vs Last Month
−$50B
QT runoff continues at slower pace.
Total Federal Reserve Assets · The QE/QT Scoreboard
Fed Balance Sheet
$7.00T
−$0.05TQT continues
Past 12 months$6.95T – $7.50T
vs Last Year−$0.45T
From 2022 Peak−$1.96T
Pre-COVID$4.31T
Fed balance sheet at $7.00T — the lowest since June 2021. QT has trimmed nearly $2T off the April 2022 peak; the Fed is signaling the runoff will halt within 2026.
Historical trend
Weekly Wednesday close.
Source: FRED · WALCL
The long view: since 2007
From $0.74T to $8.96T peak — the most consequential balance sheet in modern history.
ATH $8.96T · April 2022
Pre-crisis $0.74T · Sept 2007
Today $7.00T
How today stacks up
vs Last Year
−$450B
Steady balance sheet reduction over the year.
5-Year Average
$8.10T
Today is $1.1T below the 5-yr mean.
vs Pre-COVID
+$2.69T
Will likely never return to pre-2020 levels.
Use this number
Tools for the macro picture.
About the Fed Balance Sheet
The Federal Reserve Balance Sheet shows total Federal Reserve assets — mostly U.S. Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities purchased through quantitative easing (QE) and other programs. Today's $7.00T represents securities held by the Fed in the System Open Market Account (SOMA). When the Fed buys securities, the balance sheet expands (QE); when it lets securities mature without replacing them, the balance sheet shrinks (QT).
QE and QT in one chart
Before the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed's balance sheet was a stable ~$0.9T. The Bernanke Fed expanded it through QE1/QE2/QE3 to $4.5T by 2014. Powell briefly shrank it to $3.76T in 2019, but COVID forced an emergency restart that took the balance sheet to a record $8.96T by April 2022. The current QT cycle has trimmed about $2T off that peak — today's $7.00T is the lowest reading since June 2021.
Reading today's level
QT is winding down — the Fed slowed runoff in mid-2024 and is widely expected to halt it in 2026 at around $6.8–7.0T. The balance sheet won't return to pre-pandemic levels because the U.S. financial system requires more reserves to function smoothly than it did in 2007. Future QE programs will likely launch from a higher base.
Related trackers
Other live numbers that move with — or against — this one.
Frequently asked
What this number means, and what it doesn't.
About 60% U.S. Treasury securities and 35% agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS). The remaining 5% is overnight repos, central bank liquidity swaps, and discount window loans. The Fed adjusts the composition over time but Treasuries + MBS dominate.
The Fed buys securities from banks. Banks receive newly-created reserves (held at the Fed) in exchange. This increases bank lending capacity, lowers long-term yields, and supports asset prices. QE doesn't directly create "money in your pocket" — it adds reserves to the banking system.
The current cycle ended in March 2022 when the Fed completed its COVID-era purchases. QT (selling/running off securities) started in June 2022. The Fed has signaled QT will end in 2026 with the balance sheet stabilizing near $6.8–7.0T.
Balance sheet expansion (QE) historically correlates with risk-on markets — rising equities, tightening credit spreads, weaker dollar. Contraction (QT) correlates with risk-off pressure, though less reliably. The connection has weakened as markets adjusted to QE/QT as routine policy tools.
Methodology
Source
Pulled from FRED · WALCL and cached on the EvvyTools server.
Update schedule
Refreshed automatically by our cron whenever the upstream source publishes a new value. Historical values are not revised after publication.
How we compute
Display value is the raw published number, unrounded. Comparison stats use the closest available reference date. We never edit the underlying data.