Balance sheet (Federal Reserve)
The total assets the Federal Reserve holds, mostly Treasury and mortgage-backed securities bought in its policy operations.
The Federal Reserve's balance sheet lists its assets, principally Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities, and its liabilities, principally bank reserves and currency. Its size rose sharply during quantitative easing and has changed with the pace of quantitative tightening. Weekly data are published in the H.4.1 release.
On our site, the balance sheet is shown as a weekly series in trillions of dollars. Read the trend in reserves alongside the total, since reserves drive liquidity in money markets.
Traders care because a changing balance sheet affects reserve levels, repo rates and the funding conditions that filter into risk assets.
Worked example (illustrative numbers, not real data): the balance sheet falls from 7.0 trillion to 6.8 trillion dollars over six months, a decline of 200 billion. If reserves fall by a similar amount, money market rates can rise faster, particularly on days with heavy Treasury settlements.