Sizing hedge funds' Treasury market activities and holdings

Abstract

Hedge funds play an increasingly important role in U.S. Treasury (UST) cash and futures markets, a role that has been widely discussed following the March 2020 U.S. Treasury sell-off. In this note, we analyze hedge funds' holdings of UST securities and their UST market activities in normal times and in times of financial market stress using regulatory data from the SEC Form PF. We also develop an approach to decompose the reported aggregate UST exposures into UST holdings and derivatives exposures.