Money market maturities

Despite the fact that money market securities cover a narrow range of maturities-one year or less-there are maturities available within this range to meet just about every short-term cash and investment need. We must distinguish here between original maturity and actual maturity, however. The interval of time between the issue date of a security and the date on which the borrower promises to redeem it is the security‘s original maturity. Actual maturity, on the other hand, refers to the number of days, months, or years between today and the date the security is actually redeemed or retired.
Original maturities on money market instruments range from as short as one day on many federal funds transactions and loans to security dealers, out to a full year on some Eurodollar deposits, Banker‘s acceptances, bank certificates of deposit, and U.S. Treasury bills. Obviously, once a money market instrument is issued, it grows shorter in actual maturity every day. Because there are thousands of money market securities outstanding, some of which reach maturity each day, investors have a wide menu from which to select the precise number of days they need to invest cash.