Wall St expects a cautious Fed as T-bill demand winds down

Wall Street strategists expect the Federal Reserve to take a slow and careful approach to winding down a program meant to help ease pressure in funding markets. The Fed abruptly stopped shrinking its balance sheet-a process known as quantitative tightening-at the end of 2025 and pivoted to adding reserves back into the financial system by buying short-term Treasuries due in less than a year.

In December, the central bank began buying about $40 billion of bills each month in a bid to ease the pressures that were building in short-term rates. At that time, chair Jerome Powell said the Fed was “front-loading” its purchases to ensure there were enough reserves through the April tax season.

Roberto Perli, the New York Fed official who manages the central bank’s multi-trillion dollar securities portfolio, said in a blog post last month with colleagues that the monthly pace of purchases is likely to be “significantly reduced.” Between mid-April to mid-May, they said the decrease could be “somewhat gradual” to account for uncertainty and other factors. The Fed’s schedule is expected to be out Monday at 3 p.m. New York time. “I think Monday’s release will set the pace for how quickly the Fed wants to get to an end state,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, head of US interest rate strategy at TD Securities. “That’s what the minutes and remarks from Perli basically imply-they will be moving cautiously to ensure there are no missteps.”