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Portfolio Adjustments in Money Market Mutual Funds

Summary:
On the Liberty Street Economics blog, Catherine Chen, Marco Cipriani, Gabriele La Spada, Philip Mulder, and Neha Shah discuss last year’s regulatory changes regarding money market mutual funds: First, institutional prime and muni funds—but not retail or government funds—must now compute their net asset values (NAVs) using market-based factors, thereby abandoning the fixed NAV that had been a hallmark of the MMF industry. Second, all prime and muni funds must adopt a system of gates and fees on redemptions, which can be imposed under certain stress scenarios. Investors adjusted their portfolios in response to these changes: … investors’ shift from prime and muni funds to government—and, in particular, agency—funds means that a large segment of the industry still operates under a stable NAV (and therefore is, in principle, vulnerable to runs). … Since the new regulations have resulted in a very large shift of assets into relatively safe government funds, the SEC’s reforms have made runs on MMFs less likely and the industry itself more resilient.

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On the Liberty Street Economics blog,

First, institutional prime and muni funds—but not retail or government funds—must now compute their net asset values (NAVs) using market-based factors, thereby abandoning the fixed NAV that had been a hallmark of the MMF industry. Second, all prime and muni funds must adopt a system of gates and fees on redemptions, which can be imposed under certain stress scenarios.

Investors adjusted their portfolios in response to these changes:

… investors’ shift from prime and muni funds to government—and, in particular, agency—funds means that a large segment of the industry still operates under a stable NAV (and therefore is, in principle, vulnerable to runs). … Since the new regulations have resulted in a very large shift of assets into relatively safe government funds, the SEC’s reforms have made runs on MMFs less likely and the industry itself more resilient.

Dirk Niepelt
Dirk Niepelt is Director of the Study Center Gerzensee and Professor at the University of Bern. A research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR, London), CESifo (Munich) research network member and member of the macroeconomic committee of the Verein für Socialpolitik, he served on the board of the Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics and was an invited professor at the University of Lausanne as well as a visiting professor at the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES) at Stockholm University.

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