8mo agoSymbolism has importance
- rdtsc 8mo agoExactly but it has to be recognized as such. It’s easy to fall into self delusion and make it into some “oh yeah this will be collapse of the US empire, finally” story. Not, that it also fun to go with that story, but as long as everyone in the room understands it’s sort of a wishful fantasy.
- b00ty4breakfast 8mo agoWe might, in hindsight, see this as the first signs of the fall but anyone expecting a global empire to just collapse like a building, even in the accelerated pace of the modern world, is going to be disappointed. This will take years, possibly a decade or more...if the US is, in fact, collapsing.
- josefritzishere 8mo agoIt's self evident that this is just the beginning. Expect one group of pundits to pretend this is irrelevant as long as possible.
- shermantanktop 8mo agoA pundit saying "oh no, the world is ending" gets a lot more coverage than "nothing to see here, move along." Then again, they say whatever they need to in order for their paychecks to keep coming.
- overfeed 8mo agoTalking heads serve the interests of their wealthy benefactors who have gone all out to own/control all of news media. Benefactors whose wealth is almost entirely tied up in securities.
- zppln 8mo agoWhat 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?
- ares623 8mo agoJust needs to be more valuable than the US bonds that are 100% gonna tank I guess “I don’t need to outrun the bear. I just need to outrun you. “
- munk-a 8mo agoWell, if we're talking about the value of the underlying assets - then I imagine you have all your savings in gold because the PE ratios in the US stock market are already absolutely insane. If you're trying to escape an expected upcoming crash you don't necessarily need to look for growth but instead stability. Precious metals are always popular but simply shifting a portion of your money into an index fund of a different stock exchange should help minimize your exposure to any catastrophic loss. This is, of course, not financial advice.
- toomuchtodo 8mo agoSovereign debt of a more politically stable nation state or other monetary union, if you are investing at these levels. If you're an individual, you have more options, although there will be fierce debate about the risk profile (as US Treasuries were historically considered to be risk free). https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=449401 https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=449401
- arjie 8mo agoThe disciple went to his master and said "Master, I am considering stopping doing a thing and starting to do a different thing. But I am not certain what the new thing is that I should be doing". The master turned to the disciple and said: "A better thing" The disciple was enlightened. EDIT: Oh damn it. The entirety of the comment was "Sovereign debt of a more politically stable nation state or other monetary union" at the time I replied. Ah well.
- Sytten 8mo agoThe problem is that Europe doesn't have a European bond market to compete against the US bond market. It has the economic size and stability but not the will right now. Europe did try it a bit during COVID but financial services are just not there yet. The Euro very well become a reserve currency in a multipolar world if Europeans decide they want to shoulder it.
- pxeger1 8mo agoIs it at all realistic to expect the stable and/or fiscally conservative countries to accept the high bond yields imposed by the more fiscally loose or perceived-risky countries? Could this ever happen without the EU centralising more control over fiscal policy?
- notahacker 8mo agoNo, it wouldn't work without the bond repayments being owed by a single fiscal entity, and hard to imagine Europe doing this for the foreseeable future even if they agree more tax harmonization and budget deficit rules. But from the bondholder perspective, being able to pick and choose which countries to hold Euro denominated debt according to their risk tolerance is an advantage anyway.
- amluto 8mo agoThat’s a weird problem to have. The US has a huge bond market in part because the US has an absolutely enormous amount of debt, and the bonds are the US debt. The EU doesn’t have bloc-wide debt, for better or for worse. As an interesting thought experiment, imagine a central bank associated with a debt-free country issuing bond-like instruments. They would set an interest rate (perhaps with no auction, because they have no actual obligation to sell a predetermined amount, although an auction could still be used), sell bonds, delete the money used to buy the bonds, and issue new money to repay them with interest when they mature. This could be used as a way to act efficiently as a reserve currency and to exert a degree of control over inflation and the economy, kind of like how the Fed does it. The bonds would likely be considered extremely secure on account of the issue being entirely debt-free. I would be surprised if the EU did this as such, since the EU probably does not want to be in the business of competing for capital with its own members, who do have a fair amount of debt that they need to finance.
- dwa3592 8mo agoThis is directionally significant compared to the Danish sale(~$100 million) of US bonds.
- loeg 8mo agoUS 10- and 30-year bonds are trading at their highest yields (lowest prices) since, uh, August/September 2025. Or in historical context, rates that were more common before 2007 and the ZIRP period.
- rsync 8mo agoSome additional context: on March 10, 2023, which is the date that Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, 30 year treasuries had a yield of 3.70. Today the yield is ~4.9. Now, in 2026, how many institutions are "picking up pennies in front of steamrollers" ?
- hopelite 8mo agoThat all has way more to do with Japan’s bond issues and the carry trade unwinding. 8 billion will have caused a tick, but that’s nothing.
- downrightmike 8mo agoWhich 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.
- IrishTechie 8mo agoDon’t think they’re dumb, their goals are just shorter-term, they need to juice the numbers before the next election cycle.
- hadlock 8mo agoThe 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.
- 8mo ago
- ectospheno 8mo agoAn equally valid headline is "Investors purchased $8B of US Treasury Bonds". Never really got the point of people announcing US Treasury sales like its a big thing. Someone else not thinking with their emotions can, and will buy them. Its like announcing publicly you are selling your Honda. Its your Honda bro, sell it.
- zeroonetwothree 8mo agoThe classic “Sir, this is a Wendy’s” Or if we want to be cynical, they hope the price will drop on this news and they can buy back in more cheaply.
- knorker 8mo agoThis is not exactly right. True, $8B is not earth shattering because of the US's enormous debt. But by removing a potential $8B owner, it is a reduction in demand, and thus a tiny reduction in price. This is literally the first rule of pricing: "supply and demand". Sure, someone else is on the other side of the deal. But their demand is also satiated at a certain price point. Hell, if they wanted to buy from other sellers then it's not like T bills were not liquid. Would you say the same if Norway's wealth fund offloaded their $181B? At those scales it would be more likely that it'd be visibly price affecting, and therefore affect the US's ability to borrow at existing cost. So yes, when you sell your one NVDA, you are reducing demand and thus price. Epsilon, but nonzero.
- mktk1001 8mo agoBecause the implication is that underlying asset is regressing or degrading. It's very obvious, and this comment just highlights your lack of reading comprehension.
- ternaryoperator 8mo agoIt has importance beyond that someone else bought the bonds. It also suggests they will not be buyers in the future. If they represent the beginning of a trend and Europe stops buying US bonds, that will be a serious blow to the US economy.
- willturman 8mo ago
- dwa3592 8mo agoThey can start buying Euro bonds, Gold, bonds for the great european companies like ASML, Airbus etc?? they can basically find a way to invest in their future, right? they just need to figure out the right financial vehicle?
- nemomarx 8mo agoThey could just reinvest the 8 billion in all the other stuff they're holding, but something like those if they want to keep the diversification ratios high. Maybe the Yuan or Chinese companies?
- jacquesm 8mo agoThere isn't enough of that to offset the enormous EU holdings of US paper.
- wnevets 8mo agois America great again yet?
- stronglikedan 8mo ago[flagged]
- moogly 8mo agoHottest country in the world! Tremendous respect!
- insane_dreamer 8mo agono all caps? I sense a lack of patriotism
- jacquesm 8mo agoThere goes your social score.
- ceilajones4312 8mo ago[dead]