Quantitative tightening is measured, not announced. This page tracks the Federal Reserve's total assets (WALCL, published weekly) against their post-QE peak, so the size and direction of the runoff can be read off the data rather than inferred from commentary.
The Fed's balance sheet peaked at $8.97T in April 2022 and bottomed at $6.54T in December 2025, a $2.43T reduction between those two points. It has grown $0.21T since that low and now stands at $6.75T, still 24.7% below the peak. On the published WALCL data, the balance sheet is no longer contracting.
Post-QE peak$8.97T
Low since peak$6.54T
Latest$6.75T
Below peak24.7%
Expanding again · WALCL · 2026-07-22
Federal Reserve total assets, last 10 years
WALCL, weekly, in trillions of USD. The shaded span runs from the post-QE peak to the lowest weekly reading recorded since.
Recent pace
Window
Change
Avg per month
Last 3 months
+$0.04T
+$13B
Last 6 months
+$0.16T
+$27B
Last 12 months
+$0.09T
+$7B
A negative change means assets are running off; a positive one means the balance sheet is growing again. Reserve-management purchases, discount-window use and repo operations all show up here, so a single positive month is not by itself a policy signal.
What the runoff actually does
When a bond on the Fed's balance sheet matures and is not reinvested, the Treasury pays the principal out of its account at the Fed and the security disappears from the asset side. The liability side shrinks to match — and the liability that absorbs most of the adjustment is bank reserves. That is the whole mechanism: runoff converts a Fed asset into a smaller pile of cash in the banking system.
This is why the balance sheet cannot be read on its own. The same runoff pace drains reserves quickly when the Treasury is also rebuilding its cash account, and barely at all when the ON RRP facility is absorbing the difference. The net-liquidity series (Fed assets minus TGA minus ON RRP) is the version of this that nets out those offsets.
Why the level is context, not a score
A large balance sheet is not the same thing as loose conditions, and this site does not treat it as one. The DLI headline scores the flow of net liquidity plus an acute funding-stress override; the balance-sheet level sits outside the score deliberately, because ranking the level against its own history pins any post-QE reading at an extreme regardless of what funding markets are doing.
The practical reading is the reverse of the intuitive one: what matters is not how big the balance sheet is, but whether it is currently adding to or subtracting from the cash available to the banking system, and whether short-term funding rates show that the remaining reserves are ample or scarce.
What marks a genuine turn
A durable end to runoff shows up in three places at once, and the balance sheet is the slowest of them. Watch the SOFR-IORB spread first: when secured overnight funding persistently prints above the rate the Fed pays on reserves, reserves have stopped being abundant. Standing Repo Facility usage is the second — it is zero for months, then not.
Only after those does the asset side turn, because reserve-management purchases are a response to scarcity rather than a forecast of it. Reading the sequence in that order is what separates a policy turn from a week of noise in the weekly H.4.1 release.
Frequently asked questions
What is quantitative tightening (QT)?
Quantitative tightening is the reverse of quantitative easing: the Federal Reserve lets maturing bonds roll off its balance sheet instead of reinvesting the proceeds. The securities disappear from the asset side and bank reserves fall on the liability side, so the cash cushion in the banking system shrinks without the Fed selling anything.
When did QT start and how much has been drained?
Runoff began in mid-2022, after the balance sheet peaked following the pandemic-era asset purchases. The exact peak, the lowest weekly reading since, and the cumulative reduction are shown in the figures at the top of this page, taken from the weekly WALCL release.
Has QT ended?
Read it from the direction of the series rather than from announcements. This page classifies the last six months of WALCL as contracting, broadly flat, or expanding again, and shows the trough reading since the peak. A balance sheet that has been rising for several months is no longer draining reserves, whatever the stated policy framework is called.
How does QT affect stocks and crypto?
The link is regime-level, not day-to-day. Sustained runoff removes reserves and tends to coincide with a higher risk premium across equities and crypto; sustained growth in the balance sheet tends to coincide with the opposite. It is a coincident description of the liquidity backdrop, not a timing signal, and single-week changes carry very little information.
What is the difference between QT and rate hikes?
Rate hikes set the price of money; QT sets its quantity. The Fed can raise rates while the balance sheet grows, or cut rates while runoff continues — the two tools work through different channels and do not have to move together.