The November issue of our flagship Money Fund Intelligence newsletter, which will be sent to subscribers Friday morning, features the articles: "Crane 100 Index Hits 3.75%; NY Times: Buy Money Funds," which reviews rise in money fund yields and recent favorable coverage of MMFs; "Q3'26 Earnings Roundup: Digital, Sweeps, Growth," which quotes from the latest bank and brokerage earnings calls; and "UBS, Invesco, Allspring, Van Eck File for Tokenized MMFs," which reviews the latest pending digital money fund launches. We will also send out our MFI XLS spreadsheet Friday a.m., and we've updated our Money Fund Wisdom database with 10/31/26 data. Our November Money Fund Portfolio Holdings are scheduled to ship on Tuesday, Nov. 10, and our November Bond Fund Intelligence is scheduled to go out Monday, Nov. 16. (Note: Please join us for our upcoming Money Fund University, which will take place Dec. 17-18 in Greenwich, Conn.!)
MFI's "Crane 100 Index" story says, "While the Federal Reserve held rates steady at its October 28 meeting, money fund yields continue to digest the last remnants of the Fed's Sept. 16 move. Our Crane 100 Money Fund Index has risen from 3.51% to 3.75% since then, and the market expects rates to again move higher later this year, thus making money funds more attractive."
It continues, "The New York Times writes, 'A Simple Way to Benefit From Rising Rates: Buy Money Market Funds.' The Jeff Sommer column states, 'Rising interest rates have wreaked havoc this year in financial markets. Yet they are an unambiguous boon in one unheralded arena: money market funds, where the higher rates almost immediately funnel more money to investors without major complications. This is a big exception to the other major effects of rising rates, which have made plenty of negative headlines because they are a drag on the economy, a burden for people seeking mortgages and a punishing hurdle for stocks.'"
We write in our "Q3'26 Earnings" article, "J.P. Morgan Chase led off the latest batch of Q3'26 quarterly bank and brokerage earnings calls. (See the JPM earnings call transcript here.) CFO Jeremy Barnum says during the Q&A, 'There's obviously been a lot of focus on the Smart Cash solution.... There have been a couple of releases of personal agents this quarter, which have really gotten a bunch of attention.... The way we think about that from our perspective is that, on the one hand, it's nothing new. But that doesn't mean that we're complacent about it.... It's really the intersection of two things that we've been talking about for a long time -- one is yield-seeking flows. Obviously, we deal [with that] today and have dealt with all the various rate cycles with a lot of competition from yield-seeking flows.'"
It states, "Barnum continues, 'Our strategy remains focusing on primary bank share, not chasing every dollar of yield-seeking money. So that doesn't mean that competitive pressure isn't real. It just means it's not particularly new. The other piece is competition from fin-techs who are innovating and providing great customer experiences, and we've also been talking about that for a long time.... I think we really like our hand in no small part because of the sort of multiple decades of investment in the branch network, the value proposition, and not least trust that our customers have in us.'"
Our "UBS, Invesco, Allspring" article says, "Money fund managers continue to file for new tokenized money market funds and share classes. UBS Asset Management filed with the SEC for the UBS Select 100% US Treasury Onchain Fund and the UBS Liquid Reserves Fund Onchain Shares. Invesco, Allspring and VanEck have also all recently filed for new U.S. tokenized MMFs. The first prospectus states, 'The fund is a money market fund and seeks to maintain a stable price of $1.00 per share. To do this, under normal circumstances, the fund invests exclusively in a diversified portfolio of high quality, US Treasury money market instruments and ... cash. Money market instruments generally are short-term debt obligations.... The fund invests in securities through an underlying master fund.'"
The story continues, "It explains, 'Shares of the fund are issued in tokenized form, meaning that ownership of each share is recorded as a token on the applicable blockchain through smart contracts that conform to token standards that vary by blockchain. Smart contracts are computer programs that are designed to perform functions including 'minting' (the creation of new token balances) and 'burning' (the removal of token balances from circulation), as well as to impose restrictions preventing unauthorized transfers to unregistered wallets, and to enable the clawback of tokens under certain circumstances. These smart contracts are designed, deployed, and maintained by the Transfer Agent. Together with a traditionally maintained (i.e., 'offchain') register that contains shareholders' personal identifying information, these records form the fund's official shareholder register.'"
MFI also includes the News brief, "Assets Up in Oct.; Hit Records in Nov." It says, "Crane Data's MFI XLS shows money fund assets up $65.4 billion in October to $8.362 trillion. MMF assets jumped $78.6 billion in the week through 11/4 to a record $8.447 trillion, according to MFI Daily. Separately, ICI's latest weekly 'Money Market Fund Assets' report shows assets surging $114.5 billion to a record high $8.016 trillion, the first time this series has broken over $8.0 trillion. MMFs are up $481 billion, or 6.4%, over the past 52 weeks (through 11/4/26). YTD, assets are up $282 billion, or 3.7%."
Another News brief, "Federated Hermes' Deborah Cunningham," asks, "Why is Capital Leaving Money Market Funds as Rates Rise?" She writes in an opinion piece on Reuters, 'Against that backdrop of rising rates, you might have expected capital to flood into money market funds (MMFs). But, in fact, total MMF assets decreased by $45.45 billion to $7.89 trillion, as of the week ending Sept. 30, according to the ICI.... This reflects the fact that not all cash-like instruments reprice at the same speed. [W]hen the Fed raises its policy rate, yields across overnight markets, government auctions and floating-rate securities can adjust almost immediately. Yet the yield on a money market fund usually takes longer to catch up.'"
A third News brief, "State Street's '3Q:26 Fund Connect: Still Expecting Higher Rates' says, 'It remains the best of times for short-end investors, with overall AUM of $7.9 trillion just marginally off their all-time highs. We suspect higher yields will continue to provide support for the short end and overall market liquidity.... The WAMs of the largest MMF managers have fallen by about 10 days over the summer, providing a relatively neutral maturity base with which to adjust to changing rate expectations.'"
A sidebar, "Schwab Earnings, Blocks AI," says, "Charles Schwab also reported its Q3'26 earnings, and made comments on sweeps, AI and cash sorting. President & CEO Rick Wurster says, 'Clients are ... moving nearly $4 trillion in cash every month to invest, trade, pay bills.... A subset of traders are already using AI to support their trading goals.... As an interesting aside, this group actually holds more cash than other active traders because they are focused on finding their next great investment.'"
Our November MFI XLS, with October 31 data, shows total assets jumping $65.4 billion to $8.362 trillion, after falling $50.8 billion in September, jumping $78.5 billion in August, falling $65.6 billion in July and increasing $49.5 billion in June. They increased $193.2 billion in May, decreased $102.1 billion in April and $56.6 billion in March, but increased $94.0 billion in February. Assets rose $38.5 billion in January, $123.5 billion in December and $129.3 billion last November.
Our broad Crane Money Fund Average 7-Day Yield was up 8 bps to 3.65%, and our Crane 100 Money Fund Index (the 100 largest taxable funds) was up 7 bps to 3.75% in October. On a Gross Yield Basis (7-Day) (before expenses are taken out), the Crane MFA and the Crane 100 averaged 4.00% and 4.01%. Charged Expenses averaged 0.36% and 0.26% for the Crane MFA and the Crane 100. (We'll revise expenses once we upload the SEC's Form N-MFP data for 10/31/26 on Monday, 11/9.) The average WAM (weighted average maturity) for the Crane MFA was 35 days (down 1 day) and the Crane 100 WAM was down 1 day from the previous month at 35 days. (See our Crane Index or craneindexes.xlsx history file for more on our averages.)
