Muni Money Funds Decline with the Arrival of Seasonal Outflows

Besides the usual weekly outflows that have been recurring of late, the money market fund industry became a casualty of seasonal outflows as significant withdrawals by individuals and corporations signaled the arrival of the filing deadline for federal income tax season in the week ended April 15, according to The Money Fund Report.

The total net assets for tax-exempt reporting money market funds declined to $269.49 billion following the loss of $3.63 billion in the week ended April 15, according to the report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

The outflows – which coincided with the traditional income tax deadline for individuals and compounded the usually heavy outflows that have occurred lately – came on the heels of the rare addition of a modest $57.1 million last week when total net assets finished at $273.12 billion. The average, seven-day simple yield for the 425 tax-exempt reporting funds remained unchanged at 0.01% from the prior week, while the average maturity remained at 29 days.

Meanwhile, the total net assets of the 1,028 reporting taxable funds dropped $22.99 billion to $2.309 trillion, compared to last week when the funds settled with $2.332 trillion after outflows of $8.44 billion.

The average, seven-day simple yield for the taxable funds remained unchanged at 0.02% from the previous week, while the average maturity increased by one day to 49 days from the prior week.

Overall, the combined total net assets of the 1,453 reporting money funds lost $26.62 billion – nearly triple the amount of last week’s $8.38 billion -- as total net assets settled at $2.579 trillion in the week ended April 16 -- a day after what is also the corporate income tax payment deadline.

Total net asset settled at $2.605 trillion in the prior week, according to the report.

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