Foreign Official Flows Swung $88.3 Billion in June. The Headline TIC Number Moved $2.0 Billion.

by Jonathan Mercer · August 18, 2026

Chief Markets Correspondent, US Market Current

The Treasury Department's monthly capital-flows report for June, released at 4 p.m. Eastern on Monday after U.S. equity markets had closed, produced a headline that barely moved and an interior that turned itself inside out. Treasury reported that the sum total in June of all net foreign acquisitions of long-term securities, short-term U.S. securities and banking flows was a net TIC inflow of $133.5 billion. The same release puts May at $131.5 billion, revised down from the $132.2 billion Treasury first published on July 14. Compared on the release's own consistent vintage, the two months are $2.0 billion apart, a difference of about 1.5 percent.

Underneath that near-identical total, the two halves of the report traded places. In May, on the revised figures printed in Monday's release, Treasury reported net foreign private inflows of $171.4 billion and net foreign official outflows of $39.9 billion. In June it reported net foreign private inflows of $85.0 billion and net foreign official inflows of $48.4 billion. The official line therefore swung by $88.3 billion between the two months, from an outflow to an inflow, while the private line fell by $86.4 billion, a decline of 50.4 percent. The gap between those two moves, $1.9 billion, is the change in the headline to within a rounding step. Two components moved by more than $85 billion each and very nearly cancelled.

The official series has been doing this all spring. As each month was first published, Treasury reported net foreign official outflows of $11.4 billion in March, net official inflows of $49.2 billion in April, net official outflows of $39.9 billion in May and net official inflows of $48.4 billion in June. February's reading was a net official inflow of $18.0 billion, so the sign flipped between every pair of consecutive months from February through June. Added together, the four readings from March through June come to a net official inflow of $46.3 billion, smaller than June's single month on its own. The private series over the same four months — $162.1 billion in March, a $23.1 billion outflow in April, $171.4 billion in May and $85.0 billion in June — sums to about $395 billion. Those March and April figures are as first published and Treasury revises them, as it revised May in Monday's release, so the four-month sums mix vintages and should be read as approximate.

One thing the official line does not do is dominate the report's volatility, which is the opposite of the impression a single month can leave. Over those same four months the private line moved by roughly $185 billion, $195 billion and $86 billion from one month to the next; the official line moved by roughly $61 billion, $89 billion and $88 billion. June is unusual because the two moved in opposite directions and nearly matched in size, not because the official line is the larger mover.

The long-term securities table tells a related story in a different denomination. Foreign residents' net purchases of long-term U.S. securities were $207.1 billion in June, of which private foreign investors accounted for $169.8 billion and foreign official institutions for $37.3 billion. May's total, which Monday's release leaves at $262.8 billion, was split $246.8 billion private and $16.1 billion official as first reported. Official net purchases of long-term paper thus more than doubled month over month, while private net purchases fell 31.2 percent and the combined total fell 21.2 percent. June's $207.1 billion total sits within about $1 billion of April's $206.0 billion, and April's split — $164.4 billion private, $41.6 billion official — is not far from June's either.

Treasury's adjusted measure — the figure it reports after adjustments such as estimated foreign portfolio acquisitions of U.S. stocks through stock swaps — came to $172.7 billion of overall net foreign purchases of long-term securities in June. Monday's release also restates the three months before it, at $231.2 billion for May, $105.3 billion for April and $80.2 billion for March, against the $232.7 billion, $103.1 billion and $81.3 billion Treasury published for those months at the time. Anyone setting June against a number copied out of an earlier release is comparing two different vintages of the same series. Treasury put U.S. residents' net purchases of long-term foreign securities at $34.4 billion in June.

The short-term and banking components both drained less in June than in May. Foreign residents reduced their holdings of U.S. Treasury bills by $29.0 billion in June, compared with the $43.5 billion Treasury reported for May at the time. Foreign resident holdings of all dollar-denominated short-term U.S. securities and other custody liabilities fell $4.9 billion, against a $30.6 billion decline reported the month before. Banks' own net dollar-denominated liabilities to foreign residents fell $34.4 billion, against the $70.0 billion drop reported for May. Those pieces reconcile: $172.7 billion of adjusted long-term purchases, less $4.9 billion of short-term and custody liabilities, less $34.4 billion of banking flows, comes to $133.4 billion, a rounding step from the $133.5 billion headline.

That reconciliation shows where the June total came from. The month's inflow was not built on foreigners adding short-dated dollar claims — they shed them, in both the bills line and the bank-liability line. It was built on long-term securities purchases large enough to absorb those withdrawals and leave the headline inflow behind, and the marginal buyer of that long-term paper shifted toward official institutions.

There is a caveat attached to the official-private division, and it comes from Treasury rather than from outside critics. The footnote the department prints beneath the long-term securities table — the split reported there, not the split of total net TIC flows that the headline comparison uses — reads: "The reported division of net U.S. sales of long-term securities between net sales to foreign official institutions and net sales to other foreign investors is subject to a 'transaction bias' described in Frequently Asked Questions 7 and 10.a.4 on the TIC website." The frequently asked question it points to sets out the bias in geographic terms: because cross-border securities transactions take place disproportionately in major international financial centers such as the United Kingdom and the Caribbean banking centers, large net transactions recorded in those areas do not necessarily reflect acquisitions or sales by investors in those areas. The official-versus-private line, on Treasury's own account, is an attribution of transactions rather than a census of owners.

Treasury attaches a broader warning to the holdings side as well. Its explanatory note states that the monthly data on holdings of long-term securities, as well as the monthly table on Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities, "reflect foreign holdings of U.S. securities collected primarily on the basis of custodial data," and that these data "help provide a window into foreign ownership of U.S. securities, but they cannot attribute holdings of U.S. securities with complete accuracy." The note goes on to describe the mechanics, including securities held in custodial accounts outside the owner's country and holdings managed by foreign portfolio managers.

Two further framing points. These are monthly flow data rather than a smoothed series, and the swings are large relative to the levels: the headline itself was reported at $150.7 billion for March and $26.1 billion for April before returning above $130 billion, so a single print in either direction is a weak basis for inferring a trend. And the report is deliberately partial: Treasury's footnote says TIC data "cover most components of international financial flows, but do not include data on direct investment flows, which are collected and published by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis." The capital account described here is the portfolio one.

The data landed after Monday's close, so U.S. markets will trade on it for the first time when the cash session opens Tuesday. The next TIC report, covering July, is scheduled for Sept. 16 at 4 p.m. Washington time. It will show whether the official line breaks its alternating pattern or extends it.