Last week we wrote about the release of ICI's "2015 Investment Company Fact Book" (see our May 5 Crane Data "News," "ICI's 2015 Investment Company Fact Book: MMF Assets, Corps Hold Fast). But today we examine the "Fact Book's" numerous "Data Tables" on "Money Market Mutual Funds (which start on page 207) 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 (one of the only glimpses of fund investors types available anywhere). We also examine some of the data tables related to Bond Fund assets, flows, portfolio holdings, and fees. (Watch for more on these too in our May Bond Fund Intelligence, which is due to ship Friday.)
ICI's "Table 36" (page 208), "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 0.25% to $2.725 trillion in 2014. At year-end 2014, $1.820 trillion was in taxable institutional money market funds (66.8%), up 2.1% from 2013. Also, $905.1 billion was in taxable retail money market funds (33.2%), down 3.2% from the previous year. Breaking the numbers down by fund type, $1.453 trillion (53.3%) was in prime funds (down 2.1%), $1.010 trillion (37.1%) was in government money market funds (up 5.0%), and $260. 8 billion (9.5%) in tax-exempt accounts (up 3.8%).
Table 37, "Net New Cash Flow of Money Market Funds by Type of Fund," shows that there was $6.3 billion in net new cash flow into money market funds last year, buoyed by $48.2 billion in Government MMF inflows. Prime funds, on the other hand, had an outflow of $31.8 billion in 2014, while Tax Exempt funds had an outflow of $10.1B. Further, Retail MMFs had an outflow of $30.5B, while Institutional funds had an inflow of $36.8 billion. Paid dividends totaled a mere $7.6 billion last year, down from $8.0 billion in 2013. (This is down drastically from the peak of almost $128 billion in annual dividends in 2007.) Also, there was $5.0 billion in reinvested dividends, down from $5.2 billion in 2012. (See Table 39 on page 211.)
ICI's Table 40, "Asset Composition of Taxable Government Money Market Funds as a Percentage of Total Net Assets" show that of the $1.010 trillion in taxable government money market funds, 31.3% were in U.S. Government Agency issues, 34.7% were in Repurchase Agreements, 21.2% were in U.S. Treasury Bills, and 13.5% were in Other Treasury Securities. Another -1.2% was in "Other" assets, 0.5% was in Commercial Paper (we assume this was government-backed CP or a reporting mistake) and 0.1% was in Corporate Notes.
Table 41, "Asset Composition of Taxable Prime Money Market Funds," shows that of the $1.453 billion in taxable prime money market funds, 35.7% was in Certificates of Deposit, 23.0% was in Commercial Paper, 20.9% was in Repurchase Agreements, 5.1% was in U.S. Government Agency issues, 2.6% was in Other Treasury Securities, 3.9% was in Corporate Notes, 1.6% percent in Bank Notes, 2.1% in U.S. Treasury Bills, 1.7% in Eurodollar CDs, and 3.5% 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 35 on page 207.) In 2014, according to the Fact Book, there were a total of 528 funds, down from 555 in 2013. The number has dropped every year since it peaked in 1999 at 1,045 MMFs. The number of share classes stood at 1,507 last year, down from 1,571 in 2013 and from the peak of 2,053 in 2004.
Finally, Table 64 on page 236, "Total Net Assets of Institutional Investors in Taxable Money Market Funds by Type of Institution and Type of Fund," shows that there was $1.013 trillion of total net assets with $69.2 billion in individual accounts and $943.8 billion in Institutional accounts. Of the $943.9 billion in Institutional accounts, $499.1 billion were from business corporations (52.9%), $329.1 billion from financial institutions (34.9%), $64.9 billion from nonprofit organizations (6.9%), and $50.8 billion were from Other (5.4%).
Looking at the Data Tables related to Bond Funds, Table 3 on page 175, "Total Net Assets of the Mutual Fund Industry," shows that total assets in bond funds at the end of 2014 was $3.460 trillion, up 5.2% for the year. Bond funds represented 21.2% of all mutual fund assets. Of that total, $2.894 trillion was in taxable bond funds while $566 billion was in Municipal Bond Funds. The total number of bond funds, Table 5, was 2,088 in 2014 with 1,531 taxable funds and 557 muni funds, up from 2,017 in 2013. The number of share classes, Table 7, was 6,740, up from 6,469 in 2013. Of the 6,740, 4,997 were in taxable bond funds while 1,743 were in muni bond funds. Table 17 on page 189, "Net New Cash Flow of Long-Term Mutual Funds," shows that bond funds had inflows of $43.5 billion, up from $71.2 billion in outflows in 2013.
Further, Table 28 on page 200 looks at "Portfolio Holdings of Long-term Mutual Funds as a Percentage of Total Net Assets by Type of Fund." Bond funds had 43.8% in Corporate Bonds, 31.3% in Long-term Government Bonds, 16.1% in Municipal Bonds, 8.4% in Liquid Assets, 1.2% in Common and Preferred Stocks, and -0.7% in Other. Finally, from page 92, "Trends in Mutual Fund Fees and Expenses," the Fact Book says the average bond fund expense ratio was 57 basis points in 2014, down from 61 basis points in 2013 and down from 76 basis points in 2000, a decline of 25 percent.
