Press Releases Archives: April, 2009

The registration page is now live for the inaugural Crane's Money Fund Symposium, which will be held August 23-25, 2009, at the Renaissance Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island. Crane Data's new annual conference will bring money fund managers, issuers, investors and servicers together to exchange ideas, to network, and to learn about the latest investment strategies, business tactics, and news impacting the money market fund marketplace. Speakers to date include: Crane Data's Peter Crane, Federated Investors' Eugene Maloney and Debbie Cunningham, Wells Fargo Advantage Funds's Dave Sylvester, Standard & Poor's Peter Rizzo, ICI's Paul Schott Stevens, Treasury Strategies' Tony Carfang, SSgA's Steve Meier, Western Asset's Kevin Kennedy, Dreyfus' Colleen Meehan, SVB Asset Management's Joe Morgan, Banc of America Securities' Chris Walsh, JPMorgan's Alex Roever, Capital Advisors Lance Pan, IMMFA's Travis Barker, Fitch Ratings' Viktoria Baklanova, Moody's Henry Shilling, Reed Smith's Steven Keen, Pricewaterhousecoopers' Tony Evangelista, and more. Free post-conference online money fund trading portal demos and Money Fund Wisdom software training workshops are also offered. Click here for the agenda or e-mail Pete for the full PDF brochure. Registration is just $500 and includes all meals, refreshments, and a Rhode Island "clambake style" dinner. The special room rate at the Renaissance Providence is $169 a night for attendees that sign up before July 29. Money Fund Symposium sponsorships are almost sold out, so be sure to register quickly to reserve your spot. We hope to see you in Providence!

Investment News writes "SEC mulls $10 a share NAV for money market funds", which says, "Several problems with money market funds could be addressed by the adoption of a $10 or floating NAV, Andrew "Buddy" Donohue, director of the SEC's Division of Investment Management, said in a speech delivered this month." IN quotes, "`I think it would do more harm than good," said Pete Crane, president of Crane Data LLC, a Westborough, Mass., research firm focused on the $3.8 trillion money market fund industry. "What would investors do when the NAV drops to $9.99? Investors don't like it when the NAV goes down. I don't see what starting the run on the funds earlier actually solves.... It would present a Y2K-type challenge. It's hard to say what it might do to money market fund industry. By tinkering with the formula, you might end up with a disaster," Mr. Crane said. The piece also says, "The move to a floating NAV would be detrimental to the industry, said Domenick Pugliese, partner in the New York-based Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker LLP. Investors use money market funds as alternatives to bank accounts, and keeping the NAV stable is important to them, he said."

Crane Data's new Money Fund Wisdom software is mentioned in an article on TheMutualFundWire.com entitled, "A Money Fund Watcher Shares His Wisdom". The piece says, "Peter Crane is about to expand his operation with a new money market database service. The Crane Data president and founder confirmed that he will launch Money Fund Wisdom next month, targeted at money market fund managers and large shareholders of those funds." MFWire quotes Crane, "People have been looking for an alternative means to set up custom universes of [money market] funds for queries. Money Fund Wisdom allows users to build custom peer groups." Finally, the article adds, "Wisdom, which is still in beta, currently uses monthly data, but Crane aims to move to daily money fund data soon."

The article "US extends money market guarantee" from Bloomberg appeared in The Boston Globe last week. The April 1 article says, "The Treasury said yesterday that it would extend its emergency program guaranteeing money market funds through Sept. 18 from the previous deadline of this month. All funds that currently participate in the program are eligible to continue, the department said. The program, scheduled to end April 30, will be continued 'to support ongoing stability in financial markets,' it said." Bloomberg quotes Peter Crane, president of Crane Data LLC, a money-fund tracking firm in Westborough, "There's really no reason not to extend it. The fund industry clearly would like to wean itself off the program, but people are going to wait and see how fragile money markets remain until September."

Crane Data LLC, the publisher of the monthly Money Fund Intelligence newsletter, announces the launch of a "beta" version of its newest and most comprehensive product for monitoring money market mutual funds, Money Fund Wisdom. The new Money Fund Wisdom, available to subscribers and trial users via the http://www.cranedata.com website, allows users to select custom money fund peer groups, to choose among dozens of data points to display, and to run current and historical queries.

For example, money fund managers, marketers and investors are able to select a category, such as Treasury Institutional funds, with assets over $1 billion and expense ratios under 0.20%, and display these funds' 7-day yields over the past 24 months, along with rankings, assets, and ratings. Users may save queries, choose from a library of "canned queries," and select from any of the extensive data fields contained in Crane's Money Fund Intelligence XLS.

The initial test version of Wisdom contains over two years worth of monthly performance and offers 7-day and 30-day yields, 1-month, 3-month, YTD, 1-year, 3-year, 5-year, 10-year and since inception returns, assets, expense ratios, average maturities, ratings, rankings, and much more. Subscribers also gain access to the current and archived issues of the monthly Money Fund Intelligence newsletter and the Money Fund Intelligence XLS spreadsheet, as well as to additional website features like fund "profile" pages.

Since launching Crane Data almost three years ago, the money fund tracking company has introduced its flagship Money Fund Intelligence newsletter, its MFI XLS complement, Money Fund Intelligence Daily, Brokerage Sweep Intelligence, and the new Money Fund Intelligence International. The company also of course provides extensive free and premium resources via its website at www.cranedata.com and will soon announce its first conference event, Crane's Money Fund Symposium.

E-mail Pete Crane or call us at 1-508-439-4419 if you're interested in participating in or learning more about our Money Fund Wisdom free "beta" test. We will be adding daily money fund information and "offshore" money fund information in separate modules in coming months, and we look forward to hearing your feedback.

Investment News writes "SEC, ICI: Rules on money funds contain flaws", which discusses a panel talk at ICI's Mutual Funds and Investment Management Conference last week in Palm Desert, Calif. It says, "The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Investment Company Institute agree that changes need to be made to the agency's rules governing money market funds, but they don't necessarily agree on what those changes should be." It sites the SEC's Bob Plaze and says, "One way to address the risk that money funds pose to the entire market is to separate investors in retail money funds from those in institutional money funds." It cites Peter Crane and says, "There is no way to separate retail and institutional investors practically." IN adds, "Despite such differences, he [Plaze] said that he could see the SEC adopting many of the working group's recommendations."