Peter Crane is about to expand his operation with a new money market fund database service. The Crane Data president and founder confirmed that he will launch Money Fund Wisdom next month, targeted at money market fund managers and large shareholders of those funds.

"People have been looking for an alternative means to set up custom universes of [money market] funds for queries," Crane told MFWire. "Money Fund Wisdom will allow users to build custom peer groups."

Crane already publishes Money Fund Intelligence (launched almost three years ago: see MFWire, 5/23/2006), and he just launched Money Fund Intelligence International to cover money market funds domiciled overseas (mostly in Dublin, Ireland or in Luxembourg). He sees this as the perfect time to help investors and money fund insiders gain access to more information.

"We lucked out on the timing ... There's been a surge in demand for information on money market mutual funds in the last year and a half," Crane added, pointing to both the infamous implosion of the Reserve Primary fund last fall and to the massive flows heading into money markets in light of the recent market turmoil. "A lot of people are stepping up their due diligence."

Money Fund Wisdom, which is still in beta, currently uses monthly data, but Crane aims to move to daily money fund data soon. 

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