The January 2010 issue of Crane Data's flagship Money Fund Intelligence newsletter, which went out to subscribers on Friday, features the stories: "MF Year in Review: Money Funds' Annus Horribilus," which reviews assets, yields, and the most important stories of 2009; "SEI's Simko Speaks on Cash Management," a Q&A with Sean Simko and Daisy Lac, and "Top Money Funds of '09 Win New MFI Awards," which reviews the top-performing funds for 2009 and for the past decade. We excerpt a few highlights below.
MFI's "Annus Horibilis review of 2009 says, "Though relatively quiet compared to the explosive growth of 2007 and the near-death experience of late 2008, this past year was a terrible year for the 40-year old money fund business. The dominant themes were low and lower, for both yields and for assets. Rates ground down towards zero and assets experienced their largest drop in history. In addition, regulatory changes and the threat of a major remake of the industry dominated headlines.... Assets, which hit a record high of $3.920 trillion in mid-January [2009], proceeded to shrink by $545 billion, or 14.0%, to $3.294 trillion on the year, by far the largest annual decline."
SEI's Sean Simko tells MFI in our latest fund manager interview, "Money market and short-term portfolio managers are not only balancing the changing investment landscape, they are doing so in an unprecedented low interest rate environment. The goal is to build a portfolio that is well diversified, very liquid, upholding to the highest credit standards while achieving a return on investment. Now add into the mix concerns around all the regulatory issues that are on the horizon, and the result are a very challenging environment."
Finally, MFI writes, "In addition to our normal 1-year return and 7-day yield performance ranking tables, we recognize some of the top-performing money funds of 2009 and of the past decade with the newly created Money Fund Intelligence Awards.... [T]he winners [are] the No. 1-ranked funds based on 1-year, 5-year and 10-year returns, through Dec. 31, 2009, in a number of categories -- Prime Institutional, Government Institutional, Treasury Institutional, Prime Individual, Government Individual, and Treasury Individual."
Each issue of Money Fund Intelligence features news, info, and performance on over 1,300 money market mutual funds. Statistics include: assets, WAM, expense ratio, 7-day yield, 30-day yield, 1-month return, 3-mo, YTD, 1-year, 3-yr, 5-yr, 10-yr, and since inception returns, and gross yields. MFI also contains tables of the top-yielding and largest money funds and our benchmark Crane Money Fund Indexes. Look for more from the new MFI, more on our Top-Performing Fund Awards, and more from SEI's Sean Simko in coming days. To request a sample of the latest issue of Money Fund Intelligence, e-mail stork@cranedata.us.
