ICI's latest "Money Market Fund Assets" report shows the fourth consecutive weekly decline in assets. It says, "Total money market fund assets decreased by $6.88 billion to $2.59 trillion for the week ended Wednesday, April 22, the Investment Company Institute reported today. Among taxable money market funds, Treasury funds (including agency and repo) decreased by $3.33 billion and prime funds increased by $1.04 billion. Tax-exempt money market funds decreased by $4.58 billion. Assets of retail money market funds decreased by $10.53 billion to $865.30 billion. Among retail funds, Treasury money market fund assets decreased by $1.24 billion to $191.32 billion, prime money market fund assets decreased by $5.32 billion to $491.84 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets decreased by $3.96 billion to $182.13 billion. Assets of institutional money market funds increased by $3.65 billion to $1.72 trillion. Among institutional funds, Treasury money market fund assets decreased by $2.09 billion to $750.50 billion, prime money market fund assets increased by $6.36 billion to $905.54 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets decreased by $620 million to $66.49 billion." Assets normally decline for weeks surrounding the April 15 tax deadline. Year-to-date, money fund assets have declined by $145 billion, or 5.3%. In other news, a press release entitled, "Fitch: EU's Proposed LVNAV MMFs Could Face Concentration Risks" says, "A new money market fund structure, proposed as a compromise between constant and variable net asset value funds, may face challenges in maintaining high diversification due to the growing scarcity of high-quality short-term investments, Fitch Ratings says. This could make it harder for these funds to achieve and maintain 'AAAmmf' ratings than for other MMF structures. The new class of MMFs, low-volatility net asset value (LVNAV), has been proposed by the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and will be put to the full parliament at end-April. It allows an MMF to issue and redeem units at a constant net asset value (CNAV) as long as this is within 20bp of its actual NAV, based on the amortised cost accounting approach for assets maturing within 90 days. All other assets must be valued using market or model prices."
