ICI Trends: Assets Up in May
The Investment Company Institute released its latest monthly "Trends in Mutual Fund Investing," which confirms that May was the first positive month in 2015 for money market funds. Money market funds rose to $2.603 trillion in May from $2.565 trillion at the end of April, a jump of $38 billion of 1.5%. MMF assets dropped by $80.0 billion in April, $32.9 billion in March, $13.9 billion in February, and $33.4 billion in January. The report says, "The combined assets of the nation's mutual funds increased by $120.95 billion, or 0.7 percent, to $16.30 trillion in May, according to the Investment Company Institute's official survey of the mutual fund industry. Bond funds had an inflow of $5.47 billion in May, compared with an inflow of $6.77 billion in April.... Money market funds had an inflow of $36.17 billion in May, compared with an outflow of $81.50 billion in April. In May funds offered primarily to institutions had an inflow of $34.10 billion and funds offered primarily to individuals had an inflow of $2.06 billion." The total number of money market funds stood at 521 (360 Taxable, 161 Tax-Exempt), down 2 from the previous month. MMFs represent 16.0% of all mutual fund assets, while bond funds represent 21.7%, according to ICI's statistics. In other news, Bloomberg writes, "Who Will Save the Repo Market? Barclays Has a Few Ideas." It says, "It's no secret that the vast and shadowy "repo market," where a wide variety of banks and investors pawn their assets in exchange for short-term loans, has had a tough time of it in recent years. It was ground zero for the financial crisis, and the size of the repo market has since fallen off a cliff, because of new rules that make the transactions more expensive for banks as well as the deep scars left by the 2008 crisis."
