Our ranking of the top money market funds was created by applying a screen of several “must-have” metrics:
- AUM: All money market funds on this list have accrued a minimum AUM of at least $5 billion for their respective share class.
- Share class: All money market funds on this list represent share classes open to retail investors, not institutional investors.
- Minimum investment: To qualify for this ranking, a money market fund must have a minimum investment requirement of $3,000 or less.
- Type: This list only ranks government, prime and Treasury money market funds, with municipal money market funds excluded.
- Expense ratios: All money market funds on this list must have a 0.5% or less net expense ratio.
- Track record: A money market fund must have at least a 10-year performance history to be eligible for this list.
An experienced fund analyst selected the funds above, but they may not be right for your portfolio. Before purchasing any of these funds, do plenty of research to ensure they align with your financial goals and risk tolerance.
Why other funds didn’t make the cut
We began by filtering out money market funds that charge an expense ratio of 0.5% or higher. Given the long-term expected return of these funds tends to be low, minimizing fees can help investors keep more money in their pockets.
Next, we filtered out funds with less than a 10-year performance history and lower than $5 billion in AUM. This helped us identify established funds from large providers with economies of scale and a long track record of performance.
We also restricted our rankings to government, Treasury and prime money market funds. This meant excluding municipal money market funds. While these tax-exempt funds may be advantageous for investors in a higher income tax bracket, their yields tend to be lower, making them less suitable for the average investor.
We also filtered out money market funds only accessible to institutional investors and the institutional share classes of some money market funds. These usually require a large minimum investment, which makes them far less accessible to retail investors.
Finally, to ensure accessibility, we set a limit of $3,000 for the minimum investment a money market fund can initially require. This filtered out money market funds with high minimum investment requirements, making the rankings more accessible to beginner investors with smaller accounts.
