Money Market News
J.P. Morgan Chase released its Q1 2026 Earnings early last week (see the earnings call transcript here," and one of the main discussions during the Q&A involved a new AI tool to allocate cash. Wolfe Research's Steven Chubak comments, "So maybe to start on the AI cash tool, which, Jamie, you commented on in your letter. There's been lots of focus on this particular ... launch given that this is a tool which could potentially result in some consumer deposit pressure as well as drive some impact on increased competition [and] higher deposit betas. I was hoping you could just speak to how you see deposit competition unfolding as similar smart tools become more widespread." (See our April 17 News, "Schwab Says AI a Tailwind, Not a Threat to Cash Sweeps on Q1 Update," and our April 16 Link of the Day, "Morgan Stanley Q1 Call: AI & Sweeps.")
Charles Schwab reported its Q1'26 earnings Thursday, and discussed cash sweeps and the potential impact of AI on revenues extensively during their Spring Business Update. CFO Michael Verdeschi comments, "Client cash followed typical seasonal trends to begin the year. However, as volatility increased during the back half of the quarter, clients took a slightly more defensive posture, which in conjunction with the cash build from organic growth and the long short strategies contributed to $25 billion of cash inflows during the month of March resulting in an $8 billion sequential quarter increase in client transactional sweep cash. For the second quarter, we still anticipate the typical drawdown in client cash due to tax payments in April. And similar to past years, we expect this activity to impact both transactional sweep cash as well as other liquid cash alternatives such as money market funds. Beyond seasonal considerations, continued market volatility could influence client cash allocations."
Crane Data's latest Money Fund Intelligence International shows that assets in European or "offshore" money market mutual funds increased over the past 30 days to a record high $1.672 trillion, increasing from $1.652 trillion the month prior. Yields were mixed, while assets for USD, EUR and GBP MMFs all rose over the past month. Like U.S. money fund assets, European MMFs have repeatedly hit record highs in 2023, 2024 and 2025 (after a pause in Q2'25). These U.S.-style money funds, domiciled in Ireland or Luxembourg and denominated in US Dollars, Pound Sterling and Euros, increased by $29.0 billion over the 30 days through 4/14. The totals are up $87.2 billion (5.5%) 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: Mark your calendars for our next European Money Fund Symposium, which will be held Sept. 24-25 in Paris, France. Watch for the preliminary agenda to be released in coming weeks.)
The April issue of our Bond Fund Intelligence, which will be sent to subscribers Wednesday a.m., features the articles, "Worldwide BF Assets Jump to $16.7 Tril., Led by US & China," which reviews the latest global bond fund statistics from ICI; and "Bond Fund Symposium '26: Senior PM Perspectives," which highlights a panel from our recent fixed-income conference in Boston. BFI also recaps the latest Bond Fund News and includes our Crane BFI Indexes, which show that bond fund returns fell hard in March while yields jumped. 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.)
Money fund yields (7-day, annualized, simple, net) were down 1 bp at 3.46% on average during the week ended Friday, April 10 (as measured by our Crane 100 Money Fund Index), after remaining unchanged the week prior. Fund yields haven't been below 3.5% since November 2022, and they are down from a recent high of 5.20% in November 2023. They should remain flat in coming days (and weeks) since the Fed left short-term rates unchanged four weeks ago. Yields were 3.58% on 12/31/25, 3.78% on 11/30, 3.90% on 10/31, 3.94% on 9/30, 4.11% on 8/31, 4.12% on 7/31, 4.13% on 6/30, 4.14% on 3/31/25 and 4.28% on average on 12/31/24. MMFs averaged 4.75% on 9/30/24, 5.10% on 6/28/24, 5.14% on 3/31/24 and 5.20% on 12/31/23.
Crane Data's April Money Fund Portfolio Holdings, with data as of March 31, 2026, show that holdings of Treasuries increased while Repo declined. Money market securities held by Taxable U.S. money funds (tracked by Crane Data) decreased by $103.0 billion to $8.075 trillion in March, after increasing $113.2 billion in February, but decreasing $54.6 billion in January. Holdings assets increased $231.8 billion in December, $134.3 billion in November, $158.4 billion in October, $56.1 billion in September, $166.6 billion in August, $17.6 billion in July, $84.0 billion in June and $72.0 billion in May. They decreased by $73.8 billion last April. Treasuries, the largest portfolio composition segment, inched higher by $19.2 billion. Repo, the second largest segment, decreased $69.4 billion in March. 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 Friday, and we'll be writing our regular monthly update on the new March data for Monday'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 Thursday. (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 March 31, includes holdings information from 997 money funds (up 4 from last month), representing assets of $8.127 trillion (down from $8.327 trillion a month ago). Prime MMFs fell to $1.251 trillion (down from $1.263 trillion), or 15.4% 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 $21.6 billion (annualized) in March.
Crane Data's latest monthly Money Fund Market Share rankings show assets down among the largest U.S. money fund complexes in March, after being up in February and mixed in January. Assets have increased in 19 of the past 21 months (only April 2025 and March 2026 saw declines). Money market fund assets fell by $56.6 billion, or -0.7%, last month to $8.193 trillion. Total MMF assets have increased by $76.2 billion, or 0.9%, over the past 3 months, and they've increased by $861.1 billion, or 11.7%, over the past 12 months. The largest increases among the 25 largest managers last month were seen by Fidelity, First American, BlackRock, Schwab and Allspring, which grew assets by $9.3 billion, $9.3B, $6.5B, $5.9B and $5.1B, respectively. Declines in March were seen by SSIM, Vanguard, Goldman Sachs, Federated Hermes and BNY Dreyfus, which decreased by $16.2 billion, $13.9B, $13.1B, $10.3B and $9.1B, 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 lower in March.
The April issue of our flagship Money Fund Intelligence newsletter, which was sent to subscribers Wednesday morning, features the articles: "JPM: Corporates Driving MMF Asset Gains; A Look at Fed Z.1," which reviews corporate cash balances and their impact on money fund growth; "Bond Fund Symposium in Boston: Ho & Schneider," which quotes from our recent ultra-short bond fund conference; and "Fidelity Reserves Digital, 5th Stablecoin Reserve Fund," which discusses the latest Stablecoin Reserves money market funds. We also sent out our MFI XLS spreadsheet Wednesday a.m., and we've updated our Money Fund Wisdom database with 3/31/26 data. Our April Money Fund Portfolio Holdings are scheduled to ship on Friday, April 10, and our April Bond Fund Intelligence is scheduled to go out on Wednesday, April 15.
Money fund yields (7-day, annualized, simple, net) were unchanged at 3.47% on average during the week ended Thursday, April 2 (as measured by our Crane 100 Money Fund Index), after remaining unchanged the week prior. Fund yields haven't been below 3.5% since November 2022, and they are down from a recent high of 5.20% in November 2023. They should remain flat in coming days (and weeks) since the Fed left short-term rates unchanged three weeks ago. Yields were 3.58% on 12/31/25, 3.78% on 11/30, 3.90% on 10/31, 3.94% on 9/30, 4.11% on 8/31, 4.12% on 7/31, 4.13% on 6/30, 4.14% on 3/31/25 and 4.28% on average on 12/31/24. MMFs averaged 4.75% on 9/30/24, 5.10% on 6/28/24, 5.14% on 3/31/24 and 5.20% on 12/31/23.
The Investment Company Institute published its weekly "Money Market Fund Assets" report Thursday, which shows money fund assets increasing by $7.6 billion to $7.811 trillion, after decreasing by $53.0 billion the previous week and rising by $38.7 billion to a record high $7.856 trillion two weeks prior. Assets have risen in 22 of the last 28 weeks and 30 of the past 37 weeks. MMF assets are up by $779 billion, or 11.1%, over the past 52 weeks (through 4/1/26), with Institutional MMFs up $547 billion, or 13.2% and Retail MMFs up $232 billion, or 8.1%. Year-to-date in 2026, MMF assets are up by $78 billion, or 1.0%, with Institutional MMFs up $38 billion, or 0.8% and Retail MMFs up $39 billion, or 1.3%.
The Bank of England published a paper titled, "A simulation framework for sterling money market funds: estimating redemption capacity and evaluating liquidity requirements." The staff paper's summary says, "Money market funds (MMFs) aim to provide near-on-demand liquidity yet often hold assets that become hard to sell under stress, leaving them vulnerable to run-like redemptions. I build a simulation framework for sterling MMFs to estimate redemption capacity and failure probability across alternative redemption profiles and market-liquidity scenarios. Resilience of funds depends on both the timing of outflows and the effective liquidity of weekly liquid assets (WLA): front-loaded redemptions are most destabilising, and the benefit of asset sales shrinks as market depth thins. Removing the 30% WLA threshold effect – under which managers must consider measures to deter further redemptions – yields sizeable resilience gains by reducing cliff-edge behaviour. Under historically extreme shocks and without threshold effects, most resilience improvements come from holding WLA above the 30% regulatory minimum; in my simulations, gains concentrate around 40% WLA, with diminishing returns beyond."
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