It appears that foreigners bought the f**king dip in December as US equities tumbled, foreign official institutions bought $1.5Bn, Private foreigners bought $53.5Bn. That is the biggest buying since Dec 2020...

Foreigners, in aggregate, also bought US Treasuries for the 8th straight month, though at a considerably slower pace...

...yet curiously, foreign official institutions (central banks, wealth funds, reserve managers), have sold Treasuries for 14 straight months...

...while foreign private investors bought Treasuries for 14 straight months...

In total, December saw foreigners (in aggregate) buying US assets across the board:

Drilling down, we see China continue to 'sell' down its US Treasury holdings, but we do note that both Belgium and Luxembourg (which in the past have acted as proxies for China buying) saw UST holdings rise...

Source: Bloomberg

So did 'China' really dump USTs?

Source: Bloomberg

Japan, the largest holder of Treasuries, sold $6bn of its holdings (to $1.1tn).

Finally, we continue to broadly see the trend of de-dollarization with gold holdings on the rise as UST holdings drift lower...

Source: Bloomberg