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Comment by bowmessage | Hacker News Reader

> $100 million

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

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

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

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

I'd say each move like this increases the likelihood of the next one happening, and typically, nobody wants to be the last one holding the bag.

And the big European nations own ~ 23% of US debt. This is not a one-sided contest. Oddly, it does feel like trump is what europe needed to wake up from its slumber. With new AI / startup funding, the rebuild of their military, and opening up to china this could be the making of the EU into a true superpower. About time.

Edit: percentage down from 30% clarify debt

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

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.

> How do the traders in the market react?

Buy. Because the Fed is about to monetize the debt.

Maybe I misunderstand, but that sounds as if you're saying that Treasuries have low risk and middling yield. Is that what you mean? (Half the G20 countries currently have <4% yield on ten-year bonds, the other half more.)

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.

Sure, but if the majority of that foreign owned debt is sold off, it’s very likely there would be a run and everyone would try to sell in a panic.

It would have a massive negative impact, and there are reason why these countries dont do this (their own interests), but that's all besides the point. The US hold most of it's debt, which is not something everyone realizes.

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.

> 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.

We've certainly planned for single allies going unhinged - but what we didn't plan for was us going unhinged and causing all our allies to take retaliatory actions. If France, Denmark, Germany, Britain - any one of them was swept up in nationalistic fervor and turned their back on our multi-lateral alliances we could easily weather that storm... when it's us though, that threatens the USD's acceptance as the defacto trading currency especially at a time when BRICS is semi-coherent and we're weathering a recent inflationary burst. This is like a perfect storm.

Definitely, I think there'd be a crisis if our biggest holders like the UK and Japan sold off their treasury securities but some "small" selloffs aren't outside the realm of possibilities. Trillions in selloffs though, that might get interesting.

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.

I think you are missing the point. The point is it would materialize as inflation instead of debt default. Not that there is no downside risk.

Inflation is a kind of default, I'm not missing the point.

The value of the dollar is based on the promise of 2% inflation of a basket of goods. Breaking that promise is default.

Well... no. Default is when you can't pay back what you promised. Not keeping inflation under a certain target.

Unless words just don't mean anything anymore. In which case, yes. Which could also mean no.

In case you are interested in more than definitions of words: Bond investors do not care if you default by giving them a haircut, doing things like forcefully extending the term to 100 years or lowering the currency value by printing money. In either case they will adjust their future risk premium of US govt. bonds and of course price in future inflation.

One might be able to hide the money printing for a while, though, while the haircut is explicit.

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.

China has been divesting for the last nine months, and continues to do so.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-18/foreign-h... | https://archive.today/4pfum

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Nope but its about the sentiment

https://ticdata.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-cent...

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