Where to park excess cash in account?

Discussion in 'Stocks' started by Saltynuts, Apr 29, 2018.

  1. I've got an IB account, margin account, with an absolute ton of excess cash in it. I'm saving it as dry powder to slowly buy the dips.

    But its just been sitting in the account for awhile now, and I don't think I'm earning interest on it.

    Where would you park it to earn some (presumably) interest on it, but not risk very much, so that you could have access to it in short order when you need to liquidate it to get the funds to buy stocks? I obviously don't want to get into longer-term bonds/bonds funds due to risk of rates moving up a good bit. Short term bond fund? Ultra-short term bond fund? Actual short term treasuries?

    I'm way over the total $500,000 account insurance limit so I really need to move a good bit of it to additional brokers, but that is a separate issue haha. The most immediate thing is I hate losing out to inflation (and opportunity cost) on my cash!

    Thanks ETers.
     
  2. Overnight

    Overnight

    A saving account at a bank? A CD?
     
  3. You alluded to it ... cash IS a position.
     
  4. Overnight

    Overnight

    Yes, but he wants to try to earn some interest on said cash.
     
  5. Thanks gents. Yea, was really trying to earn a little something on the excess cash. Hate to pull it out and stick it into savings - would prefer to have it primed and ready to go. I know my dad talked about short-term bond funds back in the day, he said they would decline very little, but I looked at some and they are a little more volatile than I would have thought. There are ultra-short term funds it looks like, but not much interest there. I know that is just the price you pay haha. Don't know if there are any other options (other than bank as you mentioned Overnight).

    Thanks!
     
  6. If he's with IB he should be earning interest, they're paying 10,000.01 + 1.2% (BM - 0.5%) on balances over 10k$us.
     
  7. Oh are they eves? I'll take a look. Is that even on a margin account? How does that interest rate compare to what I might earn in a bank savings account, CD account, short-term bond fun, etc? Thanks!
     
  8. Yeah they even pay interest on your forex.

    1.2% on USD isn't bad, you'd have to have a 4 year CD to double that.
     
  9. Buy short term treasury bills and roll them over accordingly. That's what I have been doing with my excess cash. IB pays around 1.18% vs 1 month treasury bill of 1.6%. That's probably what IB does with our excess cash, they earn the spread.
     
  10. IB also lets you buy bonds including treasuries, corporate, muni, and CD's, etc.
     
    #10     Apr 29, 2018