Do Foreign Investors Really Have ‘Too Much’ US Exposure?

There’s still no consensus on whether and to what extent Donald Trump’s policies — from trade to geopolitical strategy — risk triggering en masse foreign selling of USD assets.

We know, sort of, who owns what and how much of it. Data on foreign ownership of US equities, corporate credit and Treasurys is readily available, and we can add that up. In total, foreigners hold around $26 trillion of US stocks and bonds.

But there are any number of ways to interpret and evaluate the figures. A lot of the increase in foreign holdings over the past 10 or so years is just the valuation effect and/or a consequence of tracking cap-weighted indexes which are increasingly dominated by US corporates.

Also, not all investors have the leeway to aggressively diversify even if they want to. If the dollar stabilizes, the urgency to hedge currency exposure might fade, removing a key source of de facto USD-selling pressure. And on and on. Suffice to say there are a lot of variables.

That’s the context for a new note from JPMorgan’s Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, who set about addressing “which countries are the most vulnerable or exposed” to US assets by way of what sounds like a painfully tedious data-gathering exercise.

The figure below shows the ratio of investments in US bonds and equities to total household financial assets broken down by country.

Panigirtzoglou cobbled those ratios together by analyzing central bank flow of funds and international investment data across locales as well as the OECD’s database on household financial assets and Treasury’s TIC release.

“While these portfolio investments are often made via institutions such as insurance companies and pension funds, the ultimate owners are typically households via their financial claims on these institutions,” Panigirtzoglou explained.

The chart paints a pretty benign picture. Norway and Switzerland are anomalies. What you’re seeing there are the portfolios of the largest sovereign wealth fund on Earth and the central bank, respectively.

“Despite the rather large figures often mentioned in dollar terms for the stock of US assets held by the rest of the world, relative to the total financial assets of households, the allocations typically stand at around 10-20%” excluding Norway and Switzerland, Panigirtzoglou wrote, calling that “rather low compared to the share of the US in global equity and bond indices.”

That exercise suggests foreign investors don’t necessarily hold “too much” in the way of US assets, JPMorgan concluded.

Take that for whatever it’s worth, and do note: We shouldn’t even be having this discussion. The world should be confident in the US assets it holds regardless of how large (or not) that exposure is. The fact that this is an issue says a lot, none of it good.


 

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

2 thoughts on “Do Foreign Investors Really Have ‘Too Much’ US Exposure?

Create a free account or log in

Gain access to read this article

Yes, I would like to receive new content and updates.

10th Anniversary Boutique

Coming Soon