Money Market News
Late last month, Money Fund Symposium's keynote session, "The Future of Cash," featured State Street Investment Management CEO Yie-Hsin Hung. She says, "It's fantastic to be here with all of you. I want to thank Peter first and foremost for everything that he does for the money fund industry. No one tracks cash better than you. And everyone here relies on your insights, your data, your wisdom in one way or another. So I'm really glad to be here with all of you. And yes, even with my competitors, it's rare to have so many asset managers and industry experts all in one place. But when we do come together, there’s a very good reason. Events like these give us a chance to take a big picture look where we've been, where we are, where we're headed. And I'd like to give my thoughts on that today, especially with respect to the future of cash. We think about this a lot at State Street." (Note: This article is reprinted from the July issue of Money Fund Intelligence, which was published on July 8. Contact us at info@cranedata.com to request the full issue or to subscribe.)
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published its latest monthly "Money Market Fund Statistics" summary, which shows that total money fund assets rose by $4.3 billion in June 2025 to a record high $7.473 trillion, after hitting a record $7.468 trillion the month prior. The SEC shows Prime MMFs increased $9.8 billion in June to $1.280 trillion, Govt & Treasury funds decreased $0.7 billion to $6.051 trillion and Tax Exempt funds decreased $4.7 billion to $142.6 billion. Taxable yields were mixed in June after previous decreases in May, April, March, February and January. The SEC's Division of Investment Management summarizes monthly Form N-MFP data and includes asset totals and averages for yields, liquidity levels, WAMs, WALs, holdings, and other money market fund trends. We review their latest numbers below. (Our MFI XLS monthly shows money fund assets increasing $4.7 billion in June 2025 to a record of $7.419 trillion. In July month-to-date through 7/23, total money fund assets have increased by $42.8 billion to $7.449 trillion, according to Crane Data's separate, and slightly smaller, MFI Daily series.)
A press release titled, "BNY and Goldman Sachs Launch Tokenized Money Market Funds Solution" explains, "The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation ('BNY') (BK), a global financial services company, and the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS) today announced a collaborative initiative by which BNY will employ blockchain technology developed by Goldman Sachs to maintain a record of customers' ownership of select Money Market Funds (MMFs), in a significant step towards enhancing the utility and transferability of existing MMF shares. This combined solution marks the first time in the U.S. that fund managers have enabled subscription for shares of their MMFs via BNY's LiquidityDirect and Digital Asset platforms, the corresponding value of which will be represented through mirrored record tokenization utilizing GS DAP. BlackRock, BNY Investments Dreyfus, Federated Hermes, Fidelity Investments, and Goldman Sachs Asset Management will participate in the initial launch." (See the info sheet on LiquidityDirect here.)
A blog posting from Circle Internet, titled, "Real-Time Collateral with Tokenized Money Market Funds Has Arrived," tells us, "Financial markets have evolved. The infrastructure supporting them -- built for an age of limited banking hours and multi-day settlement -- has struggled to keep pace. This is especially evident in the world of collateral and liquidity management, where demand for 24/7/365 markets runs headfirst into the limitations of legacy financial infrastructure. That's a problem. Delayed settlements, overnight liquidity buffers, credit risk, manual processing, and opaque-risk exposures pose challenges to capital efficiency and resiliency -- especially during periods of volatility. As the issuer of USYC, a tokenized money market fund with onchain settlement, and USDC, the world's largest regulated stablecoin, we see these challenges firsthand. Thankfully, we also see a path forward." (Note: We'll be featuring a session on "Tokenized Money Funds & Tech Issues" at our European Money Fund Symposium, which will be held Sept. 22-23, 2025 in Dublin, Ireland.)
EFAMA, the European Fund and Asset Management Association, recently published its annual "Fact Book," which includes a wealth of statistics on European-domiciled funds and a section on European money market funds. The press release titled, "EFAMA's 2025 Fact Book shows consistently declining fund costs and a steady shift towards larger funds," tells us, "EFAMA ... published its 2025 industry Fact Book. This year's edition includes an in-depth analysis of trends in the European investment fund industry (for 2024 and over the longer term) and an extensive overview of regulatory developments across 29 European countries. It also contains a series of info-boxes addressing some important regulatory topics EFAMA is actively working on, including retail investment, sustainability reporting, securitisation, financial data access, DEBRA, AI and tokenisation." See the full EFAMA 2025 Fact Book here. (Note: Please join us for our European Money Fund Symposium, which is Sept. 22-23, 2025 in Dublin, Ireland. Registrations are still being accepted and our discounted hotel rate expires July 28.)
BNY and State Street released earnings earlier this week, and both custodial banks discussed money markets, stablecoins and tokenized money markets. BNY says in their Q2 2025 Earnings about "Digital Assets and Stablecoin Developments," "The company was selected as reserve custodian for Societe Generale's first USD stablecoin in Europe in June 2025, and as primary custodian for Ripple's US stablecoin reserves (as announced in July 2025).... Today, BNY is a leader in servicing the growing stablecoin market, enabling companies to create and use stablecoins by providing wide-ranging services from issuance to ongoing operations. Our advancements in the digital assets ecosystem are just one example of continual innovation, but there are many others."
Earlier this week, we learned of the pending launch of yet another (the 6th) Money Market Fund ETF, the second launch from a virtually unknown company. A press release titled, "Introducing the Simplify Government Money Market ETF (SBIL)," tells us, "Simplify Asset Management ('Simplify') ... announced a further expansion of its lineup of income-focused ETFs with the launch of the Simplify Government Money Market ETF (SBIL). SBIL seeks current income consistent with liquidity and stability of principal by investing at least 99.5% of its assets in cash, U.S. Government securities, and repurchase agreements fully collateralized by such obligations or cash. The fund maintains a portfolio dollar-weighted average maturity of 60 days or less and a dollar-weighted average life of 120 days or less. The fund is a true money market fund, in an ETF wrapper, and can be considered a 'cash' position of particular use for those investors seeking the stability of a money market fund." (See our July 10 Link of the Day, "JPMorgan Files for Money Market ETF," on the pending launch of the 5th Money Market ETF.)
BlackRock released its Q2'25 earnings and hosted its earnings call Monday, and made several comments on cash, fixed-income and its relationship with stablecoin provider Circle. Chairman & CEO Larry Fink says, "From category innovation and iShares to new ventures across the world, the investments we made across our platform are paying off. Many of the categories that are leading our growth barely existed 2 years ago, categories like active ETFs, digital assets and our scaled private markets franchise. Just as importantly, BlackRock's core businesses like ETFs, Aladdin and cash management continue to be a growth engine for the firm and are cornerstones of many client relationships."
Crane Data's latest Money Fund Intelligence International shows that assets in European or "offshore" money market mutual funds inched higher over the past 30 days to $1.504 trillion, after hitting a record high $1.518 trillion three months prior, while yields were lower. Assets for USD MMFs rose while EUR and GBP MMFs fell over the past month. Like U.S. money fund assets, European MMFs repeatedly hit record highs in 2023, 2024 and early in 2025 but have paused in recent weeks. These U.S.-style money funds, domiciled in Ireland or Luxembourg and denominated in US Dollars, Pound Sterling and Euros, increased by $2.2 billion over the 30 days through 7/14. The totals are up $71.5 billion (5.0%) year-to-date for 2025, they were up $235.3 billion (19.7%) for 2024 and up $166.9 billion (16.2%) for the year 2023. (Note that currency moves in the U.S. dollar cause Euro and Sterling totals to shift when they're translated back into totals in U.S. dollars. See our latest MFI International for more on the "offshore" money fund marketplace. These funds are only available to qualified, non-U.S. investors and are almost entirely institutional.) (Note too: We're gearing up for our European Money Fund Symposium, which is Sept. 22-23, 2025 in Dublin. Register and make hotel reservations soon!)
The July issue of our Bond Fund Intelligence, which as sent to subscribers Tuesday morning, features the stories, "Worldwide BF Assets Jump to $14.3 Trillion, Led by US, Brazil," which covers ICI's latest data on global bond fund markets; and "Vanguard Asks, 'Is the Agg Enough?' Q&A w/'Mr. Agg'," which looks at a recent discussion of bond market benchmarks. BFI also recaps the latest Bond Fund News and includes our Crane BFI Indexes, which show that bond fund returns were up in June while yields were lower. We excerpt from the new issue below. (Contact us if you'd like to see our latest Bond Fund Intelligence and BFI XLS spreadsheet, or our Bond Fund Portfolio Holdings data.)
BlackRock. published a brief titled, "Why money market funds play a vital role in private markets," which tells us, "Research shows that the total value of private-market assets -- including debt and equity investments in private businesses as well as infrastructure and real-estate holdings -- is on course to rise from US$10 trillion in 2021 to more than US$18 trillion by 2027. In 2024, meanwhile, there was a sharp rise in distributions from private equity investments, along with a rebound in deal-making and exit activity. It is clear this is a sector that has recently experienced solid growth, and we expect this sector to continue at pace over the next few years as the market is increasingly democratized to an ever-wider investor base."
Crane Data's July Money Fund Portfolio Holdings, with data as of June 30, 2025, show that holdings of Repo jumped last month while Treasuries declined. Money market securities held by Taxable U.S. money funds (tracked by Crane Data) increased by $84.0 billion to $7.355 trillion in June, after increasing $72.0 billion in May and decreasing by $73.8 billion in April. Assets rose by $45.6 billion in March, $53.7 billion in February, $84.1 billion in January, and $88.0 billion in December. Repo, the largest segment, increased $194.2 billion in June. Treasuries, the second largest portfolio composition segment, decreased by $98.4 billion. Agencies were the third largest segment, and CP remained fourth, ahead of CDs, Other/Time Deposits and VRDNs. Below, we review our Money Fund Portfolio Holdings statistics. (Visit our Content center to download, or contact us to request our latest Portfolio Holdings reports.)
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