Article: Money market failings send bond funds soaring

In the mid-1980s, recalls Don Phillips, publisher of Morningstar Mutual Funds in Chicago, yields on money market mutual funds dropped below an important "benchmark" number: 10 percent. When that happened, investors started scrambling to find alternative low-risk funds that could keep their yields above the magic number. Many of them went into Ginnie Mae funds of mortgages backed by the Government National Mortgage Corp.

They got burned when homeowners refinanced mortgages and the plunging share prices on these funds chewed up all the yields, and then some.

Now, with money fund yields below another benchmark -- 6 percent, in the vicinity of passbook savings accounts -- investors are once ...

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