{"id":4475,"date":"2026-04-13T15:16:57","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T15:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/?p=4475"},"modified":"2026-04-13T15:16:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T15:16:57","slug":"tlt-and-vglt-etfs-shed-billions-as-us-public-debt-nears-39-trillion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/?p=4475","title":{"rendered":"TLT and VGLT ETFs shed billions as US public debt nears $39 trillion"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Wall Street investors are getting jittery as the US public debt surges in an uncontrollable manner and the rising 30-year yield.<\/p>\n

The popular iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) has shed over $5 billion this year, while the Vanguard Long-Term Treasury ETF (VGLT) has lost over $110 million this year. <\/p>\n

TLT and VGLT ETFs have had outflows as US debt jumped<\/h2>\n

In contrast, fixed income investors have piled into short-term government bonds, with the State Street SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF (BIL) adding over $7 billion.<\/p>\n

The ongoing performance is mostly because investors are afraid of the public debt is taking, with data by the Federal Reserve showing that it has jumped to $38.5 trillion this year from just $5.6 billion in 2000.<\/p>\n

This trend will likely continue as government spending continues rising , with President Donald Trump requesting $200 billion to fund his Iranian war and $1.5 trillion to fund the military.<\/p>\n

Estimates are that the Big Beautiful Bill<\/a> will add trillions of dollars to the public debt in the next decade, helped by the tax cuts to the wealthy and the Middle Class. <\/p>\n

While Trump’s tariffs are meant to reduce the debt, they are in a state of limbo after the Supreme Court ruling<\/a>. Trump has replaced them with broad tariffs that can only last for 180 days. He will need to replace them with more targeted levies, which will be a bit more limited than those he implemented last year.<\/p>\n

China has been selling US government bonds<\/h2>\n

At the same time, there are signs that holders of US public debt are paring back their assets. China, in particular, has reduced its holdings from over $1.2 trillion a few years ago to $694 billion.<\/p>\n

It has now become the third-biggest holder after Japan and the UK, which hold $1.2 trillion and $895 billion, respectively. The other top holders are countries like Belgium, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands, and Canada.<\/p>\n

With the US relationship with top countries worsening, there is a risk that some of them will opt to either scale back their holdings or stop investing in US debt. <\/p>\n

These fears rose recently when the Greenland crisis<\/a> was escalating. European countries warned the US that they would dump these assets if it escalated.<\/p>\n

The VGLT and TLT ETFs have shed assets for their underperformance despite having large yields. TLT yields 4.5%, while the VGLT yields 4.5%, higher than most equity ETFs. Data shows that the two funds have had a total return of 0.15% and 0.34%, respectively this year. <\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

VGLT vs BIL vs TLT ETFs | Source: SeekingAlpha<\/em><\/p>\n

Their total returns in the last three years are minus 8.54% and 5.24%, respectively. On the other hand, the less risky BIL has returned 14.78% in the last three years and 0.98% this year.<\/p>\n

The post TLT and VGLT ETFs shed billions as US public debt nears $39 trillion<\/a> appeared first on Invezz<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wall Street investors are getting jittery as the US public debt surges in an uncontrollable manner and the rising 30-year yield.The popular iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) has shed over $5 billion this year, while the Vanguard Long-Term Treasury ETF (VGLT) has lost over $110 million this year. TLT and VGLT ETFs have had…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradertideinsights.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}