Crane Data, publisher of Money Fund Intelligence, celebrates its 9th birthday this month. As we wrote in our most recent issue of MFI, we'd like to take a moment to review our progress and update you on our efforts, which include growing our conference business and extending our coverage beyond money market funds. Crane Data was launched in May 2006 by money fund expert Peter Crane and technology guru Shaun Cutts to bring faster, cheaper and cleaner information to the money fund space. We began with our MFI newsletter and have grown to offer a full range of daily and monthly spreadsheets, news, database query systems and reports on U.S. and "offshore" money funds and other cash investments. (Note: We also wanted to remind you to make hotel reservations -- we expect the hotel to be sold out soon -- and to register for our upcoming Money Fund Symposium, June 24-26 in Minneapolis, and to start making plans for our European Money Fund Symposium, Sept. 17-18 in Dublin.)
As we first mentioned in our May MFI, our big new product addition over the past year is Bond Fund Intelligence, a monthly newsletter that tracks the bond fund universe, with a focus on the ultra-short and short-term bond fund sector. BFI includes news, features, and performance data on over 300 (and growing) of the largest bond funds and ETFs. We also publish a fund "profile" interview each month with a bond fund portfolio manager. As with MFI, Crane Data offers an Excel "complement" with even more performance, data and rankings, Bond Fund Intelligence XLS. BFI includes our new Crane Bond Fund Intelligence Indexes, which now provide benchmarks for various bond market segments, including a new Conservative Ultra-Short BFI Index, a more focused benchmark for the more conservative funds in the space just beyond money market funds.
The BFI newsletter was launched due to the changing nature of the money fund and cash space. With the SEC's money fund reforms making some aspects of the cash marketplace more restrictive, we saw an opportunity to cover the growing space just beyond money funds, the ultra short and short-term bond fund segment. We listened to feedback from clients and money managers who say that area will be more attractive in an era of money fund reforms and rising interest rates. (Watch for our May issue of BFI later this week, and let us know if you'd like to see the latest edition of BFI and BFI XLS.)
Crane Data President & Publisher Peter Crane comments, "While our first love and loyalty is of course to the money fund segment, our clients -- which now include several hundred asset managers, issuers, dealers, servicers, regulators and investors -- wanted to hedge their bets too and to gather more intelligence on this growing market segment. We look forward to working with readers, bond fund providers and others in building out this new product line. We plan to eventually track Bond Fund Portfolio Holdings and launch a Bond Fund Symposium conference in this sector, though these both will take time."
Crane Data has also continued to see great success in the money fund conference business. Our 7th Annual Money Fund Symposium will take place in Minneapolis, June 24-26, and we again expect to host the largest gathering of cash investors in the world. We're also preparing for our 3rd annual European Money Fund Symposium, which be in Dublin Sept. 17-18, 2015 (the preliminary agenda is now available and registrations are now being taken for this event), and our next Money Fund University, which will be Jan. 21-22, 2016, in Boston.
The past 9 years have brought dramatic change to the money fund industry and no doubt more is yet to come. But money funds continue to hold fast, and we think higher rates will soon bring higher assets. In our MFI update, we show the annual asset totals of money funds against our flagship Crane 100 Money Fund Index (the average of the 100 largest taxable funds). During our first two years, we saw assets increase by over $1.5 trillion and yields drop from almost 5% to under 1%. During the next three years, money fund assets declined by over $1.0 trillion, while yields settled just above zero. The past 4+ years, we've seen both assets and yields virtually flat, stuck around $2.6 trillion and 0.03%, respectively.
As for Crane Data, we continue to grow. We now have 14 employees and topped $1.1 million in annual revenue in 2014. We added a new Editor, Dave Kovaleski, who is now writing much of the commentary, and we continue to rely on our core of veteran employees -- Kaio Barbosa, who oversees our Money Fund Portfolio Holdings collection, and Statistics Editors Diana Bucaro, Natalia Mendonca, and Thereza Alves. We hope to continue to deliver good information at reasonable prices, and we thank you for your continued support! Please let us know if you have any feedback or requests. We're always happy to discuss. Sincerely, Pete Crane
