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 February 27) includes Holdings information from 54 money funds (down 20 from a week ago), or $3.593 trillion (down from $4.712 trillion) of the $8.241 trillion in total money fund assets (or 43.6%) 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 February 11 News, "Feb. Portfolio Holdings: Assets Dip; Agencies Jump, Treasuries Plummet.")
Our latest Weekly MFPH Composition summary shows Government assets dominating the holdings list with Treasuries totaling $1.663 trillion (down from $2.154 trillion a week ago), or 46.3%; Repurchase Agreements (Repo) totaling $1.313 trillion (down from $1.719 trillion a week ago), or 36.5%, and Government Agency securities totaling $361.1 billion (down from $440.5 billion a week ago), or 10.1%. Commercial Paper (CP) totaled $130.6 billion (down from $180.3 billion a week ago), or 3.6%. Certificates of Deposit (CDs) totaled $52.3 billion (down from $95.0 billion a week ago), or 1.5%. The Other category accounted for $38.9 billion or 1.1%, while VRDNs accounted for $34.3 billion or 1.0%.
The Ten Largest Issuers in our Weekly Holdings product include: the US Treasury with $1.663 trillion, Fixed Income Clearing Corp with $438.4B, the Federal Home Loan Bank with $210.9B, JP Morgan with $108.9B, RBC with $101.9B, Federal Farm Credit Bank with $91.9B, BNP Paribas with $87.8B, Citi with $86.2B, Wells Fargo with $73.1B and Bank of America with $54.5B.
The Ten Largest Funds tracked in our latest Weekly include: JPMorgan US Govt MM ($327.0B), JPMorgan 100% US Trs MM ($312.0B), Goldman Sachs FS Govt ($289.5B), Fidelity Inv MM: Govt Port ($271.5B), State Street Inst US Govt ($224.3B), Morgan Stanley Inst Liq Govt ($219.9B), Fidelity Inv MM: MM Port ($167.6B), Dreyfus Govt Cash Mgmt ($162.5B), Allspring Govt MM ($129.6B) and First American Govt Oblg ($125.2B). (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, Federated Hermes' latest monthly insight asks, "Has the floor been raised for the money markets?" Money Market CIO Deborah Cunningham writes, "There are essentially two ways an extraordinary development can play out: reverting to the mean or creating a new status quo. In finance, the latter is rare, but we believe 2026 is shaping up to be just that for the money markets."
She explains, "Many would agree that the collective performance of stable value products since mid-2022 has indeed been extraordinary, riding on the back of Federal Reserve rate hikes, and rising to their highest level in decades. The high watermark for yields came the following year, with the target fed funds range reaching 5.25-5.50% and the Crane 100 Money Fund Index touching 5.20%. Funds poured into money market funds, pushing assets under management (AUM) to record highs."
Cunningham says, "But here is where it gets interesting. Logic would say that flows would reverse when the Fed pivoted to lowering rates. Yet even after 150 basis points worth of cuts since 2023, industry money fund AUM have continued to grow, hitting new highs in February of $7.8 trillion according to iMoneyNet and $8.2 trillion according to Crane Data, which calculates its figure differently. As we have said before (Slow and steady), this is in part due to how the laddered structure of money funds has kept yields above the direct Treasury market."
She adds, "But that might not be the entire picture. We are two and a half months past the last rate cut on Dec. 17 and inflows have continued. Furthermore, investors typically redeem a portion of their money market funds in the first quarter of a given year in a reversal of the seasonal surge in December and in preparation for upcoming tax payments. Not last year, as assets increased over those three months. And likely not this year, either, if March follows January and February's inflows."
Cunningham asks, "What's happening? We think investors like the 'new normal,' realizing that liquidity yields might remain competitive even if the Fed lowers rates by half a percentage point this year as it projected in December. This is not important 'just' because of the return, but because cash management tends to work best when yields are fairly steady, as seeking stability is the name of the game. We think, and the inflows seem to back up, that investors appreciate the potential sustainability of the 'benevolent ordinary' yields as much as they did the heady returns of 2023, which the Fed never conceived as long-lived. This could be wishful thinking, but we would not be surprised if stable value products retain their current widespread popularity for a long time."
She concludes, "And let's not forget the uncertainty pervading the Fed's future, the US economy and geopolitics, a collective negative vibe that often sends investors to safer harbors. Not that you should expect most cash managers to rest on our laurels. We at Federated Hermes are a conservative bunch. Despite the inflow this year, we will consider increasing liquidity to accommodate the expected withdrawals on tax days in March (corporate) and April (individual). The new normal does not mean one should forget the good habits that helped you get there."
