ICI's latest "Trends in Mutual Fund Investing, March 2013" shows that money fund assets dropped by $57.6 billion, or 2.2%, in March, after dropping $31.7 billion, or 1.2%, in February and $9.1 billion in January. YTD through 3/31, ICI shows money fund assets down by $97.7 billion, or 3.6%. ICI also released its latest "Month-End Portfolio Holdings of Taxable Money Funds," which showed a huge decline in holdings of Repurchase Agreements and a smaller but noticeable drop in Commercial Paper during March. (See Crane Data's April 12 News, "March 31 Portfolio Holdings Update: CDs Now No. 1 Holding, Repo Dives.") Month-to-date through Friday (4/26), our MFI Daily shows assets down $7.6 billion, or 0.3%, though they appear to have tax-related outflows behind them and have risen by $7.8 billion over the past seven days.
ICI's March "Trends" says, "The combined assets of the nation’s mutual funds increased by $190.9 billion, or 1.4 percent, to $13.676 trillion in March, according to the Investment Company Institute's official survey of the mutual fund industry. In the survey, mutual fund companies report actual assets, sales, and redemptions to ICI.... Bond funds had an inflow of $16.10 billion in March, compared with an inflow of $20.25 billion in February.... Money market funds had an outflow of $58.25 billion in March, compared with an outflow of $31.62 billion in February. Funds offered primarily to institutions had an outflow of $53.17 billion. Funds offered primarily to individuals had an outflow of $5.09 billion."
ICI's Portfolio Holdings for March 2013 show that Repos fell by $75.2 billion, or 13.6%, to $479.3 billion (20.6% of assets) after falling by $15.5 billion in Feb.; they are now in a three-way tie with CDs and Treasuries for the largest segment of taxable money fund portfolio holdings. Holdings of Certificates of Deposits remained the second largest position by a hair; they increased by $10.8 billion to $479.3 billion (20.6%). Treasury Bills & Securities, the third largest segment by another hair, increased by $22.7 billion to $479.1 billion (20.6%).
Commercial Paper remained the fourth largest segment behind U.S. Government Agency Securities; CP holdings fell by $24.8 billion to $357.7 billion (15.4% of assets) and Agencies rose by $9.6 billion to $331.6 billion (14.3% of taxable assets). Notes (including Corporate and Bank) fell fractionally (down $1.3 billion) to $104.9 billion (4.5% of assets), and Other holdings rose by $8.7 billion to $80.3 billion (3.5%), likely on the strength of increased municipal holdings in taxable funds.
The Number of Accounts Outstanding in ICI's Holdings series for taxable money funds decreased by 300,981 to 24.555 million, while the Number of Funds fell by 4 to 397. The Average Maturity of Portfolios remained flat at 49 days in March. Over the past year, WAMs of Taxable money funds have lengthened by 3 days.
Finally, note that the archived version of our Money Fund Intelligence XLS monthly spreadsheet -- see our Content Page to download -- has Portfolio Composition and Maturity Distribution totals and final data corrections updated as of March 31, 2013 earlier today. We revise these following the monthly publication of our final Money Fund Portfolio Holdings data.
