MMF Assets Plummet for 2nd Week
ICI's latest "Money Market Fund Assets" report shows assets plummeting for the second week in a row and for the fourth week out of the past six. Year-to-date, MMFs are down by $175 billion, or -3.7%, with Institutional MMFs down $135 billion, or -4.2% and Retail MMFs down $40 billion, or -2.7%. Over the past 52 weeks, money fund assets have increased by $75 billion, or 1.7%, with Retail MMFs falling by $49 billion (-3.3%) and Inst MMFs rising by $125 billion (4.2%). ICI's weekly release says, "Total money market fund assets decreased by $29.87 billion to $4.53 trillion for the week ended Wednesday, April 13, the Investment Company Institute reported today. Among taxable money market funds, government funds decreased by $25.16 billion and prime funds decreased by $6.49 billion. Tax-exempt money market funds increased by $1.79 billion." ICI's stats show Institutional MMFs falling $25.2 billion and Retail MMFs decreasing $4.7 billion in the latest week. Total Government MMF assets, including Treasury funds, were $4.022 trillion (88.8% of all money funds), while Total Prime MMFs were $416.4 billion (9.2%). Tax Exempt MMFs totaled $91.8 billion (2.0%). ICI explains, "Assets of retail money market funds decreased by $4.71 billion to $1.43 trillion. Among retail funds, government money market fund assets decreased by $5.66 billion to $1.15 trillion, prime money market fund assets decreased by $1.36 billion to $194.72 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets increased by $2.32 billion to $82.77 billion." Retail assets account for just under a third of total assets, or 31.5%, and Government Retail assets make up 80.6% of all Retail MMFs. They add, "Assets of institutional money market funds decreased by $25.16 billion to $3.10 trillion. Among institutional funds, government money market fund assets decreased by $19.50 billion to $2.87 trillion, prime money market fund assets decreased by $5.13 billion to $221.62 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets decreased by $528 million to $8.99 billion." Institutional assets accounted for 68.5% of all MMF assets, with Government Institutional assets making up 92.6% 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 approximately $400 billion lower than Crane's asset series.)
