Money market mutual fund assets declined by a mere $1.52 billion yesterday (Monday), September 21, the first day in over a year with no federal $1.00 NAV guarantee. Assets had fallen by just $6.57 billion on Friday, the final day of the U.S. Treasury's Temporary Money Market Fund Guarantee. It's looking increasingly likely that the expiration of the Treasury insurance will be a non-event. (Crane Data publishes the prior day's money fund assets, yields, dividends and maturities in our Money Fund Intelligence Daily product, which tracks 939 funds with $3.330 trillion in assets -- over 95% of total money fund assets.)
As we said, today's MFI Daily, shows that assets were virtually flat (down $1.52 billion) yesterday. Friday's numbers showed assets falling $6.57 billion, following a decline of $3.55 billion Thursday, but we show steeper drops of $20.86 billion Wednesday and $35.12 billion Tuesday, a quarterly corporate tax payment date. For the week ended Monday, money fund assets declined by $67.60 billion.
Contrary to recent trends, institutional assets represented the bulk of declines last week. Institutional money funds declined by $5.576 billion Friday (to $1.936 trillion) and declined by $51.51 billion on the week. Retail assets rose by $341 million Friday, but declined $5.28 billion on the week. There was no significant shift into Treasury and/or Government money funds either, nor was there any noticeable shift among money fund complexes.
On Friday, Treasury Institutional funds increased by $178 million to $337.54 billion (10.1% of taxable assets), Government Institutional funds decreased by $4.32 billion to $544.44 billion (16.3% of taxable assets), while Prime Institutional assets fell by $1.43 billion to $1.054 trillion (31.6% of taxable assets).
Treasury Retail assets decreased by $26 million to $91.04 billion (2.7% of taxable assets), Government Retail assets increased by $266 million to $127.41 billion (3.8% of taxable assets), while Prime Retail assets increased by $101 million to $758.89 billion (22.8% of taxable assets).
Money fund yields remain at record lows. Our Crane Money Fund Average, a simple average of 643 taxable money funds, remains at 0.07% (7-day annualized yield), while our Crane 100 Money Fund Index, which tracks the 100 largest taxable funds, remains at 0.11%. The Crane Tax Exempt Money Fund Index was flat at 0.08%.
