MMF reform behind huge asset swings

iMoneyNet - Money Market Fund Analysis

The Pandemic’s Slippery Slope for T-F Funds

By Paul Adams 28 Jun 2021

The 2020 pandemic, and the policy response it generated from the U.S. Federal Reserve, greased an already slippery slope for U.S. tax-free (T-F) and municipal money-market funds. Over the following 16 months, such funds saw both their number and the assets they hold drop to historic lows. From January 2020 – just prior to the global COVID outbreak – to May of this year, the number of tax-free funds tracked by iMoneyNet declined 14%, from 187 to 162. During the same period the assets they manage declined from $141 billion to $92.4 billion, a 35% slump.

iMoneyNet - Money Market Fund Analysis

iMoneynet Monthly Fund Report

By Paul Adams 22 Jun 2021

The pandemic-fueled volatility of 2020 had the effect of driving total, taxable, government, and retail U.S. money-market fund assets higher, but it had the opposite effect on the already-struggling tax-free and municipal-fund sector of the industry, reducing the number of tax-free funds by nearly 15 percent since January 2020 and assets in those funds over the same period by 41.7 percent to the lowest levels since iMoneyNet began tracking tax-free fund data in 1981. As of end-May 2021, total assets in tax-free funds stood at $92.4 billion, down from $107 billion in early January and from $141.0 billion in January 2020, just prior to the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, as the table above shows. Similarly, the number of funds fell to 162 on May 31 of this year, a reduction from 185 as the year began and from 187 in early 2020. Read more...

iMoneyNet - Money Market Fund Analysis

iMoneynet Monthly Fund Report

By Paul Adams 24 May 2021

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey has added his voice and the BoE’s authority to the chorus of regulators, academic researchers, think tanks, and even some fund sponsors – such as Charles Schwab – in arguing for a reconsideration of the role played by MMFs last spring and advocating for additional reforms. In remarks delivered at a U.K. financial conference last week, Bailey explicitly refuted arguments made by MMF defenders that structural vulnerabilities in money funds played no significant or consequential role in last spring’s pandemic-induced “dash-for-cash,” and he committed the Bank – through the Financial Stability Board – to follow through on reforms so as “to avoid history repeating itself yet again.” Read more...