The Investment Company Institute released its latest monthly "Trends in Mutual Fund Investing: March 2012" yesterday. It showed money market mutual fund assets fell by $70.7 billion to $2.5824 trillion last month. Money fund assets now account for 20.7% of overall mutual fund assets (total fund assets moved $61.6 billion higher to $12.458 trillion. Bond fund assets continued higher. After breaking $3.0 trillion last month for the first time, assets grew an additional $22.7 billion in March to $3.071 trillion, or 24.6% of assets. Separately, ICI's "Month-End Portfolio Holdings of Taxable Money Market Funds showed that declines in Repo holdings (down $65.6 billion) accounted for practically the entire drop in Taxable MMF assets in March. Funds also continued extending maturities.
ICI's "Trends" says, "The combined assets of the nation's mutual funds increased by $61.6 billion, or 0.5 percent, to $12.458 trillion in March, according to the Investment Company Institute's official survey of the mutual fund industry. In the survey, mutual fund companies report actual assets, sales, and redemptions to ICI..... Money market funds had an outflow of $70.63 billion in March, compared with an outflow of $3.01 billion in February. Funds offered primarily to institutions had an outflow of $57.58 billion. Funds offered primarily to individuals had an outflow of $13.05 billion."
In April month-to-date, Crane Data's Money Fund Intelligence Daily shows money fund assets virtually flat. They've declined by $782 million (down 0.0%) through 4/25/12). YTD, we show an overall asset decline of $110.8 billion, or 4.3%. Our daily series shows increases in Institutional and Prime Institutional funds in April; they've gained $15.9 billion and $20.0 billion, respectively. Taxable Retail funds have lost $9.9 billion MTD while Tax-Exempt funds have lost $6.8 billion.
ICI's Portfolio Holdings series shows Repurchase Agreements plunged in March (down $65.2 billion to $501.6 billion) after jumping $37.3 billion in February. Repos remain the largest portfolio holding among taxable money funds with 21.8% of assets, though Treasury Bills & Securities at 21.0% ($483.7 billion) were a close second. Holdings of Certificates of Deposits, which rank third among portfolio holdings, inched higher, rising $1.7 billion to $403.5 billion (17.5%).
Commercial Paper fell by $7.8 billion to $362.9 billion, but CP remained the fourth largest composition sector with 15.8% of taxable asset composition. U.S. Government Agency Securities saw holdings continue to fall, dropping $16.7 billion to $334.2 billion, or 14.5% of assets. Notes (including Corporate and Bank) accounted for 5.6% of assets ($128.9 billion), while Other holdings accounted for 3.5% ($81.5 billion).
The Number of Accounts Outstanding in ICI's Holdings series for taxable money funds dropped to 25.67 million from 25.71 million the month before, while the Number of Funds declined by 6 to 424. The Average Maturity of Portfolios lengthened to 46 days in March from 45 days in February and 42 days in December. Finally, note that the archived version of our Money Fund Intelligence XLS monthly spreadsheet (see our Content Page to download) now has its Portfolio Composition and Maturity Distribution totals updated as of March 31, 2012. (We revise these following the monthly publication of our Money Fund Portfolio Holdings data.)
In other news, Federated Investors announced its First Quarter 2012 Earnings late yesterday. The company hosts its quarterly earnings call Friday morning at 9am. Watch for coverage of the call in Monday's "News".
