Assets of money market mutual funds dropped below the $3.2 trillion level for the first time since early January 2008 over the past week. The Investment Company Institute's weekly "Money Market Mutual Fund Assets" shows funds decreasing by $6.73 billion to $3.198 trillion in the week ended Feb. 10. Money fund totals have declined for five weeks in a row and have declined by $95 billion, or 2.9%, year-to-date in 2010. This follows a decline of $512.7 billion, or 13.3%, in 2009.
ICI's weekly release says, "Taxable government funds increased by $3.46 billion [to $996.37 billion], taxable non-government funds decreased by $3.80 billion [to $1.821 trillion], and tax-exempt funds decreased by $6.39 billion [to $380.33 billion]." It adds, "Assets of retail money market funds decreased by $1.81 billion to $1.048 trillion.... Assets of institutional money market funds decreased by $4.91 billion to $2.150 trillion." Institutional money funds currently account for over two-thirds of all money funds assets, or 67.2%.
In other news, as we noted yesterday, Wednesday's "Money Market Funds Reform -- Issues and Implications" Webinar also featured several helpful "Resource Links." Below, we revisit two of these -- Selected Money Market Instruments and Taxable Money Market Funds' Holdings of Commercial Paper. These new tables, produced by the ICI, show money funds' holdings as a percentage of the total commercial paper rising to 45% from 39% during 2009. (The CP market, however, shrunk by $462 billion to $1.137 trillion.)
The ICI's "Selected Money Market Instruments" table shows that taxable money market mutual funds held $2.682 trillion of the $11.267 trillion in taxable money market instruments. This 24% percentage of the total is down from 26% at the end of 2008. (See the previous year's table in the ICI's Report of the Money Market Working Group.) Money funds' holdings as a percentage of these money market segmenst range from a high of 48% for the agency securities market to a low of 5% for the $2.0 trillion Eurodollar deposits market.
Money funds' percentage ownership of certificates of deposits took the biggest jump, from 16 to 25% (they now own $538 billion of this $2.134 trillion sector). They also increased their representation among agency securities, rising from 44% to 48% of this $1.179 trillion segment of the money market. Money funds' percentage of the Treasury securities market plunged from 24% to 15% as investors shifted away from Treasury money funds and into "Prime" funds. The percentage of Repurchase agreements owned by funds inched up to 25% of this market. Note that tax-exempt instruments were not included in the latest edition of the ICI's table.
