In what could have appeared to be an April Fool’s joke, but rather was just a coincidence, tax-exempt money market funds lost $1.79 billion in the week ended April 1 — the exact same amount of outflows that fled the industry in the prior week, according to The Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.
Some money fund experts may have been doing a double take, and indeed, this week’s outflows came on the heels of the same $1.79 billion of losses in the previous week when total net assets finished at $274.86 billion. Previously, there was a short-lived blip of inflows in the week ended March 18 when total assets rose by a scant $24.2 million and settled at $276.65 billion amid an otherwise outflow-laden trend lately.
The average, seven-day simple yield for the 425 reporting tax-exempt money funds remained at 0.01% while the average maturity decreased by one day to 29 days compared to last week.
Switching gears to the taxable money fund market, outflows of $9.54 billion caused total net assets to decrease to $2.341 trillion in the week ended April 2, which compares to the prior week when inflows of $11.30 billion caused total net assets to increase to $2.350 trillion.
The average, seven-day simple yield for the 1.028 taxable reporting money funds was unchanged at 0.02%, while the average maturity decreased by one day to 47 days.
Overall, the combined assets of the 1,453 reporting money funds lost $11.33 billion in the week ended April 2, as total net assets fell to $2.614 trillion. The losses follow $9.51 billion of inflows in the previous week when total net assets settled at $2.62 trillion.
