The September issue of Money Fund Intelligence, Crane Data's monthly premium newsletter, shipped this afternoon. It features the articles: "As SIV Threat Recedes Is Consolidation Coming?", "Western & Southern's Comfort: Touchstone MF", and "Revisiting AAA Ratings: Processes and Procedures." Every issue of MFI also includes the latest money fund news, indexes, performance, and of course plenty of statistics on over 1,350 money market mutual funds.
MFI's article on ratings says, "Over the past year, concerns, mostly unfounded, about the safety of money market mutual funds have spurred calls for more information disclosure and external oversight. While fund companies have responded with portfolio holdings lists, more communications, and more 'transparency,' the volume and frequency of this information is often bewildering, even to the sophisticated investors and analysts."
It continues, "Surprisingly, there has been little renewed focus on money fund ratings, which were originally designed to distill a fund's total risk exposure into a single, simple metric. The triple-A money fund ratings remain one of the oldest and best tools for investors and funds, current criticism of the ratings agencies notwithstanding. So we recently asked principals of the three major agencies to review their procedures."
For a copy of the full article, e-mail pete@cranedata.us. Look for more from our Sept. issue in coming days.
