Dramatic asset growth was again the biggest story of the year, as money market fund assets jumped by $850 billion to a record $8.07 trillion (through 12/11), after jumping by $800 billion last year and over $1.0 trillion the year before. In 2023, rising yields were the big news, but yields have moved lower in 2024 and 2025. Yields continue declining; they are now approaching 3.60%. So declining but still attractive yields were a big theme of 2025. Other major headlines of 2025 included: the growth of tokenized money market funds, stablecoin reserve funds and money fund ETFs. Below, we excerpt from a number of our biggest and most representative news stories of 2025 to highlight the major trends of the past year. (Note: For those attending our Money Fund University this week, welcome to Pittsburgh! Clients and friends are welcome to stop by Crane Data's Holiday Cocktail Party at MFU at the Pittsburgh Westin on Thursday, 12/18 from 5-7:30pm! Attendees and subscribers may access the conference materials via our "Money Fund University 2025 Download Center.")
Crane Data's Top 10 Stories of 2025 include (in chronological order): "State Street Converting Prime ILR to Govt; Weekly MF Portfolio Holdings" (1/29/25); "JP Morgan Reviews ABCP Rebound, Independents; Short-Term ETFs Hot" (3/13/25); "European Money Fund Assets Break Record $1.5 Tril.; MFI Intl Holdings" (4/15/25); "BNY's LiquidityDirect Portal Announces Plans to Tokenize Money Funds" (7/24/25); "Money Fund Assets Continue Record Run; Trends: Over 80M Shareholders" (8/29/25); "ICI: Worldwide MMFs Jump in Q2'25 to Record $12.3T; Ireland $1 Trillion" (9/24/25); "Barron's on Money-Market ETFs; JPMorgan Says MF Assets Headed Higher" (10/20/25); "Assets Break $7.8 Trillion; Fed Cuts Target to 3.75-4.0%; RJ Earnings" (10/30/25); "State Street Files for Stablecoin Reserves MMF; BNY's Stephanie Pierce" (11/19/25), and "Money Fund Assets Break Over $8.0 Trillion as Year-End Surge Continues" (12/3/25).
Our Jan. 29 story, "State Street Converting Prime ILR to Govt; Weekly MF Portfolio Holdings," covers State Street converting its Institutional Liquid Reserves Fund to Govt. The piece says, "A Prospectus Supplement filing for the $9.7 billion State Street Institutional Liquid Reserves Fund, which includes Bancroft Capital (VTDXX), Administration (SSYXX), Institutional (SSHXX), Investment (SSVXX), Investor (SSZXX), Opportunity (OPIXX) and Premier (SSIXX) share classes, tells us, 'The Board of Trustees has approved the conversion of the Fund to qualify as a 'government money market fund' as defined in Rule 2a-7 under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended. As a result, the Fund will be renamed the State Street Institutional Liquid Reserves Government Money Market Fund and will seek to achieve its investment objective by investing substantially all of its investable assets in the Street U.S. Government Money Market Portfolio.'" See also our Jan. 2 story, "Rolling w/Reform Changes VI: Finally Done with MMF Reforms; Big Sort II," our Jan. 14 story, "Boston Fed Paper Examines Prime Retail MMF Investors During Stress," our Feb. 6 story, "BlackRock Money Market ETFs Go Live; Ondo Finance on Tokenized MMFs" and our Feb. 27 story, "MMF Assets Hit Record $7.3 Trillion; SEC Extends Treasury Clearing Rules."
Our March 13 story describes J.P. Morgan's insight into the ABCP market. The piece, "JP Morgan Reviews ABCP Rebound, Independents; Short-Term ETFs Hot." It says, "Last week, J.P. Morgan Securities published a brief titled, 'Taking a closer look at the ABCP market.' They tell us, 'After nearly a decade of stagnation, the ABCP market is experiencing somewhat of a resurgence in activity. For years, market outstandings bounced around $200-$250bn, but since 2021 they have been steadily on the rise, registering $425bn as of February month-end.... Notably, fueling the growth of this sector has not been the traditional bank sponsored, multi-seller conduits. Instead, it has been driven by collateral-backed ABCP programs such as independent sponsored ABCP and bank sponsored CCP programs.'" See also our March 20 story, "JPM: Low Duration Bond Funds Up to $850B; Public Trust and PMA Merge."
In April, we published, "European Money Fund Assets Break Record $1.5 Tril.; MFI Intl Holdings," which reviews the "offshore" MMF space. It states, "Crane Data's latest Money Fund Intelligence International shows that assets in European or 'offshore' money market mutual funds inched higher again over the past 30 days to a record $1.518 trillion, while yields were flat or lower. 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 early in 2025. These U.S.-style money funds, domiciled in Ireland or Luxembourg and denominated in US Dollars, Pound Sterling and Euros, increased by $20.6 billion over the 30 days through 4/11. The totals are up $85.7 billion (6.0%) 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." See also our May 22 story, "Fitch: Liquidity LGIPs Rise to Over $430 Billion; NY Fed Blogs on NBFIs."
Our June 25 update, we wrote about the AFP Liquidity Survey in, "More AFP Liquidity Survey: Bank Deposits, Money Funds and T-Bills Rule." This piece says, We wrote last week on the '2025 AFP Liquidity Survey.' (See our June 20 News, 'AFP 2025 Liquidity Survey: MMFs Inch Higher; Deposits, T-Bills Lower.') Today, we continue our excerpts from the annual survey of corporate investors' cash habits. Discussing 'Current Allocations of Short-Term Investments,' AFP says, 'Companies maintain their investments in relatively few vehicles. Organizations invest in an average 2.57 vehicles for their cash and short-term investments -- slightly lower than the 2.7 average reported in 2024. Most organizations continue to allocate a large share of their short-term investment balances -- an average of 80% -- in safe and liquid investment vehicles: bank deposits, money market funds (MMFs) and Treasury securities. This result is three percentage points lower than the 83% reported in 2024. The typical organization currently maintains 46% of its short-term investments in bank deposits. This allocation is one percentage point lower than last year (2024) but is 9 percentage points lower than the 55% reported in 2022, and lower than both the 52% reported in 2021 and the 51% in 2020. This year's (2025) allocation is similar to percentages reported in 2019 (46%).'"
Our July 16 news discussed European Money Fund Assets in, "European Money Fund Assets Inch Up to $1.5 Trillion; MFI Intl Holdings." This piece says, "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. Also check out our July 21 piece, "BNY, State Street Talk Stablecoins, Tokenized MMFs on Q2 Calls; Schwab."
Later in July, we wrote about BNY's LiquidityDirect Portal in, "BNY's LiquidityDirect Portal Announces Plans to Tokenize Money Funds," which states, "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.)"
Our August 29 update, "Money Fund Assets Continue Record Run; Trends: Over 80M Shareholders," discussed the continued momentum MMF assets are seeing. It explains, "The Investment Company Institute released its latest weekly 'Money Market Fund Assets' report Thursday and its latest monthly 'Trends in Mutual Fund Investing - July 2025' and 'Month-End Portfolio Holdings of Taxable Money Funds' on Thursday. The former shows money fund assets rising $17.2 billion to a record $7.207 trillion. MMFs rose $3.8 billion last week, $33.3 billion the week before and $76.2 billion 3 weeks ago. MMF assets are up by $944 billion, or 15.1%, over the past 52 weeks (through 8/27/25), with Institutional MMFs up $534 billion, or 14.3% and Retail MMFs up $410 billion, or 16.2%. Year-to-date, MMF assets are up by $356 billion, or 5.2%, with Institutional MMFs up $146 billion, or 3.5% and Retail MMFs up $210 billion, or 7.7%." See also our Aug. 4 story, "Federated Hermes' Q2 Earnings Call Talks Tokenized MMFs, Stablecoins," our Aug. 13 story, "Goldman Files to Launch Stablecoin Reserves Fund; Circle Q2 Earnings," our Aug. 20 story, "BNY Dreyfus to Launch Stablecoin Reserves Fund; Joins Goldman, Circle" and our Aug. 22 story, "Money Funds Hit Record Assets Again; State Street Does Blockchain CP."
Our September 24 news, "ICI: Worldwide MMFs Jump in Q2'25 to Record $12.3T; Ireland $1 Trillion," explains, "The Investment Company Institute published, 'Worldwide Regulated Open-Fund Assets and Flows, Second Quarter 2025,' which shows that money fund assets globally rose by $470.2 billion, or 4.0%, in Q2'25 to a record $12.315 trillion. (The totals would have been $12.587 trillion if Australia and New Zealand had been included.) Increases were led by a sharp jump in money funds in China and Ireland, while France and the U.S. also rose. Meanwhile, money funds in Argentina were lower. MMF assets worldwide increased by $1.672 trillion, or 15.7%, in the 12 months through 6/30/25, and money funds in the U.S. now represent 57.0% of worldwide assets. In Q1, European money fund asset totals surpassed Asian money fund totals for the first time since Q4'2017, and they continue to rise. We review the latest Worldwide MMF totals, below.
In October, we published, "Barron's on Money-Market ETFs; JPMorgan Says MF Assets Headed Higher," which says, "Barron's writes that, 'Money-Market ETFs Have Arrived. Should You Buy One?' They explain, 'Not too long ago, investors who wanted to park cash in an exchange-traded fund version of a money-market mutual fund had to settle for ultrashort-dated bond ETFs as a proxy. That has changed with the recent launch of a few money-market ETFs, which have quickly gained assets, even as the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates. The handful of money-market ETFs include the $3.4 billion Simplify Government Money Market, the $361.2 million iShares Prime Money Market, the $269.3 million Schwab Government Money Market, the $77.2 million iShares Government Money Market, and the $60 million Texas Capital Government Money Market, which kicked off the category when it launched in September 2024.'" See also our Oct. 17 piece, "BlackRock Breaks $1 Trillion in Money Funds; Offers Stablecoin Reserve" and our Oct. 22 piece, "BNY's Vince on Q3 Call: Money Market Evolution, Dreyfus, Stablecoins."
Later in October, we published, "Assets Break $7.8 Trillion; Fed Cuts Target to 3.75-4.0%; RJ Earnings," which says, "Assets of money market funds rose by $27.3 billion over the past week to a record high $7.821 trillion (as of 10/28), according to Crane Data's Money Fund Intelligence Daily. MMF assets broke above the $7.8 trillion level for the first time ever on October 27. Month-to-date in October (through 10/28), MMF assets have increased $113.1 billion, after increasing by $105.2 trillion in September, $132.0 billion in August and $63.7 billion in July. They rose $6.7 billion in June and $100.9 billion in May, but decreased $24.4 billion in April. Assets increased by $2.8 billion in March, $94.2 billion in February, $52.8 billion in January, $110.9 billion in December, $200.5 billion in November, and $97.5 billion last October."
Finally, Our November 19 news, "State Street Files for Stablecoin Reserves MMF; BNY's Stephanie Pierce," says, "State Street Investment Management is the fourth money fund manager to launch a Stablecoin Reserves money market fund, following BlackRock's Circle Treasury Reserves, and Stablecoin Reserves offerings from Goldman Sachs and BNY. A Form N-1A Registration Statement for the pending State Street Stablecoin Reserves Money Market Fund tells us, 'The investment objective of State Street Stablecoin Reserves Money Market Fund ... is to seek a high level of current income consistent with preserving principal and liquidity and the maintenance of a stable $1.00 per share net asset value. The Fund, which is advised by SSGA Funds Management, Inc., invests in assets in which payment stablecoin issuers are permitted to invest in under a U.S. law enacted in July 2025 designed to establish a framework of these issuers and any regulation adopted thereunder (the 'GENIUS Act').'"
For more 2025 (and soon 2026) News (and prior years going back to 2006), see Crane Data's News Archives. We'll continue to provide daily updates on the money fund marketplace in the coming year, so `keep reading our News and Link of the Day commentaries in 2026. Let us know if you need web access (unlimited access is for subscribers only), or if you'd like to see our latest Money Fund Intelligence, Bond Fund Intelligence or MFI Daily publications. Thanks to all of our readers and subscribers for your support in 2025, and we wish you all the best in the coming year. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
