Hard stop.

That’s what we’re looking at in terms of foreign investor flows to US bonds and equities. Or at least on one bank’s telling.

There’s a vociferous debate about the severity of the reputational damage US assets incurred since Inauguration Day and particularly since “Liberation Day.” Some contend the “buyers’ strike” narrative’s overdone, others say it’s the only story that matters.

Personally, I think Donald Trump’s behavior is beyond the pale even by his own standards for outlandishness. Let me put it this way: The threat to Canada’s real, or real enough that it altered a Canadian election. That says it all right there. We’re living in a bad comedy.

At the least, it’s fair to say trust in America’s commitment to honor its obligations — financial and otherwise, tacit and explicit — is badly shaken, and it’s not unreasonable (at all) to suggest that’s behind a sharp slowdown (and in some cases an outright reversal) of inflows to US assets.

I’ve been over this and over it, and it’s not my intention to belabor the point, although if there’s a point worth belaboring, it’s surely this one. However, given the epochal nature of what may be unfolding in 2025, I do feel editorially obliged to highlight relevant commentary when I see it, and Deutsche Bank’s George Saravelos is writing voluminously on the subject.

In his latest, he tallied flows data from some 400 ETFs which invest in US equity and fixed income, selecting for those domiciled outside the country. “The vast majority of these ETFs are located in Europe,” he wrote, adding that such flows can be tracked by “calculating the nominal value of the net change in the shares outstanding of all these ETFs on a daily basis.”

The figures above, from Saravelos, illustrate “persistent selling of US equities and bonds by foreigners over the last two months,” as he put it, noting that the stock-selling “peaked during the week of the tariff announcements but has remained negative since then [while] fixed-income selling started earlier in March and has also persisted.”

As a cross-check, Saravelos availed himself of EPFR’s datasets, the same ones I use for my weekly flows coverage. As most readers are aware, that data’s unequivocal: Flows to US assets have slowed dramatically.

In his note, Saravelos described “an abrupt end to buying in equities [and] aggressive selling in bonds.”

The figures above give you a sense of things. Again, the message is unequivocal. The picture “does not look pretty,” as Saravelos put it.

The Trump administration’s mercurial approach to… well, to everything, has curbed flows to US assets. “At best,” Deutsche Bank’s strategists said, we’ve seen a “very rapid slowing in US capital inflows.” “At worst,” they went on, we’re witnessing “continued active disinvestment from US assets.”

In either case, the read-through for the dollar, a twin-deficit currency, is challenging, Saravelos emphasized. More concerning still: There’s so far no evidence to suggest capital flows to the US are resuming amid the Trump administration’s efforts to soften the trade rhetoric.