We wrote almost 2 weeks ago about the release of ICI's "2014 Investment Company Fact Book" (see our May 16 Crane Data News). But today we examine the "Fact Book's" numerous "Data Tables" on "Money Market Mutual Funds (which start on page 196) in more detail. ICI lists annual statistics on shareholder accounts, the number of funds, net assets, net new cash flows, paid and reinvested dividends, composition of prime and government funds, and net assets of institutional investors by type of institution. ICI's "Table 39" (page 198), "Total Net Assets of Money Market Funds by Type of Funds" shows us that total net assets in taxable U.S. money market funds increased about 1 percent to $2.718 trillion in 2013. At yearend 2013, $1.782 trillion was in taxable institutional money market funds (65.6%), while $936 billion was in taxable retail money market funds (34.4%). Breaking the numbers down by fund type, $1.485 billion were in prime funds (54.6%), $962 billion in government money market funds (35.4%), and $270 billion in tax-exempt accounts (9.9%).
ICI's Tables 43 and 44, "Asset Composition of Taxable Government Money Market Funds as a Percentage of Total Net Assets" and "Asset Composition of Taxable Prime Money Market Funds," show that of the $962 billion in taxable government money market funds, 29.4% were in U.S. government agency issues, 27.9% were in Repurchase agreements, 27.1% were in U.S. Treasury bills, and 14.3% were in Other Treasury securities. Another 0.8% was in "Other" assets, 0.3% was in Commercial paper and 0.1% was in corporate notes.
ICI's Fact Book shows that of the $1.485 billion in taxable prime money market funds, 33.3% was in Certificates of deposit, 23.9% was in commercial paper, 15.7% was in Repurchase agreements, 5.7% was in U.S. government agency issues, 4.3% was in Other Treasury securities, 4.2% was in Corporate notes, 2.7% percent in Bank notes, 2.2% in U.S. Treasury bills, 2.3% in Eurodollar CDs, and 5.7% in Other assets (which includes Banker's acceptances, municipal securities and cash reserves).
ICI's annual statistics also show that there's been a steady decline in the number of money market mutual funds over the last 15 years. (See Table 38 on page 197.) In 2013, according to the Fact Book, there were a total of 555 funds, down from 580 in 2012. The number of share classes stood at 1,571 in 2013, down from 1,623 in 2012. Further, there were 26.6 million taxable shareholder accounts in 2013, down 4.7 percent from 27.8 million in 2012. Most (19.1 million) were prime accounts, followed by government (4.9 million) and tax-exempt (2.4 million).
There was $15.2 billion in net new cash flow into money market funds last year, a significant change from 2012 when money market funds experienced a $336 million net outflow. A closer look at the data shows $27.4 billion in net new cash flow into institutional funds and a $12.2 billion cash outflow from retail funds. Paid dividends totaled a mere $8 billion last year, up from $6.6 billion in 2012. (But this is down drastically from the peak of almost $128 billion in annual dividends in 2007.) Also, there was $5.2 billion in reinvested dividends, up from $4.2 billion in 2012. (See Table 42 on page 201.)
Finally, Table 59 on page 218 shows that there was $900.5 billion of total net assets of institutional investors in taxable money market funds in 2013. (Note that $833.2 billion of this total was in Institutional money funds while $67.3 billion was in Retail MMFs.) About $485.8 billion were from business corporations (53.9%), $304.8 billion from financial institutions (33.8%), $46.4 billion from nonprofit organizations (5.1%), and $63.3 billion from Other (7.0%). The total net assets in this category were up 5.6 percent from 2012.
