ICI: Money Fund Assets Fall Hard
The Investment Company Institute's latest "Money Market Fund Assets" report shows assets falling sharply after a huge jump last week. Year-to-date, MMFs are down by $130 billion, or -2.8%, with Institutional MMFs down $145 billion, or -4.5% and Retail MMFs up $16 billion, or 1.1%. Over the past 52 weeks, money fund assets have increased by $183 billion, or 4.2%, with Retail MMFs falling by $27 billion (-1.8%) and Inst MMFs rising by $211 billion (7.3%). ICI's weekly release says, "Total money market fund assets decreased by $30.48 billion to $4.58 trillion for the week ended Wednesday, March 9, the Investment Company Institute reported.... Among taxable money market funds, government funds decreased by $26.45 billion and prime funds decreased by $4.00 billion. Tax-exempt money market funds decreased by $35 million." ICI's stats show Institutional MMFs decreasing $31.9 billion and Retail MMFs increasing $1.4 billion in the latest week. Total Government MMF assets, including Treasury funds, were $4.065 trillion (88.8% of all money funds), while Total Prime MMFs were $429.1 billion (9.3%). Tax Exempt MMFs totaled $85.2 billion (1.9%). ICI explains, "Assets of retail money market funds increased by $1.44 billion to $1.48 trillion. Among retail funds, government money market fund assets increased by $2.19 billion to $1.21 trillion, prime money market fund assets decreased by $638 million to $198.09 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets decreased by $116 million to $75.63 billion." Retail assets account for just under a third of total assets, or 32.4%, and Government Retail assets make up 81.6% of all Retail MMFs. They add, "Assets of institutional money market funds decreased by $31.92 billion to $3.09 trillion. Among institutional funds, government money market fund assets decreased by $28.64 billion to $2.85 trillion, prime money market fund assets decreased by $3.36 billion to $227.01 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets increased by $81 million to $9.59 billion." Institutional assets accounted for 67.6% of all MMF assets, with Government Institutional assets making up 92.3% of all Institutional MMF totals. (Note that ICI's asset totals don't include a number of funds tracked by the SEC and Crane Data, so they're almost $400 billion lower than Crane's asset series.)
