Rates & Fed · August 22, 2026 · 2 min read

Fed H.4.1 Listed $6.472 Trillion in Securities Held Outright on August 19

Published August 22, 2026 • Updated August 22, 2026

The Federal Reserve’s August 20 H.4.1 release reported $6.472 trillion in securities held outright as of August 19, including $4.539 trillion of U.S. Treasury securities and $1.931 trillion of mortgage-backed securities.

CONFIRMED FACTS The Federal Reserve Board’s H.4.1 release dated August 20, 2026 reported $6,471,814 million in securities held outright on Wednesday, August 19. The release reported a $5,146 million increase from the prior Wednesday and a $147,188 million increase from August 20, 2025. Within that total, U.S. Treasury securities were $4,538,703 million and mortgage-backed securities were $1,930,764 million on August 19. The release reported that Treasury securities increased $5,236 million from the prior Wednesday, while mortgage-backed securities decreased $91 million. The H.4.1 table states that its figures are in millions of dollars. ANALYSIS These reported holdings describe a major component of the Federal Reserve Banks’ balance sheet at the stated weekly observation date. The week-over-week movement in the securities-held-outright line should be read as a balance-sheet accounting change, not by itself as a measure of a new monetary-policy decision, market interest-rate movement, or the amount of securities available for private investors. UNKNOWNS AND LIMITS The cited table does not identify the transaction-level causes of the weekly changes, such as maturities, settlements, reinvestments, valuation conventions, or operational timing. It also does not provide a forecast or establish a causal effect on inflation, credit, or asset prices. Components may not sum to totals because of rounding, as the Federal Reserve notes; the release also distinguishes face values and related premiums or discounts in separate lines. This brief reports the published H.4.1 figures for August 19, 2026, which may be revised in later releases.

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Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System — H.4.1, Factors Affecting Reserve Balances, August 20, 2026 — Primary release for the August 19 securities-held-outright total, its Treasury and mortgage-backed-security components, weekly changes, units, and methodological notes.

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