Cash-related products gain with investors

Cash is creeping back. With interest rates rising and the stock market cooling from its big gains last year, some savers and investors are putting more money into once-dormant cash-related products such as money market funds, bank certificates of deposit and Treasury securities.

The net assets of money market mutual funds totaled $2.89 trillion as of June 6, the most since the financial crisis in 2008-09, according to the Investment Company Institute, a mutual fund trade group.

Money funds and other cash-related products were paid scant notice during the last decade because they paid so little, carrying interest rates not much above zero. That was largely due to the Federal Reserve Board’s stimulus monetary policy, in which it kept its benchmark short-term rates at nearly zero to help the country recover from the financial collapse.

As the U.S. economy bounced back, the stock market enjoyed a nineyear bull run that con- tinues today — the Dow Jones industrial average has soared nearly threefold since early 2009 — and investors were disinclined to keep much money in cash.

But the scenario changed starting in December 2015, when the Fed began nudging interest rates higher once again. The central bank has done so several times since then — most recently on June 13, when it lifted its key rate to a range of 1.75 percent to 2 percent — and two more increases are expected this year.