美联储毁不了债券市场

    这样的购买规模和供应水平相比情况如何呢？今年5月份，美国政府发行了1,840亿美元（1.135万亿元人民币）的1年期及多年期债券，4月份此类债券的发行量为2,820亿美元（1.74万亿元人民币）。因此，上述购债规模实际上并不会让美联储垄断市场，而且大多数国债在发行时依然获得了超额认购。

    美银美林（Bank of America Merrill Lynch）美国利率策略分析师山亚姆•拉贾恩说：“有些人被美联储挤出了市场，其他一些美国公债的真正买家会填补他们留下的位置。”

    没错，债券基金个人投资者一直在撤资。但这些共同基金在市场中所占的份额已经远低于上世纪90年代中期的水平。此外，今后几个月的债券发行规模可能下降。美国国会预算办公室（CBO）等机构最近预测，经济不断好转以及税收增多可能使美国本财年财政赤字从1.1万亿美元（6.787万亿元人民币）下降到6,500亿美元（4.01万亿元人民币）左右。如果情况确实如此，理论上美联储就可以将每个月的购债规模压缩到450亿美元（2,776.5亿元人民币），而购买债券的作用仍将保持不变。

    证券公司Advisors Asset Management首席执行官斯科特•科利尔认为：“在政府发债规模急剧下降的情况下，美联储减少债券购买量后仍有可能将利率保持在较低水平。”

    如果按债券市场每日成交量计算，美联储的重要性甚至会进一步下降。据估算，美国国债的日成交额为3,500亿美元（2.16万亿元人民币）。将美联储450亿美元的购买量除以每个月的交易日数，所得结果表明，美联储只占整个国债市场日成交量的0.4%。

    而且这是美联储突然全面停止购债所产生的影响，但出现这种情况的几率极小。更有可能出现的局面是，美联储逐步缩小购债规模，每次减少50-100亿美元（308.5-617亿元人民币）。这样的撤资步伐所产生的影响可能由国债和抵押债券市场共同承担。

    长期以来，投资咨询公司Cumberland Advisors首席货币经济学家鲍勃•艾森拜斯一直在观察美联储。他说：“我觉得量化宽松政策的终结就像是去看牙医。预期会比实际诊断结果更差。”（财富中文网）

    译者：Charlie

    How does that compare to what's being sold? In May, Uncle Sam issued $184 billion in debt that won't come due for a year or more. In April, the Treasury sold $282 billion in similar debt. So the Fed is not exactly cornering the market with its bond purchases. And most Treasury bond auctions continue to be oversubscribed.

    "There are other natural buyers of U.S. government debt that will step in that have been crowded out by the Fed," says Shyam Rajan, a U.S. rate strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

    Yes, retail investors have been pulling their money out of bond funds. But those mutual funds are a much smaller portion of the market than they were back in the mid-1990s. What's more, the amount of new debt is likely to shrink in the coming months. The CBO and others recently predicted that an improving economy and higher tax revenue could cause the U.S. deficit to fall to around $650 billion this fiscal year, down from $1.1 trillion. If that's true, the Fed could theoretically cut its bond purchases back and still have the same impact that it is currently having by buying $45 billion a month.

    "With the government dramatically reducing amount of issuance, the reduced buying from the Fed could still have the power to keep rates low," says Scott Colyer of Advisors Asset Management.

    When you look at the daily trading volume for the bond market, the Fed's importance is even smaller. An estimated $350 billion of Treasury bonds are bought and sold each day. Spread the Fed's $45 billion in purchases over the course of the month, and that works out to just 0.4% of overall Treasury bond market activity on a daily basis.

    And that's if the Fed were to stop all of its purchases at once, which it isn't likely to do. More likely, the Fed would cut back bond purchases gradually, $5 to $10 billion at a time. That pullback could be spread between the Treasury and mortgage markets.

    "My anticipation is the that the end of QE will be like going to the dentist," says long-time fed watcher Bob Eisenbeis of Cumberland Advisors. "The anticipation is worse than that actual visit."