The Federal Reserve recently released its Quarterly Z.1 "Flow of Funds" Report, which contains a wealth of statistics on money market mutual funds. The Fed's numbers show money fund assets declining by $155 billion in the second quarter, led by a $78 billion drop in holdings of "Funding corporations", a category dominated by securities lenders. The Household Sector experienced the second largest drop, a decline of $67 billion, in the quarter ended June 30, 2009.
According to the Fed's Z.1 table L.206 "Money Market Mutual Fund Shares," the Household sector still accounted for the largest segment of money fund shares, with $1,495.7 billion, or 41.7%, of the $3.584 trillion in money funds. Funding corporations held 21.6% of money fund assets with $775 billion, while Nonfinancial corporate businesses held $688 billion, or 19.2% of assets.
Other investors segments included: Life insurance companies ($261 billion, or 7.3%), Nonfarm corporate businesses ($100 billion, or 2.8%), Private pension funds ($96 billion, or 2.7%), State and local governments ($85 billion, or 2.4%), Rest of the world ($65 billion, or 1.8%), and State and local government retirement funds ($19 billion, or 0.5%).
Over the past year (through Q2'09), money fund assets have still increased by $266 billion. Funding corporations (up $105 billion) and the Household sector (up $102 billion) have shown the largest increases. Nonfinancial businesses added $36 billion on the year but subtracted $10 billion in the latest quarter.
The Fed's "Flow of Funds" Table L.121 "Money Market Mutual Funds" for Q2 shows Agency- and GSE-backed securities as the largest holding of money market funds with $733 billion (20.5%), followed by Time and savings deposits with $541.1 billion (15.1%), Open market paper with $522.1 billion (14.6%), Treasury securities with $489.1 billion (13.6%), Security RPs with $481.6 billion (13.4%), Municipal securities with $455.8 billion (12.7%), Corporate and foreign bonds with $217.9 billion (6.1%), Foreign deposits with $93.1 billion (2.6%), and Miscellaneous assets with $56.5 billion (1.6%).
In other news, money market mutual fund assets increased yesterday by $7.42 billion according to our Money Fund Intelligence Daily. This puts money market mutual fund asset totals above their level at the end of last week, the last day that many funds were covered under the Treasury's Temporary Guarantee Program.
