Commercial banks and thrifts boosted their combined holdings of residential MBS to a new record, $1.661 trillion, during the first quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. The data include held-to-maturity and available-for-sale accounts, but not trading assets, which included another $45.99 billion of residential MBS as of the end of March. The banking industry’s MBS holdings in HTM/AFS portfolios rose 1.0 percent from the end of 2015, and they were up a substantial 5.2 percent from a year ago. It’s worth noting that total assets in the banking industry actually rose a bit faster, by 2.1 percent, dropping the MBS share of total assets down slightly to 10.2 percent. Unlike some quarters, when activity by one or two dominant banks accounts for most of the industry’s change, the first-quarter increase was...[Includes two data tables]