this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
234 points (97.2% liked)

News

23259 readers
4606 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Got_Bent@lemmy.world 32 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Sell to whom? Do Euro bonds work differently than in the US?

You can sell bonds in the US and it's only slightly different from selling a stock. The bond changes hands, but the government debt and interest payments remain static. (The buyer and seller get to deal with premium/discounts and accrued interest, but that has zero effect on the underlying debt from the issuing government)

I don't understand why this would be a bad thing for them to sell.

[–] Tinidril@midwest.social 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Europe is selling new bonds all the time, and the price buyers will be willing to pay for them will fall.

[–] sunzu@kbin.run 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I don't see how KSA selling their bonds on secondary market will lower the "price" of new issue.

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Why would you buy the new issue that yields like crap when the older bonds that got dumped are much cheaper?

The price of the bond and the yield are in an inverse relation. In other words, by dumping the bonds you increase their yield. Europe would be forced to pay a higher yield on new issues

[–] Got_Bent@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I mentioned premium/discount in my comment. When you sell a bond on the secondary market, the price goes up or down to match prevailing interest rates. It should have no effect on new issue prices.

I am simplifying quite a bit here, but the gist is sufficient unless European bonds work differently which was my original question.

[–] notabot@lemm.ee 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The price moves with supply and demand on the secondary market. Normally, yes, that'll tend to vary to balance yield with the prevailing interest rates, however, the threat seems to be to dump bonds onto the secondary market, presumably without a minimum price. The glut would mean buyers could purchase them below that balance price, giving them a better yield. This would have (at least) two knock on effects, firstly it would make it harder for governments yo raise funds through bond issues as they'd effectively be competing with the cheaper 'dumped' bonds and so would need to offer an equivalently high yield, and secondly may allow 'undesirable' governments or groups to amass significant amounts of European debt, which potentially gives them more political leverage than European governments might like.

[–] Got_Bent@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

A sensible response. Thank you. I couldn't wrap my head around how this would affect the market, but yeah if the volume is big enough and the price is low enough it could muck things up.

[–] sunzu@kbin.run 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It’s not clear how much European debt Saudi Arabia holds, but its central bank’s net foreign currency reserves stand at $445bn. Saudi Arabia holds $135.9bn in US treasuries, placing it 17th among investors in the US bonds.

Best info on their holdings I could pull from fake news coverage. I am going to assume they hold less EU than US. So lets say 130billion.

European sovereign bond issuance continues above pre-pandemic levels: in 2021, European sovereign bond issuance, including issuance from EU Member States, the UK and the European Commission, accumulated EUR 3362.3 bn in proceeds,

Note that's with a 3.3T

I am not a bond trader so I am not sure how big of impact Saudi sell off would cause but for them to drive the price, they would be taking big losses on top of what is likely an underwater position.

[–] notabot@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago

They may well be looking at how much the EU holds in Saudi assets, seeing those at potential risk of being seized and deciding tge write-down on dumping the bonds would be worth it. Long term, I don't think it would have an effect on prices, but short term it may well do, depending on how concentrated their holdings are.

From what I can see, normal trading volume in bonds is about 500% per year, or about 2% per day assuming 250 trading days per year. If the 130bn you mention is spread across all government bonds across the EU then it accounts for about 4% of the total, or about two days of normal trade. Dump all of that in one go and it'd definitely have a short term effect. If their holdings are more concentrated they could have an even bigger effect on the bonds they hold.

Bonds tend to be issued on a regular basis, so even a short term drop in price could be timed to affect an auction. That has the twin effect of reducing the amount the government in question raises, and also tying them into effectively higher interest rates, potentially for decades to come.

I'm no expert trader either, so I could be barking up the wrong tree, but I assume that they would have a clear expectation of the results before making that threat, and I can't really see any other effects it could be expected to have.

[–] sunzu@kbin.run 2 points 4 months ago

It should have no effect on new issue prices.

That is my understanding, short of KSA flooding secondary market to where nobody shows up at the auction but I doubt they got enough bonds to do this or that they would sell them in such manner anyway.

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

The prevailing interest rates is what is affected when a large holder dumps their bonds, it increases the market interest rates