Among the missing.

The article focuses on the Treasury-bond market. Ten-year Treasury yields touched 4.4%, on October 3rd, their highest in almost two months. Yields ended October 5th at 4.34%. What really drives yields? Fed-watching matters a lot at the shorter end of the spectrum. And concern about inflation is arguably the main determinant of long-bond yields. But the appetite of foreigners and especially foreign central banks has played a big role. Foreign banks have been buying more of other things, mainly higher-yielding bonds issued by government-backed agencies such as Fannie Mae, the mortgage giant. Some are choosing to buy in the secondary market abroad, which shows up in private rather than official flows. This may be especially true of many OPEC countries, including those with national wealth-management funds. On October 5th it emerged that Venezuela, perhaps for political reasons, had apparently transferred as much as $20 billion--most of its reserves--out of Treasuries and out of America. Indirectly, central banks' diversification out of dollars may also be boosting private-sector demand for dollar assets. Moving more into euros, they are helping to push down yields in Europe. Brad Setser and Nouriel Roubini, of Roubini Global Economics, a consultancy, reckon that central-bank buying at its peak could have dampened Treasury yields by up to two percentage points. And a new paper by Francis Warnock and Veronica Cacdac Warnock, of the University of Virginia, finds that if foreign central banks had bought no Treasuries over the past year, ten-year yields would be 60 basis points higher. A curious new trend in the eurodollar-futures market, however, hints that interest-rate hikes may end sooner than most assume.