Who's Making Money w/Your Cash?
The Tahoe Daily Tribune recently featured a personal finance piece, "Market Pulse: Who is making money with your cash?" It explains, "Now that short-term interest rates are on the rise yields on money-market funds are moving up as well. They used to pay close to nothing, now the three-month Treasury bill yields 2.4 percent and the funds are near that level as well. Cash is no longer trash. Long-suffering individual investors earning almost nothing for years are looking forward to reaping the rewards in their money-market funds. Not so fast. For many years the incoming cash in brokerage firm accounts was "swept" into whichever money-market fund a client chose.... Then brokerage firms had a better idea, at least better for them. They could sweep a client's incoming cash (and in some cases the entire balance) into a deposit account at a bank they own and pay very little interest on it (now 0.3 percent). Their cost of funds would remain rock bottom while interest rates on short-term vehicles rise. What could be better? Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Charles Schwab, Ameritrade and others have gone this route. Vanguard and Fidelity have not." Adviser David Vomund writes, "Not all is lost. At some firms that now only sweep cash to a bank they own clients can "purchase" one of several money-market funds as they would buy any security. At Schwab there is no commission to do so. If any firm charges to purchase a money-market fund their commission must be very small, a token. Ask your firm."
