Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Breaking the Buck: phrase of the day

Money market funds mainly buy safe instruments, government bonds. They aggregate these and attract short term deposits.  Highly regulated and they operate under the assumption the rate curve increases, always. So, absent 'risk' of investment losses they mainly become a savings and loan bank. They call losing money breaking the buck because they keep their share values at one dollar.  when the company hasn't the cash to redeem at full value, it has broken the buck. So their shares are just certificates of deposit, not expected to be traded.

The subject came up as I learned a bit how DC and that humogous stock bubble would screw the money market funds. How many one year corporate notes filling the money market basket? How much of that interest expense depends on stock trading? I would think, not much.

This episode is all about DC and the debt and the Fed. Oddly, those three things are kind of confined, the culprits fenced in. Run on MM? No.

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