The Securities and Exchange Commission announced it will hold an open meeting on July 12 to consider a number of matters, including money market reforms.
At the end of 2021, the SEC had proposed extensive changes to the rules governing money market funds. These were prompted by issues that money market funds experienced during the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Among other things, the amendments (as proposed) would amend Investment Company Act Rule 2a-7 in order to increase daily and weekly liquid asset requirements for all money market funds, modify stress testing requirements, require funds to calculate their “dollar-weighted average portfolio maturity” (WAM) and “dollar-weighted average life maturity” (WAL) using market values for their portfolio securities, remove liquidity fee and redemption gate provisions from Rule 2a-7, and require swing pricing for non-government institutional money market funds (i.e., institutional prime and institutional tax-exempt MMFs). The amendments, if adopted, would have broad impacts on the short-term paper market.