Money Fund Intelligence and Crane Data celebrate their fifth birthday this month. As we wrote in our most recent issue, little did we know when we launched in May 2006 that the next five years would be the most tumultuous in the 40-year history of money market mutual funds. During our first two years, we saw assets increase by over $1.5 trillion and yields drop from almost 5 percent to under 1.0 percent. The past three years, we've seen assets decrease by over $1 trillion and we've suffered through the lowest yields in history. Money funds have survived, though, and Crane Data has prospered, thanks to you. We appreciate your continued support!
Our company has grown into a 10-person firm with hundreds of customers and thousands of readers and web visitors. Crane now offer conferences, database products and international coverage, and, with the addition last year of our Money Fund Portfolio Holdings collections, we now track tens of thousands of money market securities. Our website, www.cranedata.com is easily the most comprehensive money fund resource available. (CraneData.com has been averaging over 2,200 visitors a day in May 2011 so far, up almost 100 percent from a year ago.)
As we say in the MFI masthead, "Crane Data LLC measures money ... and provides competitive intelligence on money market mutual funds & cash investments. The publisher of Money Fund Intelligence and producer of Money Fund Symposium was founded in 2006 by money fund expert Peter Crane and by computer guru Shaun Cutts. Our mission is to provide faster, cheaper & cleaner money market & fund information.
Subscriptions to Money Fund Intelligence are $500 a year and include web access to archived issues and fund "profiles." Additional users are $250; "site licenses" for unlimited redistribution are $5,000. Visit www.cranedata.com or call 1-508-439-4419 to subscribe or add users. Crane Data's other products include: Money Fund Intelligence XLS ($1K/yr), MFI Daily ($2K/yr), Money Fund Wisdom ($5K/yr; includes Money Fund Portfolio Holdings and other products), MFI International ($2K/yr), and Brokerage Sweep Intelligence ($2K/yr). We are liberal with our samples and support, so don't be afraid to call or write.
In sum, Crane Data aims to deliver low-cost and high quality money fund information. Please let us know if we can improve MFI (or www.cranedata.com) or assist in any way. We're happy to discuss where to find information if we don't have it, or to tell you that it doesn't exist. We continue to pursue our goal of faster, cheaper and cleaner money fund information, and we thank you again for your backing! Sincerely, Peter G. Crane
