The Investment Company Institute's latest weekly money fund totals show assets increasing by $8.81 billion to $3.507 trillion the week ended July 23, 2008. Retail assets grew $2.70 billion to $1.231 trillion and Institutional assets grew $6.11 billion to $2.276 trillion. Year-to-date, money fund assets have increased by $362.7 billion, or 11.5%, though assets remain below their record level of $3.536 trillion set the week of April 9 this year.
In other news, a press release says, "The Performance U.S. Treasury Money Market Fund, a Trustmark proprietary mutual fund, has been assigned Standard & Poor's "AAAm-G" principal stability fund rating. The fund commenced operations in September 2007 and is managed by Trustmark Investment Advisors, Inc. The fund seeks to provide investors with the highest possible current income as is consistent with preservation of capital and liquidity. To achieve its investment objective, the fund normally invests its assets in short term direct obligations of the U.S. Treasury."
Finally, some Product News from Crane Data. Next week, we will release our quarterly Money Fund Intelligence Distribution Survey, which tracks sales trends, market share and asset metrics. We've also recently launched Money Fund Intelligence Daily, which provides daily dividend factors, 1-day, 7-day and 30-day yields, assets and maturities on our Crane Indexes and over 300 of the largest money funds. We're also now publishing Brokerage Sweep Intelligence, which tracks bank, money fund and CD options from the nation's largest brokerages. Finally, we're preparing for the "beta" release of Money Fund Wisdom, which will allow subscribers to build custom reports and peer groups from our database of historical money fund performance information. E-mail Pete or call 1-508-439-4419 for samples or for more details.