Money Market News
The Investment Company Institute's latest weekly "Money Market Fund Assets" report shows money fund assets rising a mere $900 million to $7.928 trillion. Assets rose $18.3 billion the previous week and increased $55.4 billion the week before this. MMF assets are up by $739 billion, or 10.3%, over the past 52 weeks (through 8/19/26), with Institutional MMFs up $582 billion, or 13.8% and Retail MMFs up $157 billion, or 5.4%. Year-to-date in 2026, MMF assets are up by $195 billion, or 2.5%, with Institutional MMFs up $167 billion, or 3.6% and Retail MMFs up $29 billion, or 0.9%. (Note: Please join us for our European Money Fund Symposium show, which will be held in just one month, Sept. 24-25, 2026 in Paris, France!)
While Crane Data makes preparations for our European Money Fund Symposium, which will take place Sept. 24-25 in Paris, we're also starting to focus on our next Money Fund University conference, which will be in Greenwich, Dec. 17-18. Crane's Money Fund University is designed for those new to the money market fund industry or those in need of a concentrated refresher on the basics. The event also focuses on hot topics like money market fund regulations, money fund alternatives, offshore markets, and other recent industry trends. Our educational conference features a faculty of the money fund industry's top lawyers, strategists, and portfolio managers, and the Greenwich show will include our Holiday cocktail party Dec. 17 and a free product training session for Crane Data clients. We review the MFU agenda and some other upcoming conferences, below.
S&P Global Ratings published "U.S. Domestic 'AAAm' Money Market Fund Trends (Second-Quarter 2026)" recently, which tells us, "Rated government and prime MMF assets grew to $4.8 trillion by the end of the second quarter. Rated government MMF assets increased 4.3% and rated prime MMF assets increased 0.8% during the first half of the year. Flows were in line with seasonal trends, where assets dipped during tax season before rebounding." (Note: Register soon for our European Money Fund Symposium show, which will be held in just over a month, September 24-25, 2026 in Paris, France!)
Barron's "Income Investing" column, titled, "Inflation and Taxes Are Eating Into Your Savings. What You Can Do About It," contained the same error as a Wall Street Journal piece from last week -- it compared the current yield on money funds with the inflation rate over the past year. Columnist Randall Forsynth writes, "Congratulations, savers. Your money-market fund is now yielding more than inflation, if only by a hair. But after paying taxes on your money fund's earnings, you're still behind the inflation bogey. What to do? 'Nothing' seems to be the answer from those individuals who keep $3 trillion stashed in money funds yielding about 3.5%, 10 basis points more than the 3.4% increase in the consumer price index in the latest 12 months, but less than that after rendering unto Uncle Sam." (Crane Data Note: The latest money fund yield would be more appropriately compared with the latest month's inflation reading, which is 1.2% annualized.)
Crane Data's latest Money Fund Intelligence International shows that assets in European or "offshore" money market mutual funds decreased over the past 30 days to $1.696 trillion, the month prior assets reached a record high of $1.706 trillion. Yields were up, while assets for USD and EUR MMFs declined and GBP MMFs rose over the past month. Like U.S. money fund assets, European MMFs have repeatedly hit record highs in 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. These U.S.-style money funds, domiciled in Ireland or Luxembourg and denominated in US Dollars, Pound Sterling and Euros, decreased by $10.2 billion over the 30 days through 8/13. The totals are up $111.5 billion (7.0%) year-to-date for 2026. They were up $151.9 billion (10.6%) for 2025, 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 USD. 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: Please join us for our upcoming European Money Fund Symposium, which will be held Sept. 24-25 in Paris, France.)
The August issue of our Bond Fund Intelligence, which was sent to subscribers Friday a.m., features the articles, "Bond Fund Inflows Slow But Assets Decline; Shorts Winning," which reviews the latest bond fund asset and flow data from BFI, ICI and other sources; and "Higher Short-Term Yields Attracting Attention," which excerpts from recent coverage of short-term bond yields and money fund alternatives. BFI also recaps the latest Bond Fund News and includes our Crane BFI Indexes, which show that bond fund returns fell in July while yields rose. 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.)
The Wall Street Journal posted an article titled, "Wealth Management Has a $3 Trillion Problem: Investors Are Keeping Too Much Cash." Subtitled, "Advisers are pitching bonds and other investments, but many prefer to keep cash in money-market funds," it tells us, "Since Don Ross retired as an airline pilot a decade ago, all the financial planners he has spoken with have wanted him to invest his cash. He isn't sold. He is keeping 85% of his portfolio in stocks and the rest in a money-market fund yielding 3.62%. Ross looked at historical bear markets and determined they typically don't last longer than three years. He keeps enough of his portfolio in cash to comfortably get himself through that period, and he sells stocks when he needs to replenish his cash pile."
Crane Data's August Money Fund Portfolio Holdings, with data as of July 31, 2026, show that holdings of Treasuries jumped while Repo declined. Money market securities held by Taxable U.S. money funds (tracked by Crane Data) decreased by $8.7 billion to $8.212 trillion in July, after decreasing $4.9 billion in June but increasing $255.9 billion in May. Assets decreased by $105.9 billion in April and $103.0 billion in March. Taxable assets increased $113.2 billion in February, but they decreased $54.6 billion in January. Treasuries, the largest portfolio composition segment, increased by $150.2 billion. Repo, the second largest segment, decreased $148.0 billion in July. 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.)
Crane Data's latest monthly Money Fund Portfolio Holdings statistics will be sent out Tuesday, and we'll be writing our regular monthly update on the new July data for Wednesday's News. But we also already uploaded a separate and broader Portfolio Holdings data set based on the SEC's Form N-MFP filings on Monday. (We continue to merge the two series, and the N-MFP version is now available via our Portfolio Holdings file listings to Money Fund Wisdom subscribers.) Our new N-MFP summary, with data as of July 31, includes holdings information from 1010 money funds (unchanged from last month), representing assets of $8.381 trillion (up from $8.364 trillion a month ago). Prime MMFs rose to $1.242 trillion (up from $1.241 trillion), or 14.8% of the total. We review the new N-MFP data and we also look at our revised MMF expense data, which shows charged expenses were mostly flat and money fund revenues fell to $21.7 billion (annualized) in July.
Crane Data's latest monthly Money Fund Market Share rankings show assets lower among the largest U.S. money fund complexes in July, after being higher in June. Assets have increased in 21 of the past 25 months (April 2025, March 2026, April 2026 and July 2026 saw declines). Money market fund assets fell by $65.5 billion, or -0.8%, last month to $8.290 trillion. Total MMF assets increased by $190.7 billion, or 2.4%, over the past 3 months, and they've increased by $816.9 billion, or 10.9%, over the past 12 months. The largest increases among the 25 largest managers last month were seen by Invesco, JPMorgan, American Funds, UBS and Schwab, which grew assets by $19.7 billion, $14.0B, $9.6B, $4.7B and $3.3B, respectively. Declines in July were seen by Allspring, Vanguard, SSIM, Goldman Sachs and Fidelity, which decreased by $19.2 billion, $17.0B, $15.2B, $12.7B and $12.2B, respectively. Our domestic U.S. "Family" rankings are available in our MFI XLS product, our global rankings are available in our MFI International product. The combined "Family & Global Rankings" are available to Money Fund Wisdom subscribers. We review the latest market share totals, and look at money fund yields, which were higher in July.
The August issue of our flagship Money Fund Intelligence newsletter, which was sent to subscribers Friday morning, features the articles: "Tokenized MMF Launches Proliferate: BlackRock, Aviva," which reviews the latest tokenized money fund launches; "Quarterly Earnings Calls Quiet on Money Fund, Cash News," which discusses Q2'26 earnings discussions on cash, deposits and sweeps; and "Federated's Donahue on MF Market Share, Digital, Rates," which quotes Federated Hermes' latest earnings call. We also sent out our MFI XLS spreadsheet Friday a.m., and we've updated our Money Fund Wisdom database with 7/31/26 data. Our August Money Fund Portfolio Holdings are scheduled to ship on Tuesday, Aug. 11, and our August Bond Fund Intelligence is scheduled to go out on Friday, Aug. 14. (Note: Please join us for our upcoming European Money Fund Symposium, which will take place next month -- Sept. 24-25 in Paris, France!)
The SEC published its latest quarterly "Private Funds Statistics" report recently, which summarizes Form PF reporting and includes some data on "Liquidity Funds," or pools which are similar to but not money market funds. The publication shows overall Liquidity fund assets were higher in the latest reported quarter (Q4'25) at $426 billion (up from $414 billion in Q3'25 and up from $358 billion in Q4'24). We also again briefly review the SEC's "Amendments to Form PF Reporting Requirements for Large Liquidity Fund Advisers" which went into effect over two years ago, below.
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