Long before the mainstream media caught on to the topic of SWF selling of stocks, we warned a month ago that as a result of the collapse in oil, and assuming oil remains priced at roughly $31 per barrel, the world’s largest SWFs showin the chart below…
… would be forced liquidate at least $75 billion in equities and the lower the price of oil goes, the more selling there would be.
Subsequently, we showed both the equity sector and region allocation of SWF equity exposure, noting that financial stocks located in Western Europe are most exposed, something both DB and CS have found out the hard way.
We also warned (ironically, courtesy of a Deutsche Bank analysis) to stay away from European stocks with high EM government ownership such as these:
Yet while the wholesale equity selling by SWFs has become manifest just as predicted, in recent months something unexpected emerged when looking at other asset classes in which SWFs are involved, most notably Treasurys.
” Unexpected”, because US Treasury paper was one of the asset classes many expected would feel the brunt of SWF selling, perhaps much more so than equities. Quite the opposite has not happened.
As Stone McCarthy writes, based on TIC data for Asian oil exporters, those countries have been more aggressively selling risk assets than Treasury securities since oil prices began to slide in mid 2014. The chart below shows the cumulative net purchases of U.S. securities since July of 2013, about a year before oil prices began their descent, for the “oil-exporter” group.
From SMRA:
Since oil prices began falling, oil exporters have been cumulative buyers of $12.5 billion in Treasury securities. Until November, cumulative purchases of Treasuries were continuing to trend higher. During the same period, oil exporters have been net sellers of $19.9 billion in U.S. equities, and $10.0 billion of corporate and agency debt, with corporate bonds accounting for almost all of the sales.
Will this trend of SWFs and oil exporters selling equities even as they buy TSYs change? The Treasury will release the latest December TIC data on Tuesday, February 16. Any notable changes will be promptly apparent, however based on the Fed’s weekly custody holdings data, there has been no notable changed in December, and only in January was there an accelerated decline of TSYs held in custody.
Which means that the liquidity preference of those most exposed to oil prices remains one of unwinding risky equity positions, while adding to Treasury holdings. We only mention this in case the record high spec net shorts in Treasury…
… are curious who keeps forcing them to add capital to fund those relentless margin calls.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1QfCyW3 Tyler Durden