Yesterday's Bond Buyer wrote "Low Yields Prompt Money Market Funds to Keep Waiving". It said, "Money market funds continue to waive big chunks of their management fees as yields on cash instruments remain too low to charge the full amount. A spike in certain short-term interest rates in the second and third quarters allowed money funds to reclaim a few basis points of the fees they had been waiving. It didn't last. Now that those interest rates have slipped back down, money market fund managers expect to continue reimbursing most of their fees to shareholders.... The industry is on pace to collect about $7.5 billion in fees this year, about half what it collected last year. Not all funds are waiving fees -- some are closing down altogether. There were more than 2,000 money funds at the end of 2008, according to the Investment Company Institute. Today, there are 1,775. If money fund complexes wanted to blame someone, it would be Ben Bernanke. The Federal Reserve chairman has pinned his target for short-term interest rates to zero since late 2008, and has repeatedly pledged to keep it there indefinitely. The Fed's overnight lending rate is officially in a range between 0% and 0.25%." Bond Buyer adds, "The average expense ratio for the 10 biggest tax-free money funds is 0.32%, according to Crane Data, compared with 0.22% for the biggest taxable funds. Peter Crane, founder of the firm, cited two reasons tax-free funds charge higher fees. The most important is that taxable funds are used principally by institutional investors, while tax-free funds are a retail phenomenon. That means taxable funds are executing more big-block transactions, while tax-free funds are dealing with smaller shareholders with smaller transactions."
