They're not just the biggest whales, but possibly <i>the only whales that matter.</i><p>I mean, $9T is a lot. For comparison, the world's largest and most popular index fund, Vanguard's 500 Index Fund, with a gigantic number of investors, holds "only" $0.4T in investments.<p>Put another way, $9T works out to ~$1100 of liquidity injected into the financial system for every man, woman and child alive!<p>It's hard to reason about the impact of such incomprehensibly large injections of liquidity on the behavior of financial markets.
I enjoyed this article, but I’m confused. The section raising the question about how this has affected other asset prices seems to just posit the question without establishing how the banks actions would have done so. Is there some obvious link between the FED buying mortgage backed securities and technology stocks going up? Or should it be inferred that by buying those securities they just put more money into the system that is creating the situation they describe? Thanks for any explanation.