ICI's latest "Trends in Mutual Fund Investing, April 2013" was released late last week, showing that money fund assets dropped by $24.5 billion, or 0.9%, in April, after falling $57.6 billion in March, $31.7 billion in February, and $9.1 billion in January. YTD through 3/31, ICI shows money fund assets down by $97.7 billion, or 3.6%. ICI also released its latest "Month-End Portfolio Holdings of Taxable Money Funds," which showed a rebound in holdings of Repurchase Agreements and an increase in Commercial Paper during April. (See Crane Data's May 13 News, "Repo Regains No. 1 Spot in April 30 Portfolio Holdings, CDs Again 2nd.") Money fund assets rebounded in May though. Month-to-date through 5/30, our MFI Daily shows assets rebounded by $36.4 billion, or 0.3%.
ICI's April "Trends" says, "The combined assets of the nation's mutual funds increased by $179.6 billion, or 1.3 percent, to $13.856 trillion in April, 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.... Bond funds had an inflow of $12.13 billion in April, compared with an inflow of $16.11 billion in March.... Money market funds had an outflow of $24.48 billion in April, compared with an outflow of $58.25 billion in March. Funds offered primarily to institutions had an outflow of $10.52 billion. Funds offered primarily to individuals had an outflow of $13.95 billion."
ICI's Portfolio Holdings for April 2013 show that Repos rose by $49.9 billion, or 10.4%, to $529.3 billion (22.9% of assets) after falling sharply in March; they regained their lead as the largest segment of taxable money fund portfolio holdings after being in a 3-way tie with CDs and Treasuries in March. Holdings of Certificates of Deposits, the second largest position, decreased by $26.5 billion to $453.0 billion (19.6%). Treasury Bills & Securities, the third largest segment, decreased by $42.2 billion to $436.9 billion (18.9%).
Commercial Paper remained the fourth largest segment ahead of U.S. Government Agency Securities; CP holdings rose by $18.3 billion to $375.8 billion (16.3% of assets) and Agencies fell by $14.4 billion to $317.2 billion (13.7% of taxable assets). Notes (including Corporate and Bank) fell fractionally again (down $2.8 billion) to $102.1 billion (4.4% of assets), and Other holdings rose by $6.1 billion to $86.4 billion (3.7%).
The Number of Accounts Outstanding in ICI's Holdings series for taxable money funds increased by 26,678 to 24.555 million, while the Number of Funds fell by 3 to 394. The Average Maturity of Portfolios remained flat for the third month in a row at 49 days in April. Over the past year, WAMs of Taxable money funds have lengthened by 4 days.
Finally, note that the archived version of our Money Fund Intelligence XLS monthly spreadsheet -- see our Content Page to download -- has Portfolio Composition and Maturity Distribution totals and final data corrections updated as of April 30, 2013 earlier today. We revise these following the monthly publication of our final Money Fund Portfolio Holdings data.
