The April issue of our flagship Money Fund Intelligence newsletter, which was sent to subscribers Wednesday morning, features the articles: "JPM: Corporates Driving MMF Asset Gains; A Look at Fed Z.1," which reviews corporate cash balances and their impact on money fund growth; "Bond Fund Symposium in Boston: Ho & Schneider," which quotes from our recent ultra-short bond fund conference; and "Fidelity Reserves Digital, 5th Stablecoin Reserve Fund," which discusses the latest Stablecoin Reserves money market funds. We also sent out our MFI XLS spreadsheet Wednesday a.m., and we've updated our Money Fund Wisdom database with 3/31/26 data. Our April Money Fund Portfolio Holdings are scheduled to ship on Friday, April 10, and our April Bond Fund Intelligence is scheduled to go out on Wednesday, April 15.
MFI's "Corporates" story says, "A recent 'Short-Term Fixed Income' from J.P. Morgan Securities' featured a section titled, 'Corporates maintain large liquidity portfolios, and even larger cash balances.' It states, 'As expected, corporations continue to maintain large liquidity portfolios. Based on balance sheet data for S&P 500 non-financial companies, we estimate liquidity portfolio balances as of 4Q25 registered $2.6tn, an increase of $119bn QoQ and $257bn YoY. At these levels, they surpass even the prior peak of $2.5tn in the months after Covid in 2020.'"
The story states, "The brief continues, 'Notably, cash and cash equivalents rose materially, even as investment securities drove most of the increase in liquidity portfolios. We estimate aggregate cash and cash equivalents rose by nearly $117bn last year, reaching $1.38tn by 4Q25.... This marks one of the larger annual increases in cash and cash equivalents, though still behind what we saw in 2020 and 2023. [A]s far as cash levels go, ... this will be the highest amount of cash and cash equivalents corporations have held in at least a decade.'"
We write in the "Bond Fund Symposium Boston," story, "We recently hosted our latest Crane's Bond Fund Symposium in Boston, which brings together ultra-short bond fund managers and securities issuers. The keynote talk, 'Ultra‐Short Bond Funds: Spring Break,' featured J.P. Morgan Securities' Teresa Ho and PIMCO's Jerome Schneider. The latter comments, 'First of all, thanks for being here. Once again, it's obviously a great forum to see friends. And it's important, not just because of where we are today, and we can talk about the factors of where the economy is going, and waking up every moment to see where rates are going, things like that. But ... what we do here is probably described as calm amongst a storm of uncertainty ... [within] the broader landscape.'"
It continues, "He tells us, 'So, my [role at] PIMCO is running short-term low duration strategies in addition to some of our portable alpha strategies.... From that vantage point, I think about the best way to optimize cash and ... shorter duration type of fixed income allocations.' (Note: Thanks again to those who supported Bond Fund Symposium! Attendees and Crane Data subscribers may access the conference binder, Powerpoints and recordings via our 'Bond Fund Symposium 2026 Download Center.')"
Our "Fidelity Reserves" article says, "Fidelity Investments is the 5th money fund manager to launch a Stablecoin Reserves money market fund, following BlackRock's Circle Treasury Reserves, and Stablecoin Reserves offerings from State Street, Goldman Sachs and BNY. A Registration Statement tells us, 'Fidelity Reserves Digital Fund seeks to obtain as high a level of current in come as is consistent with the preservation of capital and liquidity.' (See our March 30 News, 'Arca Capital Management Files for US Treasury Money Mkt Digital Fund,' which says, 'Arca Capital Management filed a Form N-1A registration statement for Arca U.S. Treasury Money Market Digital Fund.')"
It continues, "Fidelity Reserves Digital's Principal Investment Strategies include: 'Investing only in U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds with a remaining maturity of, or issued with a maturity of, 93 days or less, cash, and overnight repurchase agreements fully collateralized by U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds, and other registered government money market funds; Investing only in eligible reserve assets that payment stablecoin issuers are permitted to maintain under the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act ('GENIUS Act') and any regulations adopted thereunder; and, Investing in compliance with industry-standard regulatory requirements for money market funds for the quality, maturity, liquidity, and diversification of investments."
MFI also includes the News brief, "MMFs Hit Record $8.279 Tril., Then Dip in Late March. Money market mutual fund assets jumped to a record high of $8.279 trillion on 3/18, according to our Money Fund Intelligence Daily. But assets then fell. They declined by $56.6 billion in March to $8.201 trillion."
Another News brief, "Fed Holds Rates at 3.5-3.75%." It says, "The Federal Reserve's latest FOMC Statement says, 'The Committee decided to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 3.5 to 3.75%.' Our Crane 100 Money Fund Index inched lower to 3.48% in March."
A third News brief, "Reuters: War and Record MMF Assets," says, "Reuters writes 'Investors drive US money market fund assets to records as war-related risk fears multiply.' The piece says, 'As the Iran conflict intensifies, the spike in oil prices and rising inflation fears are spurring investors to ditch stocks as too risky and shun traditional safe havens such as gold in favor of money market funds. The result: assets in those ultra-short-term and ultra-safe Treasury funds are now hovering around $8 trillion, according to calculations from providers such as the Investment Company Institute, JPMorgan Chase and Crane Data.'"
A sidebar, "Donahue Talks Tokenized," says, "Federated Hermes' Chris Donahue spoke recently at the '2026 RBC Capital Markets Global Financial Institutions Conference,' and made a number of comments on tokenization. He says, 'The BNY, Goldman deal is where we have our regular fund. BNY makes a token. The token invests, in effect, money in the fund, so the money fund's the same as it was five minutes ago, and it participates in Goldman's platform. That's another whole deal. Archax is one we're doing in Europe.... We have the structures inside to actually tokenize a money fund.'"
Our April MFI XLS, with March 31 data, shows total assets fell $56.6 billion to $8.201 trillion, after increasing $94.0 billion in February, $38.5 billion in January, $123.5 billion in December, $129.3 billion in November, $141.5 billion in October, $100.4 billion in September, $129.9 billion in August, $69.0 billion in July, $10.1 billion in June and jumping $90.3 billion in May. MMFs decreased $26.6 billion last April.
Our broad Crane Money Fund Average 7-Day Yield was down 1 bp at 3.37%, and our Crane 100 Money Fund Index (the 100 largest taxable funds) was down 1 bp at 3.48% in March. On a Gross Yield Basis (7-Day) (before expenses are taken out), the Crane MFA and the Crane 100 averaged 3.74% and 3.74%. Charged Expenses averaged 0.36% and 0.26% for the Crane MFA and the Crane 100. (We'll revise expenses once we upload the SEC's Form N-MFP data for 3/31/26 on Thursday, 4/9.) The average WAM (weighted average maturity) for the Crane MFA was 41 days (up 1 day) and the Crane 100 WAM was up 1 day from the previous month at 43 days. (See our Crane Index or craneindexes.xlsx history file for more on our averages.)
