Web Exclusive: Tax-Exempt Money Market Funds See $1.61B of Inflows

Tax-exempt money market funds saw inflows of $1.61 billion for the week ending Nov. 24 and reached $494.08 billion in total assets, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com of Westborough, Mass.

The latest inflow activity was a stark reversal of the previous week, when the funds lost $4.11 billion and settled with $492.47 billion in total assets for the week ending Nov. 18, and is more in line with the $1.59 billion of inflows the funds took in for the week ending Nov. 10, when they ended with $496.58 billion.

Last week, the 516 tax-exempt and municipal money funds in the report saw the average seven-day yield drop to 0.84% from 0.89%, while the average maturity remained unchanged at 30 days.

In addition, yields continue to fall in most other segments of the short-term market, although not as dramatically as they had in recent weeks. For instance, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s weekly swap index fell to 1.12% on Nov. 19 compared with 1.14% on Nov. 12.

The yields, however, have been dropping steadily and more dramatically prior to the last two weeks, down from a high of 7.96% back on Sept. 24 at the height of the nation’s financial turmoil, according to Municipal Market Data.

Meanwhile, the yield on weekly variable-rate demand obligations fell Nov. 26 to 1.66%, down from 1.74% on Nov. 20, according to MMD. The yield on daily VRDOs rose slightly to 1.18% on Nov. 26, up from 1.11% on Nov. 20.

Back in the money fund arena, the 1,250 taxable money market funds in the report added inflows of $36.36 billion for the week ending Nov. 25 to set a new all-time high of $3.14 trillion. That compared with the prior week when the funds ended the week of Nov. 18 with $3.10 trillion — which also set a new record — after $59.74 billion of additional inflows caused them to surpass the $3.044 trillion record set on Nov. 11.

Overall, the combined total assets of the 1,766 money funds in the report ended the week of Nov. 25 with $3.63 trillion in total assets after seeing inflows of $37.97 billion and again surpassing the former record high. The previous week the funds increased by $55.63 billion and ended the week of Nov. 18 with a record high of $3.596 trillion. At the time that also topped the previous record of $3.540 trillion for the week ending Nov. 11, when the funds gained $21.21 billion, according to the report.

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