"Raise Your Own Rates" Says WSJ
The Wall Street Journal's "Intelligent Investor" column again takes a shot at lower-yielding cash options in its piece, "Raising Your Own Rates Even if the Fed Won't." Author Jason Zweig writes, "The Federal Reserve signaled on Wednesday that it will be 'patient' before raising interest rates again, but you should put your money in motion. In a few minutes and with a few clicks of a mouse, you can crank up the yield on your cash by two percentage points, often adding hundreds -- even thousands -- of dollars to your investment income annually. The only hard part is overcoming your own inertia." The Journal tells us, "The nearly $8 trillion of cash in savings deposits at commercial banks is earning interest at an average rate of 0.09%. The more than $1 trillion of cash at brokerage firms is paying investors just under 0.3% on average, estimates Peter Crane, president and publisher of Crane Data, a firm that monitors cash and other short-term investments. Meanwhile, savings accounts at online banks and short-term U.S. Treasury securities are yielding 2% to 2.5%.... In all likelihood, the only thing stopping you is you. Inertia may be the most powerful force in financial physics. Once you have cash in a bank or a brokerage account, moving it will tend to feel harder -- perhaps even 'riskier' -- than leaving it there. In what economists call 'the flypaper effect,' money tends to stick wherever it lands." Finally, Zweig adds, "Many money-market mutual funds are paying 2% and up. Although they aren't backed by the government, they hold short-term securities whose value tends to hold steady. (A money fund yielding much more than 2.5%, however, is probably taking excessive risk.) At Vanguard Group this week, taxable money-market funds were yielding between 2.31% and 2.48%, and tax-exempt money funds yielded 1.19% to 1.32%. Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab Corp., among other firms, also offer money-market funds with attractive yields."
