Articles on the Treasury International Capital System (TIC)

Part A: The following articles by the Federal Reserve are about TIC data, or make significant use of TIC data.

  1. (April 18, 2024). Introducing New Valuation Change Data for U.S. Cross-Border Portfolio Holdings, McCallum, Andrew H., Laura DeMane, Nyssa Kim, Emily Liu, and Andrew Loucky, FEDS Notes, Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve began publishing valuation change data in April 2024, back to February 2023. This note documents the new valuation change data and shows that such data are crucial for accurately decomposing the changes in cross-border holdings attributed to net U.S. sales and purchases versus those attributed to valuation and other changes. The TIC Form SLT now collects, on a single form and directly from the same reporters, the level of cross-border long-term securities holdings and changes in holdings due to purchases, sales, valuation, and other factors, thereby providing a more accurate portrayal of U.S. portfolio flows. This note also compares these reported valuation changes with estimated valuation changes that use price indexes.
  2. (October 02, 2023) Measuring U.S. Cross-Border Securities Flows: New Data and A Guide for Researchers, Carol Bertaut and Ruth Judson, FEDS Notes, Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. (The last paragraph has advice for researchers.) Understanding the effects of capital flows across countries depends critically on accurate and comprehensive data. For the U.S., data on cross-border securities holdings and transactions are collected through the TIC (Treasury International Capital) data system. As previously noted, it has long been difficult to reconcile the TIC data on securities holdings with the TIC S transactions data (see Bertaut and Tryon (September 2007) and Bertaut and Judson (August 2014, February 2022)).
  3. (August 04, 2023) Financial Flows to the United States in 2022: Was There Fragmentation?, Colin R. Weiss, FEDS Notes, Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Events of the last five years, such as the U.S.-China trade war, the COVID-19 pandemic, and—most recently—Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have raised concerns in the popular press and among policymakers that the international economic and financial system is at risk of becoming significantly fragmented (Aiyar et al., 2023; Ip, 2023; Shin, 2023). Most recently, attention has shifted to the possibility of fragmentation along geopolitical lines, where countries primarily trade with and invest in other countries with which they share close diplomatic and political ties (International Monetary Fund, 2023a,b). (This note discusses purchases of U.S. securities by foreign official and private investors in 2022 as reported by the Treasury International Capital (TIC) system—the primary data source on foreign demand for U.S. securities.)
  4. (February 18, 2022) "Estimating U.S. Cross-Border Securities Flows: Ten Years of the TIC SLT", Carol Bertaut and Ruth Judson, FEDS Notes, Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The Treasury International Capital (TIC) system collects cross-border securities positions and transactions data and is the primary source of information on foreign official and private demand for U.S. Treasuries and other U.S. securities, as well as for U.S. investment in foreign securities. As noted in earlier work, the TIC system currently collects data separately on holdings of securities (the monthly TIC SLT and the annual SHL/SHC collections) and on transactions (the monthly TIC S), and these two data streams can be difficult to reconcile, making interpretation of movements in the data challenging.
  5. (September 2019) "Globalization and the Geography of Capital Flows," Carol C. Bertaut, Beau Bressler, and Stephanie Curcuru, FEDS Notes, Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In this note, we document the large and growing distortions in official capital flows and investment statistics as a result of globalization. We provide a series of stylized facts about the extent and causes of these distortions, and also include data files containing U.S. portfolio holdings restated on a nationality basis to reflect the true exposures of U.S. investors.
  6. (August 2014) Estimating U.S. Cross-Border Securities Positions: New Data and New Methods, Carol Bertaut and Ruth Judson, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System: International Finance Discussion Papers 2007-910. The paper presents new monthly estimates of U.S. cross-border securities investment, combining information from detailed annual Treasury International Capital (TIC) surveys with new information from the TIC form SLT. The paper also show how changes in the new monthly data can be decomposed into flows, estimated valuation changes, and a residual "gap".
  7. (May 2012) Improving the Measurement of Cross-Border Securities Holdings: The Treasury International Capital SLT (PDF). In the wake of the financial crisis, growing interest in improving the measurement of cross-border securities positions spurred the introduction of a new Treasury International Capital (TIC) reporting form, the TIC SLT. This article reviews the existing structure of TIC cross-border position and flow data, the benefits that the new SLT can provide, and the incoming information from the first two reporting months of SLT data, September and December 2011. While some patterns and characteristics of the SLT data will become clear only after more data have accumulated, the SLT data have already begun to provide timely insights on U.S. and foreign cross-border investment flows that are different from the monthly estimates provided by existing flow data. It is from the Federal Reserve Bulletin, Volume 98, May 23, 2012, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
  8. (November 2009) The Financial Crisis and U.S. Cross-Border Financial Flows (PDF). This article illustrates how a wide variety of TIC data can be used in examining international financial flows and portfolio investment positions. The article examines the effects of the recent financial crisis, which began in August 2007, on U.S. cross-border financial flows. The focus is on flows in securities and banking flows, and also analyzes the influences on cross-border positions in securities and of banks and nonbanks. It is from the Federal Reserve Bulletin, November 2009, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
  9. (September 2007) "Monthly Estimates of U.S. Cross-Border Securities Positions," Bertaut, Carol C., and Ralph Tryon, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System: International Finance Discussion Papers 2007-910. This paper is for researchers seeking a consistent time series of monthly holdings data up to 2011.
  10. (May 2007) U.S. Cross-Border Derivatives Data: A User's Guide (PDF). This article provides detailed information on the uses and interpretation of the TIC derivatives data. It is from the Federal Reserve Bulletin, May 2007, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
  11. (2006) Understanding U.S. Cross-Border Securities Data (PDF). This article is recommended reading for all users of the various TIC data related to cross-border securities. It is from the Federal Reserve Bulletin, 2006, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
    -- The previous article (2004) was Recent Developments in Cross-Border Investment in Securities (PDF). The appendix compares U.S. and foreign measurement of holdings of U.S. securities. It is from the Federal Reserve Bulletin, Winter 2004, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
    -- The first in this recent series of articles (2001) was The U.S. System for Measuring Cross-Border Investment in Securities (PDF). The appendix discusses how to use the monthly transactions data and the annual survey data to construct ongoing estimates of cross-border holdings of securities. It is from the Federal Reserve Bulletin, October 2001, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Part B: The following statistics from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) use adjusted TIC data.

  1. How BEA Aligns and Augments Source Data From the U.S. Treasury Department for Inclusion in the International Transactions Accounts, (PDF), published in the July 2023 issue of the Survey of Current Business, Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), U.S. Department of Commerce. Article published in July 2020 (PDF). Article published in September 2014 (PDF). Article published in July 2013 (PDF).
  2. Balance of Payments and International Transactions Data (quarterly) are available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), U.S. Department of Commerce.   
    -- Details of transactions in long-term securities can be found in Table 7a, at the "Interactive Tables" link on the balance of payments webpage. The BEA estimates include adjusted TIC data and, in addition, data on debt and equity transactions associated with merger and acquisition activity that are not included in the TIC data.   
    -- Among the useful BEA articles available from its balance of payments section is the July 2007 article on "Annual Revision of U.S. International Accounts" that discusses the new TIC data on financial derivatives.
  3. Information on the International Investment Position of the United States is available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), U.S. Department of Commerce.   
    There are detailed quarterly articles in Survey of Current Business, including information on cross-border holdings of securities.