| Small side note: I was about to make an irritated post complaining that the article is giving a misleading description of an ETF purchase.[1] That is, Fed buys $1 billion of a broad-based corporated bond ETF, 0.8% of which is Walmart bonds, and it gets reported as "Fed buys $8 million of Walmart bonds". Which articles have done before. However, after some digging, it looks like it's not simply some indirect purchase via ETF, judging from articles like this one: https://hardnoxandfriends.com/2020/06/29/federal-reserve-to-... >To avoid criticism that it might favor a specific industry, the Fed said two weeks ago that it would seek to mimic a broad market index approach and purchase bonds from a wide range of companies. ... >The Fed said Sunday that it made its first bond buys from 86 companies last week. Those companies include Nike, broadcaster Fox Corp. ... >The central bank is also purchasing pools of bonds in exchange-traded funds, which operate similarly to mutual funds. The Fed currently owns $6.8 billion of bond ETFs. So this is on top of the previous ETF purchases. [1] which, for the record, is still worrying! Just not as bad as if they bought the corporate bonds directly, which they seem to be doing now. |