Money market mutual fund assets rose slightly last week, increasing for the second week in a row and for the 6th week in the past 8 weeks. ICI's latest "Money Market Mutual Fund Assets" says, "Total money market mutual fund assets increased by $2.31 billion to $2.622 trillion for the week ended Wednesday, August 14, the Investment Company Institute reported today. Taxable government funds decreased by $550 million, taxable non-government funds increased by $3.67 billion, and tax-exempt funds decreased by $800 million." Year-to-date, money market mutual fund assets have decreased by $82 billion, or 3.0%, but since May 1, 2013, assets have increased by $59 billion, or 2.3%.
ICI's latest weekly report explains, "Assets of retail money market funds decreased by $580 million to $923.68 billion. Taxable government money market fund assets in the retail category decreased by $250 million to $198.39 billion, taxable non-government money market fund assets increased by $410 million to $530.69 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets decreased by $740 million to $194.61 billion." Retail money funds currently account for 35.2% of all money fund assets, with non-government ("prime") retail funds making up 20.2% of assets, government retail making up 7.6%, and tax-exempt retail making up 7.4% of all assets.
It adds, "Assets of institutional money market funds increased by $2.89 billion to $1.699 trillion. Among institutional funds, taxable government money market fund assets decreased by $300 million to $711.20 billion, taxable non-government money market fund assets increased by $3.26 billion to $914.95 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets decreased by $70 million to $72.46 billion." Institutional funds now account for 64.8% of all MMF assets, with prime institutional funds (the portion that could be forced to use a floating NAV) totaling 34.9%, government institutional funds totaling 27.1%, and tax-exempt institutional funds totaling just 2.8% of assets.
Year-to-date, Institutional MMFs have decreased by $63 billion, or 3.6%, while Retail MMFs have decreased by $20 billion, or 2.1%. Since May 1, Retail MMFs have gained more in assets than Institutional funds, rising by $33 billion, or 3.7%, while Inst MMFs have increased by $26 billion, or 1.5%.
ICI also released its latest weekly "Estimated Long-Term Mutual Fund Flows" on Wednesday, which shows that outflows from bond funds continued in the week ended August 7. (ICI's long-term flow data lag by a week while their money fund data is current.) They write, "Bond funds had estimated outflows of $2.09 billion, compared to estimated outflows of $6.95 billion during the previous week. Taxable bond funds saw estimated inflows of $33 million, while municipal bond funds had estimated outflows of $2.13 billion."
Crane Data's Money Fund Intelligence Daily shows money fund assets fell by $696 million Wednesday and have risen by $9.0 billion the past week. (We track a different universe of funds than ICI.) The largest assets increases for the past week were shown by the following funds: JPMorgan US Govt MM Agency (up $2.3B), Fidelity Instit MM: Prime MMP I (up $2.1B), Wells Fargo Adv Heritage I (up $2.0B), Dreyfus Instit Cash Adv Inst (up $1.4B), BlackRock Cash Prime MMF Inst (up $1.3B), Vanguard Prime MMF (up $1.3B), Goldman Sachs FS MM Admin (up $1.1B), Federated Treasury ObIig Cap (up $1.1B), First American Govt Obligs Z (up $854M), and HSBC Inv US Govt Money Mkt I (up $854M).
The largest declines in the past week were shown by: Goldman Sachs FS Govt Admin (down $1.8B), BlackRock Lq FedFund Inst (down $1.3B), BofA Treasury Reserve Capital (down $1.2B), Goldman Sachs FS Trs Obl Adm (down $977M), DWS MM Series Instit (down $726M), Invesco Treasury Cash Mgmt (down $597M), DWS CAT Prem MM Sh MMP Svc (down $563M), BlackRock Lq TempFund In (down $511M), Goldman Sachs FS Trs Ins Adm (down $500M), and Morgan Stanley Inst Liq Govt Inst (down $403M).
