The Investment Company Institute published its latest weekly "Money Market Fund Assets" report Thursday, as well as its latest "Trends in Mutual Fund Investing" for May 2024. (Its monthly "Month-End Portfolio Holdings of Taxable Money Funds" wasn't available yesterday so isn't included in today's News.) The former shows money market mutual fund assets rising to $6.103 trillion, after dipping last week and rising the previous 8 weeks before that. MMF assets are up by $216 billion, or 4.6%, year-to-date in 2024 (through 6/26/24), with Institutional MMFs up $52 billion, or 1.7% and Retail MMFs up $164 billion, or 9.8%. Over the past 52 weeks, money funds have risen by $672 billion, or 12.4%, with Retail MMFs up by $454 billion (22.7%) and Inst MMFs rising by $218 billion (6.3%).

The weekly release says, "Total money market fund assets increased by $4.97 billion to $6.10 trillion for the eight-day period ended Wednesday, June 26, the Investment Company Institute reported.... Among taxable money market funds, government funds increased by $6.26 billion and prime funds decreased by $2.38 billion. Tax-exempt money market funds increased by $1.09 billion." ICI's stats show Institutional MMFs increasing $7.3 billion and Retail MMFs falling $2.3 billion in the latest week. Total Government MMF assets, including Treasury funds, were $4.930 trillion (80.8% of all money funds), while Total Prime MMFs were $1.043 trillion (17.1%). Tax Exempt MMFs totaled $129.1 billion (2.1%).

ICI explains, "Assets of retail money market funds decreased by $2.31 billion to $2.45 trillion. Among retail funds, government money market fund assets decreased by $3.38 billion to $1.56 trillion, prime money market fund assets decreased by $117 million to $773.75 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets increased by $1.18 billion to $117.53 billion." Retail assets account for over a third of total assets, or 40.2%, and Government Retail assets make up 63.7% of all Retail MMFs.

They add, "Assets of institutional money market funds increased by $7.28 billion to $3.65 trillion. Among institutional funds, government money market fund assets increased by $9.64 billion to $3.37 trillion, prime money market fund assets decreased by $2.26 billion to $269.49 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets decreased by $92 million to $11.54 billion." Institutional assets accounted for 59.8% of all MMF assets, with Government Institutional assets making up 92.3% of all institutional MMF totals.

According to Crane Data's separate Money Fund Intelligence Daily series, money fund assets have risen by $23.2 billion in June (through 6/26) to $6.496 trillion. (They hit a record $6.538 trillion on 4/2, so our assets series has yet to reclaim record levels.) Assets rose by $91.4 billion in May, fell $15.8 billion in April and $68.8 billion in March. But they rose $72.1 billion in February, $93.9 billion in January, $32.7 billion in December and $226.4 billion in November. MMF totals fell by $31.9 billion in October. They rose $93.9 billion in September, $98.3 billion in August and $34.7 billion in July. Note that ICI's asset totals don't include a number of funds tracked by the SEC and Crane Data, so they're over $400 billion lower than Crane's asset series.

ICI's monthly Trends shows money fund totals rising $90.9 billion in May to $6.079 trillion (after an increase in April, a drop in March and a jump in February, January, December and November, a decrease in October, and increases in September, August, July, and June). Prior to this, the March 2023 jump (a $371.0 billion increase) was the third largest monthly increase ever and the largest in history if you exclude 2 coronavirus lockdown panic months in March and April 2020. Bond fund assets increased $60.6 billion to $4.832 trillion, and bond ETF assets increased and still remain above the $1.5 trillion level (after passing it for the first time ever 5 months ago).

MMFs have increased by $659.6 billion, or 12.2%, over the past 12 months (according to ICI's Trends through 5/31). Money funds' May asset increase follows an increase of $4.3 billion in April, a decrease of $73.0 billion in March, an increase of $55.1 billion in February, $82.4 billion in January, $34.9 billion in December, $213.9 billion in November, a decrease of $13.6 billion in October and gains of $74.1 billion in September, $123.9 billion in August $31.4 billion in July, $30.6 billion in June, $172.7 billion in May, $8.4 billion in April, $371.0 billion in March, $60.0 billion in February and $31.5 billion in January.

Money fund assets surpassed bond fund assets in September 2022 for the first time since 2010 and they continued to hold a sizeable lead last month. (The bond fund totals don't include bond ETFs, which total $1.559 trillion as of 5/31, according to ICI.)

ICI's monthly release states, "The combined assets of the nation's mutual funds increased by $733.74 billion, or 2.8 percent, to $26.78 trillion in May, according to the Investment Company Institute's official survey of the mutual fund industry. In the survey, mutual fund companies report actual assets, sales, and redemptions to ICI.... Bond funds had an inflow of $7.83 billion in May, compared with an inflow of $7.89 billion in April.... Money market funds had an inflow of $74.16 billion in May, compared with an outflow of $14.91 billion in April. In May funds offered primarily to institutions had an inflow of $53.00 billion and funds offered primarily to individuals had an inflow of $21.16 billion."

The Institute's latest statistics show that Taxable MMFs and Tax Exempt MMFs were both higher from last month. Taxable MMFs increased by $86.6 billion in May to $5.950 trillion. Tax-Exempt MMFs increased $4.3 billion to $129.5 billion. Taxable MMF assets increased year-over-year by $642.4 billion (12.1%), and Tax-Exempt funds rose by $17.1 billion over the past year (15.2%). Bond fund assets increased by $60.6 billion (after decreasing by $75.2 billion in April) to $4.832 trillion; they've increased by $216.9 billion (4.7%) over the past year.

Money funds represent 22.7% of all mutual fund assets (down 0.3% from the previous month), while bond funds account for 18.0%, according to ICI. The total number of money market funds was 276, unchanged from the prior month and down from 280 a year ago. Taxable money funds numbered 231 funds, and tax-exempt money funds numbered 45 funds.

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