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This page provides additional information about data in the Board of Governors' statistical release on flow of funds of the United States (Z.1). Most of the information is of a technical nature and represents answers to questions that may be of interest to a range of analysts and researchers. The page will be updated as such questions arise.

Documentation for the data in the Z.1 release is available on the About page on the Board's website.

Q: How is the Securities Data Corporation (SDC) bond data used to calculate series FA103163003.Q in the Flow of Funds data set? Which categories of the SDC bond data do you focus on, and what are you using as a filter?

For the Flow of Funds data, we use SDC to track bonds of nonfinancial U.S. firms issued in U.S. and foreign markets. A firm is a U.S. firm if issuing subsidiary's domicile is the United States. We include both convertible and non-convertible debt issues but exclude medium-term notes (MTNs), Certificates of Deposit, Bank Notes, and government and agency bonds. MTN net issuance is tracked using a separate data source.

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Q: I have been looking at the Flow of Funds report Table F.212 - Net Issues and have some questions how the SDC Bond database is used.

The SDC Bond data from CM is used only to calculate 103163003 (corporate sector) issuance.

1. Do you filter the SDC database on U.S.-owned corporates targeting U.S. markets, or do you filter on all (no matter if they are primarily owned by another country) corporate targeting U.S. markets?
   1. We filter the SDC database on U.S.-owned corporates targeting U.S. and foreign markets, with the domicile determined by the issuing subsidiary's domicile.
2. Do you use the SDC database for Financial Companies?
   1. No, the financial sectors bond issuance series are not from the SDC data.¹
3. What sectors in SDC do you classify as 'Financial' (if you use SDC) and 'Non-Financial'?
   1. We use the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code of the issuer (not the parent) to distinguish between financial and non-financial firms. (http://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/sic_manual.html)
4. What instruments do you consider to be asset-backed securities (ABS)?
   1. We only use the SDC bond data from Capital Markets to calculate 103163003 (corporate sector) issuance, so since this is nonfinancial data, it does not include ABS.¹
5. How are the maturity dates handled when using SDC?
   1. We do not filter out any issues based on time to maturity.
6. How is Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) used
   1. DTCC is used for MTN net issuance data.

1. The answers to questions 2 and 4 originally suggested that the Flow of Funds Accounts excluded financial bonds. The text has been updated to say that the Flow of Funds Accounts do contain financial bonds, but the SDC bond data from Capital Markets is used only for the "Nonfinancial corporate business" line of table 212, which only includes nonfinancial bonds.

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