Direxion

How Did Asset Managers Respond to QE3?

It’s almost old news by now. Yesterday, the Fed announced QE3 and ongoing purchases of mortgage-backed securities at the rate of $40B per month. So, how did asset managers respond?

Using Twitter as an (incomplete) proxy for firms’ responses, here’s the short, chronological list of activity as of 5pm on the day of the news:

That is six responses within about six hours. As a sidebar, it’s interesting that none of the content referenced any of trending conversations on Twitter (#QE3, #Fed, etc.). Per the screen capture below, a search showed Oppenheimer and Russell taking advantage of Twitter’s social features. But these were from before the Fed’s announcement.

I don’t know exactly what I expected when I started to look, but overall I’d characterize the volume as a bit disappointing. The biggest financial news of the week warranted a bigger, faster response. Firms know that; it’s still a matter of getting the process ironed out.