Crane Data published its latest Weekly Money Fund Portfolio Holdings statistics Tuesday, which track a shifting subset of our monthly Portfolio Holdings collection. The most recent cut (with data as of Feb. 21) includes Holdings information from 67 money funds (up 5 from a week ago), or $3.856 trillion (up from $3.585 trillion) of the $7.267 trillion in total money fund assets (or 53.1%) tracked by Crane Data. (Note: Our Weekly MFPH are e-mail only and aren't available on the website. See our latest Monthly Money Fund Portfolio Holdings here and our Feb. 12 News, "Feb. Money Fund Portfolio Holdings: Treasuries Higher, Fed Repo Plunges.") (Note: Register soon for our upcoming Bond Fund Symposium, which is March 27-28 in Newport Beach. We hope to see you next month in Southern California!)
Our latest Weekly MFPH Composition summary shows Government assets dominating the holdings list with Treasuries totaling $1.825 trillion (up from $1.713 trillion a week ago), or 47.3%; Repurchase Agreements (Repo) totaling $1.283 trillion (up from $1.226 trillion a week ago), or 33.3%, and Government Agency securities totaling $320.3 billion (up from $306.3 billion), or 8.3%. Commercial Paper (CP) totaled $173.8 billion (up from a week ago at $139.4 billion), or 4.5%. Certificates of Deposit (CDs) totaled $95.7 billion (up from $79.5 billion a week ago), or 2.5%. The Other category accounted for $107.7 billion or 2.8%, while VRDNs accounted for $50.4 billion, or 1.3%.
The Ten Largest Issuers in our Weekly Holdings product include: the US Treasury with $1.825 trillion (47.3% of total holdings), Fixed Income Clearing Corp with $397.1B (10.3%), the Federal Home Loan Bank with $213.1 billion (5.5%), JP Morgan with $115.1B (3.0%), Citi with $91.3B (2.4%), BNP Paribas with $81.1B (2.1%), Federal Farm Credit Bank with $74.2B (1.9%), RBC with $66.4B (1.7%), Barclays PLC with $58.1B (1.5%) and Bank of America with $53.8B (1.4%).
The Ten Largest Funds tracked in our latest Weekly include: JPMorgan US Govt MM ($292.6B), Goldman Sachs FS Govt ($278.9B), JPMorgan 100% US Treas MMkt ($250.8B), Fidelity Inv MM: Govt Port ($219.7B), Morgan Stanley Inst Liq Govt ($178.3B), Federated Hermes Govt ObI ($173.4B), BlackRock Lq FedFund ($169.8B), State Street Inst US Govt ($161.9B), BlackRock Lq Treas Tr ($151.0B) and Fidelity Inv MM: MM Port ($150.4B). (Let us know if you'd like to see our latest domestic U.S. and/or "offshore" Weekly Portfolio Holdings collection and summary.)
In other news, a release titled, "HilltopSecurities Announces Strategic Partnership with Treasury Curve to Offer Money Fund Portal to Clients" says, "Hilltop Securities Inc. is assisting its institutional clients by launching a Money Fund Portal and has selected Treasury Curve, a leading independent provider of automated and intelligent treasury management solutions, as its technology provider. The HilltopSecurities Institutional Money Fund Portal simplifies liquidity management by enabling users to diversify liquidity risk across multiple institutions while managing all accounts within a single, user-friendly platform. Institutional public entities, corporations, and bank clients gain advanced research capabilities, real-time reporting, and compliance analysis -- all designed with security and reliability in mind."
Carl Stimmel, Head of Short-Term Products & SBA Business Development, comments, "At HilltopSecurities, we are constantly striving to meet and exceed the expectations of our clients. Our clients have been asking for a streamlined, secure solution for managing liquidity, and we are excited to deliver through our partnership with Treasury Curve. This new Money Fund Portal reflects our ongoing commitment to providing innovative tools that empower our clients to manage their assets more efficiently while mitigating risk."
Treasury Curve President Chris Kaminski adds, "We are excited to partner with HilltopSecurities and extend the reach of our Money Fund Portal to a broader client base. This partnership further validates Treasury Curve's leadership in treasury automation, and we look forward to helping HilltopSecurities' clients manage their liquidity more efficiently while mitigating risk."
For more on Money Fund Portals, see these Crane Data News pieces, "MUFG Bank White Labels BNY Portal" (11/19/24); "Morgan Stanley Puts Impact Partner Class on Portal; UBS Changes Cutoff" (6/25/24); and "Tradeweb to Acquire ICD Portal" (4/9/24).
Finally, Federated Hermes posted "The slowing pace of Fed cuts," a video with Tara Dougherty and Debbie Cunningham discussing the "many reasons why the Fed is likely to keep rates higher for longer." Dougherty says, "Debbie, thank you so much for joining us here in London. Debbie Cunningham is the CIO for our liquidity franchise here at Federated Hermes, overseeing approximately $600 billion of liquidity assets. I'm very pleased to have her here with us today. So I'll start with new administration in the White House. Volatility seems to be kind of the name of the game. Wanted to maybe get your thoughts on the trajectory of rates in the US market and some potential impacts that we've seen in these first few days of Trump 2.0."
Cunningham responds, "Certainly, from a Trump administration perspective, fast and furious is what we've dealt with so far. I'm not sure if anything though in the context of sticking points is hugely impactful for where we are from a monetary policy standpoint with regard to the Fed. Our expectations at this point are 1 to 2 rate cuts by the end of this year. That's drastically changed from where we were in the September meeting when the Fed cut 50 basis points and even, you know, November and into December, and that's reflective of I think what has been termed as sticky inflation."
She continues, "And a resilient consumer from an employment perspective now from a Trump policy standpoint, I don't know that either one of those things are drastically changed in this environment. The policies that his administration is looking to achieve when you look at immigration, when you look at tariffs, potential regulatory changes, all of those to some degree, at least on an initial blush basis, are more inflationary, so sticky inflation and, and maybe even rising inflation. Which brings the Fed's job from an easing perspective to a much lower threshold.... So ultimately, we're looking at higher rates for a longer period of time."
Dougherty then asks, "OK, there's some talk about potential for a hike maybe down the road, are we in that camp at all?" Cunningham responds, "We are not in that camp at all. That is something that, there's a broad array of outlooks and it goes from those that think maybe one or two hikes by the end of the year. To those who are still contemplating lowering of interest rates before the end of the year, we think both of those are extreme positions and ultimately where we stand from a yield curve perspective, which is reflective of 1 to 2 rate cuts the remaining portion of this year is where we're also standing at this point, which is good because we're actually seeing value in the marketplace based on that."
