ICI published its latest weekly "Money Market Fund Assets" report Thursday. The weekly series shows money fund assets rising $27.7 billion to $6.969 trillion, after falling $5.0 billion the week prior and rising $37.6 billion two weeks ago. Money fund assets remain just below record levels and have still risen in 27 of the last 42, and 38 of the last 57 weeks, increasing by $665.1 billion (or 10.6%) since the Fed cut on 9/18/24 and increasing by $991.2 billion (or 16.6%) since 4/24/24. MMF assets are up by $903 billion, or 14.9%, in the past 52 weeks (through 5/21/25), with Institutional MMFs up $463 billion, or 12.7% and Retail MMFs up $440 billion, or 18.1%. Year-to-date, MMF assets are up by just $118 billion, or 1.7%, with Institutional MMFs down $18 billion, or -0.4% and Retail MMFs up $137 billion, or 5.0%. (Note: Register soon for our upcoming Crane's Money Fund Symposium, which is June 23-25. We hope to see you next month in Boston!)
ICI's weekly release says, "Total money market fund assets increased by $27.67 billion to $6.97 trillion for the week ended Wednesday, May 21.... Among taxable money market funds, government funds increased by $23.40 billion and prime funds increased by $2.25 billion. Tax-exempt money market funds increased by $2.02 billion." ICI's stats show Institutional MMFs increasing $24.7 billion and Retail MMFs increasing $3.0 billion in the latest week. Total Government MMF assets, including Treasury funds, were $5.678 trillion (81.5% of all money funds), while Total Prime MMFs were $1.150 trillion (16.5%). Tax Exempt MMFs totaled $140.7 billion (2.0%).
It explains, "Assets of retail money market funds increased by $2.97 billion to $2.87 trillion. Among retail funds, government money market fund assets decreased by $615 million to $1.81 trillion, prime money market fund assets increased by $2.01 billion to $933.29 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets increased by $1.58 billion to $128.27 billion." Retail assets account for well over a third of total assets, or 41.2%, and Government Retail assets make up 63.0% of all Retail MMFs.
They add, "Assets of institutional money market funds increased by $24.70 billion to $4.10 trillion. Among institutional funds, government money market fund assets increased by $24.02 billion to $3.87 trillion, prime money market fund assets increased by $236 million to $216.59 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets increased by $447 million to $12.40 billion." Institutional assets accounted for 58.8% of all MMF assets, with Government Institutional assets making up 94.4% of all institutional MMF totals.
According to Crane Data's separate Money Fund Intelligence Daily series, money fund assets have increased by $56.3 billion in May (through 5/21/25) to $7.355 trillion, last month assets hit a record high of $7.384 trillion on April 3. Assets fell by $24.4 billion in April, they rose $2.8 trillion in March, $94.2 billion in February, $52.8 billion in January, $110.9 billion in December, $200.5 trillion in November, $97.5 billion in October, $149.8 billion in September, $109.7 billion in August, $16.6 billion in July, $15.7 billion in June and $91.4 billion in May. They declined by $15.8 billion in April 2024. Note that ICI's asset totals don't include a number of funds tracked by the SEC and Crane Data, so they're over $330 billion lower than Crane's asset series.
In other news, the U.S. Treasury's Office of Financial Research (OFR) published a blog piece titled, "OFR's MMF Monitor Shows Reduced Federal Reserve ON RRP Use." It states, "In Q1 2025, U.S. money market funds (MMFs) experienced strong cash inflows from retail and institutional investors that pushed assets to $7.4 trillion by quarter-end, according to OFR's U.S. Money Market Fund Monitor data. Investors sought relative safety from broader market volatility and benefited from the yield advantage generally offered by MMFs over alternative investment products."
They write, "MMFs also lowered their exposure to U.S. Treasury securities and increased their repurchase agreement (repo) allocation to over $2.8 trillion.... The change primarily reflected high repo rates and a net decrease in U.S. Treasury issuance. The U.S. Department of the Treasury is conserving its borrowing authority until the federal debt limit is raised or suspended."
OFR's update tells us, "Attractive private market repo rates above the ON RRP offer rate contributed to the growth in MMF private repo transactions. MMFs increased their private repo holdings by $234 billion to a record high of $2.5 trillion at the end of Q1 2025. As a share of overall MMF assets, private repo has risen from 17% in early 2023 to 33% at the end of the most recent quarter. The data shows that roughly a dozen counterparties accounted for most of the increase.... About a quarter of this growth was attributable to centrally cleared repos with the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC). With this growth, more than a third of MMFs' repo exposure is to FICC."
It continues, "Conversely, MMFs' use of the Federal Reserve's ON RRP facility stood at $349 billion at the March quarter-end, down 9% from year-end 2024, extending a gradual decline since early 2023. ON RRP usage may rebound in the future.... If the investible amounts of the government securities and private repo decrease relative to MMF assets, MMFs may turn to ON RRP. Also, some MMFs use the ON RRP facility on quarter-end dates because certain securities dealers reduce money market financing to shrink their balance sheet on regulatory reporting dates."
Finally, the blog adds, "Some MMFs use ON RRP as a tool to manage liquidity. The four largest MMFs account for over 60% of recent ON RRP balances. The largest ON RRP exposures as a percentage of fund portfolio assets were at large internal funds that manage liquidity for other funds across their fund family.... While funds can change their ON RRP balances at any time, the Federal Reserve limits single counterparties to a maximum ON RRP balance of $160 billion per day."
