Federal Reserve Board staff introduce CSLT dataset unifying monthly U.S. cross-border securities holdings and transactions since 1985

In a FEDS Notes article, Federal Reserve Board staff introduced the Continuous Securities Long-Term dataset, a single public source that combines Treasury International Capital data and previously published estimates into continuous and comparable monthly measures of U.S. cross-border securities holdings, transactions, and valuation changes from 1985 to the present. The note says the dataset is intended to replace the current practice of stitching together several separate historical estimates, and that it is available through the U.S. Department of the Treasury website and Federal Reserve Economic Data. The CSLT does not create new estimation methods. Instead, it consolidates existing approaches across three periods: January 1985 to December 2011, when monthly holdings and valuation changes had to be estimated from annual surveys and monthly transactions data; January 2012 to January 2023, when monthly holdings from the SLT11 form were available but transactions and valuation changes still required estimation; and from February 2023 onward, when the redesigned SLT form directly collects net transactions, holdings changes, and valuation changes. The dataset also adds aggregate and country-level foreign holdings of short-term U.S. Treasuries from the BL2 form, while the note flags limits in continuous country, date, and security-level coverage because of factors including confidentiality restrictions. U.S. liabilities series begin in January 1985, while U.S. claims series begin in April 1994.