Money Market Mutual Funds: Wall Street Journal

5/12/09

A money market mutual funds investment fund that holds the objective to earn interest for shareholders while maintaining a net asset value (NAV) of $1 per share. Mutual funds and banks offer these safe investment funds. Investor portfolios are comprised of short-term periods representing high-quality, liquid debt and monetary instruments.
A money market fund's purpose is to provide investors with a safe investment with easily accessible cash-equivalent assets characterized as a low-risk, low-return investment. Because of their relatively low risk & low returns, investors, such as those participating in employer-sponsored retirement plans, might not want to use money market funds as a long-term investment option.

As you probably know Money Market Mutual Funds have become extremely popular over the last 20 years. What was once just another obscure financial instrument is now a part of our daily lives. More than 80 million people, or one half of the households in America have money in mutual funds. That means that, in the United States alone, trillions of dollars are invested in mutual funds.

Originally, Money Market Mutual Funds were heralded as a way for the little guy to get a piece of the market. Instead of spending all your free time buried in the financial pages of the Wall Street Journal, all you had to do was buy a mutual fund and you'd be set on your way to financial freedom. As you might have guessed, it's not that easy. Mutual funds are an excellent idea in theory, but, in reality, they haven't always delivered. Not all mutual funds are created equal, and investing in Money Market Mutual Funds is not as easy as throwing your money at the first salesperson who solicits your business.

MONEY MARKET MUTUAL FUNDS REPORTS

A leading Money Market Mutual Fund provider of independent investment research, today reported estimated U.S. mutual fund asset flows through June 2012. Long-term mutual funds recorded their lowest monthly intake year to date with just $10.8 billion in new money, and money market funds saw outflows of $30.1 billion after tepid May inflows of $1.4 billion.

Additional highlights from Morningstar's report on mutual fund flows:

    Investors seem to have renewed their faith in municipal-bond funds and are increasingly comfortable taking on risk in search of yield. High-yield muni bond funds took in $6.7 billion through June, as the category's median return was 6.7% in the first half of the year.
    The balanced asset class, which includes primarily allocation funds, saw redemptions of $890 million in June, its first month of outflows in 2012. Some of the world-allocation category's most prominent offerings suffered outflows; BlackRock Global Allocation, IVA Worldwide, and Ivy Asset Strategy lost $460 million, $232 million, and $171 million, respectively.
    Taxable-bond funds saw inflows increase by more than $3.2 billion over last month to $10.9 billion. U.S.-stock funds remained in familiar territory with outflows of $8.5 billion, while international-stock funds, driven by inflows to diversified emerging-markets funds, collected $4.8 billion.
    DoubleLine Total Return Bond led all funds in June with inflows of $2.1 billion. It leads all funds over the trailing 12 months, too, with $18.1 billion in new assets.