On the heels of a historic decline in the money market funds overall last week, tax-exempt funds stemmed their own losses to nearly half of last week’s outflows. Approximately $2.03 billion fled the market and total assets closed at $370.07 billion during the week ending March 22, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.
Last week, the funds saw outflows of $4.93 billion and ended with $372.11 billion in total assets.
The average seven-day simple yield for the 498 tax-exempt money funds reporting this week inched up to 0.03% from last week’s all-time low of 0.02%, while the average maturity decreased by one day to 27 days compared to the previous week.
After taxable money funds posted the third-largest one-week decline in history last week, outflows tapered off to $1.04 billion this week, causing the 1,165 reporting funds to end with $2.618 trillion, according to the report. That compares to $2.619 trillion in total assets last week when the funds saw a whopping $70.70 billion of outflows following the arrival of the March 15 corporate tax deadline and as a result of competition from the 0.20% effective federal funds rate that drew money for direct cash investments away from the lower-yielding money funds.
The average seven-day simple yield for taxable funds remained in the record-low territory of 0.02% for the seventh consecutive week.
Overall, the combined assets of the 1,663 money funds in the report this week lost $3.08 billion and ended with $2.988 trillion in total assets. That compares to the previous week when the funds closed with $2.991 trillion after the huge outflows caused the funds to plummet by $75.63 billion. It was the first time that money funds fell below $3 trillion since they finished with $3.017 trillion back on Nov. 20, 2007.
