Money Market News
The Investment Company Institute released its latest weekly "Money Market Fund Assets" report Thursday and its latest monthly "Trends in Mutual Fund Investing - June 2025" and "Month-End Portfolio Holdings of Taxable Money Funds" on Wednesday. The former shows money fund assets rising $1.5 billion to a near-record $7.076 trillion, after rising $9.2 billion the week prior and falling $6.8 billion two weeks prior. Assets rose $55.6 billion to a record $7.078 trillion four weeks ago (the week ended July 2). MMF assets are up by $942 billion, or 15.4%, over the past 52 weeks (through 7/30/25), with Institutional MMFs up $520 billion, or 14.3% and Retail MMFs up $422 billion, or 16.9%. Year-to-date, MMF assets are up by $226 billion, or 3.3%, with Institutional MMFs up $47 billion, or 1.1% and Retail MMFs up $179 billion, or 6.5%.
This week, we heard another batch of second-quarter earnings calls for brokerages, and there still are some analyst questions and comments on cash sweeps and money markets. Raymond James Financial CFO Jonathan Oorlog says, "Client domestic cash suite and enhanced savings program balances ended the quarter at $55.2 billion, down 4% compared to the preceding quarter and representing 3.8% of domestic ... client assets. Program balances increased by nearly $1 billion in the month of June after seasonal declines for client tax payments and fee billings resulted in decreases early in the quarter. In July, domestic cash sweep and enhanced savings program balances have declined to date, in line with July's record quarterly fee billings of approximately $1.7 billion." (See the earnings call transcript here.) (Note: For those attending our European Money Fund Symposium, Sept. 22-23 in Dublin, our discounted hotel rate expires August 1.)
With less than 2 months to go, we're ramping up preparations for the 11th Annual Crane's European Money Fund Symposium, which will take place Sept. 22-23 at the Hilton Dublin in Dublin, Ireland. The latest agenda is now available and registrations are still being taken for our European money market mutual fund event. We provide more details on the show below, and feel free to contact us for more information. Our 2024 European Symposium event in London attracted over 210 money fund professionals, sponsors and speakers. Given the continued growth in money fund assets, trends like tokenization and expectations for another round of regulatory changes in Europe, we expect our show in Dublin to once again be the largest gathering of money market professionals outside the U.S. (Note: For those attending, please make your hotel reservations ASAP. Our discounted rate expires August 1 and we expect our block of rooms to sell out shortly.)
International Monetary Fund Economist Kleopatra Nikolaou published a Working Paper titled, "Money Market Fund Growth During Hiking Cycles: A Global Analysis," which tells us, "This paper examines the drivers of money market funds (MMFs) growth during monetary policy hiking cycles. Analyzing data from nine countries with notable MMF sectors post-pandemic, it examines three main drivers: yield differentials between MMFs and bank deposits, banking turmoils that affect perceptions of relative safety for traditional cash options, and structural characteristics (types) of MMFs. The findings indicate that MMFs attract capital during rising interest rates driven primarily by yield-seeking behavior. This pattern persisted following the 2023 banking turmoil, particularly in the U.S., where yield remained the dominant driver. After accounting for yield differentials, MMF growth was not unusually high compared to previous hiking cycles, suggesting limited evidence of widespread flight-to-safety flows. Moreover, when MMF yields rise, investors in the US and the euro area increasingly favor private debt MMFs, likely due to their higher yields. The study underscores the trade-off between safety and yield in investor behaviour, providing insights for policymakers on enhancing financial stability." (Note: Crane Data's Peter Crane will join AFP's Tom Hunt, Invesco's Laurie Brignac and Masco's Marcel Santiz on a webinar Tuesday (7/29) from 3-4pm ET titled, "Liquidity in Flux: Insights from the 2025 AFP Liquidity Survey.")
Late last month, Money Fund Symposium's keynote session, "The Future of Cash," featured State Street Investment Management CEO Yie-Hsin Hung. She says, "It's fantastic to be here with all of you. I want to thank Peter first and foremost for everything that he does for the money fund industry. No one tracks cash better than you. And everyone here relies on your insights, your data, your wisdom in one way or another. So I'm really glad to be here with all of you. And yes, even with my competitors, it's rare to have so many asset managers and industry experts all in one place. But when we do come together, there’s a very good reason. Events like these give us a chance to take a big picture look where we've been, where we are, where we're headed. And I'd like to give my thoughts on that today, especially with respect to the future of cash. We think about this a lot at State Street." (Note: This article is reprinted from the July issue of Money Fund Intelligence, which was published on July 8. Contact us at info@cranedata.com to request the full issue or to subscribe.)
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published its latest monthly "Money Market Fund Statistics" summary, which shows that total money fund assets rose by $4.3 billion in June 2025 to a record high $7.473 trillion, after hitting a record $7.468 trillion the month prior. The SEC shows Prime MMFs increased $9.8 billion in June to $1.280 trillion, Govt & Treasury funds decreased $0.7 billion to $6.051 trillion and Tax Exempt funds decreased $4.7 billion to $142.6 billion. Taxable yields were mixed in June after previous decreases in May, April, March, February and January. The SEC's Division of Investment Management summarizes monthly Form N-MFP data and includes asset totals and averages for yields, liquidity levels, WAMs, WALs, holdings, and other money market fund trends. We review their latest numbers below. (Our MFI XLS monthly shows money fund assets increasing $4.7 billion in June 2025 to a record of $7.419 trillion. In July month-to-date through 7/23, total money fund assets have increased by $42.8 billion to $7.449 trillion, according to Crane Data's separate, and slightly smaller, MFI Daily series.)
A press release titled, "BNY and Goldman Sachs Launch Tokenized Money Market Funds Solution" explains, "The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation ('BNY') (BK), a global financial services company, and the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS) today announced a collaborative initiative by which BNY will employ blockchain technology developed by Goldman Sachs to maintain a record of customers' ownership of select Money Market Funds (MMFs), in a significant step towards enhancing the utility and transferability of existing MMF shares. This combined solution marks the first time in the U.S. that fund managers have enabled subscription for shares of their MMFs via BNY's LiquidityDirect and Digital Asset platforms, the corresponding value of which will be represented through mirrored record tokenization utilizing GS DAP. BlackRock, BNY Investments Dreyfus, Federated Hermes, Fidelity Investments, and Goldman Sachs Asset Management will participate in the initial launch." (See the info sheet on LiquidityDirect here.)
A blog posting from Circle Internet, titled, "Real-Time Collateral with Tokenized Money Market Funds Has Arrived," tells us, "Financial markets have evolved. The infrastructure supporting them -- built for an age of limited banking hours and multi-day settlement -- has struggled to keep pace. This is especially evident in the world of collateral and liquidity management, where demand for 24/7/365 markets runs headfirst into the limitations of legacy financial infrastructure. That's a problem. Delayed settlements, overnight liquidity buffers, credit risk, manual processing, and opaque-risk exposures pose challenges to capital efficiency and resiliency -- especially during periods of volatility. As the issuer of USYC, a tokenized money market fund with onchain settlement, and USDC, the world's largest regulated stablecoin, we see these challenges firsthand. Thankfully, we also see a path forward." (Note: We'll be featuring a session on "Tokenized Money Funds & Tech Issues" at our European Money Fund Symposium, which will be held Sept. 22-23, 2025 in Dublin, Ireland.)
EFAMA, the European Fund and Asset Management Association, recently published its annual "Fact Book," which includes a wealth of statistics on European-domiciled funds and a section on European money market funds. The press release titled, "EFAMA's 2025 Fact Book shows consistently declining fund costs and a steady shift towards larger funds," tells us, "EFAMA ... published its 2025 industry Fact Book. This year's edition includes an in-depth analysis of trends in the European investment fund industry (for 2024 and over the longer term) and an extensive overview of regulatory developments across 29 European countries. It also contains a series of info-boxes addressing some important regulatory topics EFAMA is actively working on, including retail investment, sustainability reporting, securitisation, financial data access, DEBRA, AI and tokenisation." See the full EFAMA 2025 Fact Book here. (Note: Please join us for our European Money Fund Symposium, which is Sept. 22-23, 2025 in Dublin, Ireland. Registrations are still being accepted and our discounted hotel rate expires July 28.)
BNY and State Street released earnings earlier this week, and both custodial banks discussed money markets, stablecoins and tokenized money markets. BNY says in their Q2 2025 Earnings about "Digital Assets and Stablecoin Developments," "The company was selected as reserve custodian for Societe Generale's first USD stablecoin in Europe in June 2025, and as primary custodian for Ripple's US stablecoin reserves (as announced in July 2025).... Today, BNY is a leader in servicing the growing stablecoin market, enabling companies to create and use stablecoins by providing wide-ranging services from issuance to ongoing operations. Our advancements in the digital assets ecosystem are just one example of continual innovation, but there are many others."
Earlier this week, we learned of the pending launch of yet another (the 6th) Money Market Fund ETF, the second launch from a virtually unknown company. A press release titled, "Introducing the Simplify Government Money Market ETF (SBIL)," tells us, "Simplify Asset Management ('Simplify') ... announced a further expansion of its lineup of income-focused ETFs with the launch of the Simplify Government Money Market ETF (SBIL). SBIL seeks current income consistent with liquidity and stability of principal by investing at least 99.5% of its assets in cash, U.S. Government securities, and repurchase agreements fully collateralized by such obligations or cash. The fund maintains a portfolio dollar-weighted average maturity of 60 days or less and a dollar-weighted average life of 120 days or less. The fund is a true money market fund, in an ETF wrapper, and can be considered a 'cash' position of particular use for those investors seeking the stability of a money market fund." (See our July 10 Link of the Day, "JPMorgan Files for Money Market ETF," on the pending launch of the 5th Money Market ETF.)
BlackRock released its Q2'25 earnings and hosted its earnings call Monday, and made several comments on cash, fixed-income and its relationship with stablecoin provider Circle. Chairman & CEO Larry Fink says, "From category innovation and iShares to new ventures across the world, the investments we made across our platform are paying off. Many of the categories that are leading our growth barely existed 2 years ago, categories like active ETFs, digital assets and our scaled private markets franchise. Just as importantly, BlackRock's core businesses like ETFs, Aladdin and cash management continue to be a growth engine for the firm and are cornerstones of many client relationships."
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