Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said a majority of Federal Open Market Committee members don’t favor selling the Fed’s holdings of mortgage-backed securities when it begins to exit record monetary stimulus.

“A strong majority now expects the committee will not sell agency backed mortgage-backed securities during the process of normalizing monetary policy, although in the longer run, limited sales could be used to reduce or eliminate residual MBS holdings,” Bernanke said at a press conference in Washington.