As we mentioned last week, the Investment Company Institute recently published its "2018 Investment Company Fact Book," an annual compilation of statistics and commentary on the mutual fund industry. (See our May 11 News, "ICI 2018 Fact Book Reviews MMF Demand, Reforms, Composition in '17.") We reviewed the update on worldwide and U.S. domestic money funds in our last piece, but today we focus on the numerous "Data Tables" involving "Money Market Mutual Funds, which start on page 242. 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 annual statistics 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 242.) In 2017, according to the Fact Book, there were a total of 382 money funds, down from 421 in 2016, 805 in 2007, and down from 1,015 in 2001. The number of share classes stood at 1,180 in 2017, down from 1,275 in 2016 and 2,015 in 2007.
Table 36 on page 243, "Money Market Funds: Total Net Assets by Type of Fund," shows us that total net assets in taxable U.S. money market funds increased $119.2 billion to $2.847 trillion in 2017. At year-end 2017, $1.840 trillion (64.6%) was in institutional money market funds, while $1.007 trillion (35.4%) was in retail money market funds. Breaking the numbers down by fund type, $455.4 billion (16.0%) was in prime funds, $2.261 trillion (79.4%) was in government money market funds, and $131.1 billion (4.6%) was in tax-exempt accounts.
Also, Table 37 on page 244, "Money Market Funds: Net New Cash Flow by Type of Fund," show that there was $106.9 billion in net new cash flow into money market funds last year. A closer look at the data shows $101.5 billion in net new cash flow into institutional funds and a $5.4 billion cash inflow into retail funds. There were also $30.1 billion in net inflows into Government funds, versus $76.3 billion in net outflows from Prime funds.
Table 39 (page 246), "Money Market Funds: Paid and Reinvested Dividends by Type of Fund," shows dividends paid by money funds reached their highest level since 2009 with $18.5 billion, $10.7 billion of which was reinvested (57.8%). Dividends have been as high as $127.9 billion in 2007 (when rates were over 5%), and as low as $5.2 billion in 2011 (when rates were 0.05%). Reinvestment rates were 64.4% in 2007 and 62.3% in 2011, so they've remained relatively stable over the past decade.
ICI's Tables 40 and 41 on pages 247 and 248, "Taxable Government Money Market Funds: Asset Composition as a Percentage of Total Net Assets" and "Taxable Prime Money Market Funds: Asset Composition," show that of the $2.261 trillion in taxable government money market funds, 30.0% were in U.S. government agency issues, 39.0% were in Repurchase agreements, 19.4% were in U.S. Treasury bills, 10.5% were in Other Treasury securities, and 1.0% was in "Other" assets. The average maturity was 33 days, down 13 days from the end of 2016.
The second table shows that of the $455.4 billion in Prime funds at year-end 2017, 39.2% was in Certificates of deposit, 32.5% was in Commercial paper, 16.5% was in Repurchase agreements, 0.7% was in US government agency issues, 0.6% was in Other Treasury securities, 0.8% was in Corporate notes, 0.8% percent was in Bank notes, 5.2% was in US Treasury bills, 0.8% was in Eurodollar CDs, and 2.9% was in Other assets (which includes Banker's acceptances, municipal securities and cash reserves).
Table 60 on page 267, "Total Net Assets of Mutual Funds Held in Individual and Institutional Accounts," shows that there was $1.09 trillion of assets with institutional investors and $1.76 in assets in Individual accounts in 2017.
Finally, Table 62, "Total Net Assets of Institutional Investors in Taxable Money Market Funds by Type of Institution and Type of Fund," shows of the total of $1.088 trillion in Total Institutional assets ($1.024 trillion in Institutional funds and another $63.8 billion in Retail funds), $475.2 billion were held by business corporations (43.7%), $430.1 billion were held by financial institutions (39.5%), $84.8 billion were held by nonprofit organizations (8.0%), and $97.8 billion were held by Other (9.0%). All MMFs rose in 2017 by $5.6 billion in total.
In other news, Crane Data published its latest Weekly Money Fund Portfolio Holdings statistics and summary Tuesday. Our weekly holdings track a shifting subset of our monthly Portfolio Holdings collection, and the latest cut (with data as of May 11) includes Holdings information from 76 money funds (the same as on 4/20), representing $1.411 trillion (down from $1.414 trillion on April 20) of the $2.908 (48.5%) in total money fund assets tracked by Crane Data. (For our monthly Holdings recap, see our May 10 News, "May Money Fund Portfolio Holdings: Treasury Surge Ends; Repo Rebound Down.")
Our latest Weekly MFPH Composition summary shows Government assets dominating the holdings list with Repurchase Agreements (Repo) totaling $510.4 billion (up from $505.4 billion 3 weeks ago), or 36.2%, Treasury debt totaling $437.4 billion (down from $460.9 billion) or 31.0%, and Government Agency securities totaling $302.8 billion (up from $293.0 billion), or 21.5%. Commercial Paper (CP) totaled $53.0 billion (up from $51.6 billion), or 3.8%, and Certificates of Deposit (CDs) totaled $43.5 billion (up from $40.5 billion), or 3.1%. A total of $31.1 billion or 2.2%, was listed in the Other category (primarily Time Deposits), and VRDNs accounted for $33.0 billion, or 2.3%.
The Ten Largest Issuers in our Weekly Holdings product include: the US Treasury with $437.3 billion (31.0% of total holdings), Federal Home Loan Bank with $244.5B (17.3%), BNP Paribas with $81.2 billion (5.8%), Federal Farm Credit Bank with $40.7B (2.9%), RBC with $36.4B (2.6%), Wells Fargo with $32.4B (2.3%), Credit Agricole with $32.3B (2.3%), HSBC with $29.2B (2.1%), Societe Generale with $27.6B (2.0%), and Natixis with $25.8B (1.8%).
The Ten Largest Funds tracked in our latest Weekly include: JP Morgan US Govt ($139.0B), Fidelity Inv MM: Govt Port ($105.6B), BlackRock Lq FedFund ($96.0B), Goldman Sachs FS Govt ($89.9B), BlackRock Lq T-Fund ($76.5B), Wells Fargo Govt MMkt ($70.6B), Dreyfus Govt Cash Mgmt ($63.0B), Morgan Stanley Inst Liq Govt ($57.1B), State Street Inst US Govt ($51.1B), and Goldman Sachs FS Trs Instruments ($50.8B). (Let us know if you'd like to see our latest domestic U.S. and/or "offshore" Weekly Portfolio Holdings collection and summary, or our Bond Fund Portfolio Holdings data series.)
