The demand among average investors has swelled so much, in fact, that they bought more Treasurys in the first quarter than foreigners and the Fed combined.
Households picked up about $170 billion in the low-yielding government debt during the quarter, while foreigners increased their holdings by $110 billion.
via Guess Who’s Buying All the Bonds? (It’s Not the Fed) – US Business News – CNBC.
Comment:~ Jim Bianco points out: “If mom and pop were really the end buyers we would expect to see similarly booming numbers from the mutual fund industry. However….mutual fund purchases are a somewhat insignificant portion of domestic buying. Our guess is the domestic buyer is a leveraged carry trader, a mutual fund, a brokerage subsidiary or other group that does not have its own category so it gets ‘dumped’ into the default category of households.”
[Hat tip to Barry Ritholz]