A multi-trillion-dollar mutual fund industry niche has grown to its biggest size in nearly a decade.

Mary Jo White Former Chair of the SEC

U.S. money market funds rose to $3.328 trillion in AUM this past Tuesday, August 20, Reuters reports, citing iMoneyNet's Money Fund Report. That's up $17.11 billion (0.52 percent) in a week and up $357 billion (12 percent) year-to-date.

$3.328 trillion is also the highest total U.S. money fund AUM since October 2009, the wire service notes. That was in the wake of the financial crisis, but before two rounds of SEC money fund reform; one in 2010 (smiled on by the ICI), and a second (after a 2012 retreat and chair change) in 2014.

Put another way, U.S. money fund AUM has risen 28 percent since 2014, when the SEC's second round of money fund reforms was unveiled. And in 2016, when those reforms took effect, estimates put outflows from prime money funds in the preceding 12 months at more than $1 trillion (though much of that flowed into government money funds).

The new Reuters report puts money funds' recent growth in the context of investors shifting "cash into low-risk products amid worries about a global economic slowdown and trade tensions." 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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