Treasury dealers’ financing burden can outlast their bond holdings, Fed study finds

Federal Reserve staff research published Oct. 30 finds that Treasury dealers can keep financing customers' bonds after their own auction inventory has largely cleared. That lingering lending uses balance-sheet capacity, so falling inventories can give an incomplete picture of dealers' ability to finance Treasury positions. The study estimates that each dollar of Treasury coupon issuance expanded dealer balance sheets by about 21 cents, with roughly two-thirds attributable to client financing. Its main regression sample covers eight large bank-affiliated dealers from January 2016 through June 2025. These are historical estimates, rather than measurements of October 2026 stress.