I keep seeing posts claiming “European pension funds are selling US Treasuries” and that it’s some major “Sell America” wave. But if you look at the official U.S. Treasury TIC data, total foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities are at/near all time highs.
Treasury TIC (Major Foreign Holders/ able 5) shows the “Grand Total”, around $9.36T (recent monthly data). That’s the opposite of a mass exit.
Even Reuters just reported Europe accounted for a huge share of foreign Treasury buying over recent months (The “Europe is dumping” narrative doesn’t match flows).
Yes, some specific funds may divest for their own reasons (for example: Denmark had a pension fund selling a $100M Treasury position). But $100M is basically a rounding error vs a $9+ trillion foreign-held market.
So in my opinion a lot of this “Europe is dumping bonds” stuff looks like headline amplification/fear engagement farming rather than reality.
Sources:
\- U.S. Treasury TIC Table 5 (Major Foreign Holders): [https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/slt\_table5.html](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/slt_table5.html)
\-Reuters (Jan 22): Europe accounted for 80% of foreign buying of U.S. Treasuries from April–Nov (per Citi portfolio data) [https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sell-america-buyers-europe-piled-into-treasuries-2025-data-shows-2026-01-22/](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sell-america-buyers-europe-piled-into-treasuries-2025-data-shows-2026-01-22/)
Non paywall: [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sell-america-buyers-europe-piled-132630857.html](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sell-america-buyers-europe-piled-132630857.html)
Curious what \*REAL\* people think: Are we looking at an actual sustained “Sell America” shift or just a few symbolic moves being turned into a viral narrative?