Inside Fidelity's Money Market Team
Fidelity Investments posted a video titled, "Inside Fidelity's Money Market Team," which features Portfolio Managers Joe McHale, Eric Graham and Stephanie Merrin. McHale says, "Hello and thank you for joining us to learn more about Fidelity's taxable money market investment team. As a leader in the money market industry, we pride ourselves on an investment process that's routed in a collaborative team-based approach that prioritizes safety, liquidity, and generating consistent returns. Our co-portfolio management structure, combined with our highly experienced trading, research, and technology teams, help us deliver on our investment strategy. Today I am pleased to introduce Eric Graham and Stephanie Merrin, who along with myself comprise the portfolio management team of our Government money market funds. We'll take some time today to discuss their career experiences and our team's investment approach. Eric, you joined the portfolio management team in March of 2024, but you've been with Fidelity since 2000 in a variety of roles. When you think about your career thus far at Fidelity, which experience do you feel has helped you the most for your current role?" Graham replies, "Thanks, Joe. I try not to assign any one experience as the most beneficial training ground for my current role as a portfolio manager, as I truly believe the benefit lies in the breadth of experience across roles in credit research, trading, and now portfolio management. Each functional role in our group is tasked with evaluating certain sets of risks the portfolios face. The portfolio manager is ultimately responsible for assessing all risk factors, which is why I believe having experience across the different disciplines prepares an individual well for the role." McHale comments, "Thanks Eric, and Stephanie, you joined Eric and I as a co-portfolio manager in January 2025. Can you tell us about your background prior to becoming a portfolio manager and what you think has prepared you most for this role?" Merritt answers, "Sure, Thanks Joe. I spent my early career working for banks. First for a bank treasury where I gained a deep understanding of balance sheet mechanics, liquidity management, and funding strategies. I then moved to sell-side rate sales, where I covered a variety of clients, including government-sponsored entities, banks, and money market funds. This role provided me with invaluable insights into the funding strategies and balance sheet management of the GSEs as well as the asset management practices of money market funds. Those two experiences helped me build a deep understanding of front-end markets across a range of different market participants. Equally important, before becoming a money market portfolio manager, I was a trader for our money market funds. That role allowed me to interact daily with portfolio managers and our portfolios, which gave me an in-depth understanding of our investment process and our shareholder needs." McHale then asks, "Can you talk a little bit about the money market teams investment approach?" Graham comments, "Paramount to our investment philosophy is insuring stability and liquidity for our shareholders while providing them with a competitive risk adjusted return. As you mentioned earlier, we work closely with our research, trading, and technology teams to help us achieve these goals. We collaborate with research to invest within the maturity day and dollar guideline limits aligned with their credit risk assessments across approved counterparties. Additionally, our research team performs in depth analysis on a Federal Reserve and U.S. Banking system, which informs our opinions on the trajectory of U.S. Monetary policy and the effects of its transmission on the banking system and money markets generally." Finally, Merritt adds, "Building off of Eric, we also partner with our Trading Desk, who helps us find opportunities to reinvest regular maturities. Depending on the portfolio, we invest in a combination of overnight investments and short duration government securities, which means we rely both on the government and repo trading desks to help us find the most advantageous investments. Finally, our technology partners provide us with the tools we need to monitor fund attributions, analyze investments, and stress test our funds to ensure ongoing stability and liquidity."
