Bogleheads.org

Hogan773 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 3:51 pm So the SIFMA index is showing 4.35% yesterday and today. Is that right? I kept looking it up on Bloomberg or the SIFMA website and I thought it was wrong because of how high it was vs the VMSXX SEC yield that I had been seeing a few days back (in the 2s)

Right. It updates once a week, usually on Wednesday. It went up from 2.64 to 4.35 this week.

The large majority of holdings in Muni MM funds seem to be tied to this index. Most rates seem to reset on Thursdays, with a bit of movement on Wednesday. I swapped yesterday, on Thursday.

I can confirm that I earned more than 4% on the 1 day yield yesterday in VMSXX by viewing accrued dividends by date.

I may give up on this watching/swapping thing haha. I hadn't looked in a couple days and now the VMSXX 7 day yield is shooting up again, so right now it is better than VUSXX tax adjusted. I guess given the reporting lag of the 7-day yield, that means I probably am late again in switching over. So while I haven't thought through this perfectly, my gut is that any benefit here really requires one to pretty much perfectly catch the right crossover points. If one doesn't, but gets "close" then the benefit will be lower and may be just the same as doing nothing, so lots of work for nothing. WORST case if one is too sloppy and really misses the crossover points with a lag, then one may actually be doing worse than just leaving it in VM...

MisterMister wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 8:21 am
This will work at Fidelity, but you must have a margin account. Converting to a margin account was very simple for me to do, though the margin account itself takes some getting used to. In retrospect I don't think I'd make the choice just for this capability; I'll just use auto-roll where I want it.

I've done it at Fidelity without a margin account, but I need to have additional funds in a separate Fidelity account. I transfer in $1000 times the number of bonds I want to purchase, place the auction order, and then immediately transfer the money out. If I don't transfer the money out, I lose access to those funds between auction and settlement.

I was thrilled when a new BoA branch was being built just a couple miles from my house. The day it opened I went down an asked the branch manager if I could get a safe deposit box. He sorta smiled and said the new banks in the area (CO) were not being built with safe deposit boxes :oops: So I'm moving to NC in a couple weeks and hope I'll have better luck. I've been a customer since NCNB days. Moving to another state because BoA doesn't have any deposit boxes available seems like a slight overreaction. I was about to suggest using BoA's locator website https://locators.bankofamerica.com/ to find the locations with safety deposit boxes, but it looks like that they stopped displaying whether or not a branch has them on that site in around ea...

Ferdinand2014 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 11:52 am I noticed on the Fidelity fixed income website, 2 curious treasury bills I have never seen before. 1 has settlement date of 3/28 and maturity of 4/6 and another settlement date of 3/28 and maturity of 4/17. There is also the usual 3 month t-bill which is what I was purchasing. Is this a temporary funding gap or irregular auction? These are not secondary market offerings, but under new issue menu.

Those are 7 and 17 day CMBs that auction on the 28th and are issued on the 30th and 31st respectively.

You can view CMB and other Treasuries after announcement and before auction here: https://www.treasurydirect.gov/auctions/upcoming/

dchobo wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 2:22 am A few more newbie questions (sorry if it's already covered here):

How many CMA accounts can I create?
Can I have: a personal account, a joint account with my spouse, a "trust" account -- 3 different CMA accounts?
And can I link them to a single login?
Can I transfer between CMA accounts, as well as my main brokerage account?

thanks in advance

I don’t think there’s a low limit. If you want higher ATM withdrawal limits, you can probably open a couple dozen if you wanted.

I like that you can name and categorize them, so you can use them for different purposes. I like that my CMA accounts have near zero balances until I need to withdraw money, which protects my main current account.

The SIFMA Swap index jumped to 4.35 yesterday, even higher than February. If you’re comfortable with munis MM funds, it probably is time to switch back.

Edit: FZEXX jumped to 4.00% today. Since VMSXX's 7 day yield jumped 0.22% to 3.03%, and FZEXX's 7-day yield jumped a similar amount, I expect that VMSXX's current yield is about 4.15%.

Merrill Edge has instant transfers between a BoA checking account and offers institutional class money market funds with only a $1k minimum that are comparable in yields to Vanguard's. So for someone with a BoA checking, this may be more desirable since there is no lag waiting for money to transfer. My understanding is that if you sell TTTXX before 1:45PM ET on a trading day you can transfer it instantly to the checking account. Otherwise you'd have to wait until the next day. I get an error whenever I've tried to place an order when the market was closed. I think Preferred Deposit allows for same day purchases and sales online on trading days before 5PM with instant transfers available to a BoA checking account, but I am unsure on the det...

I have Online Shopping as my 3% choice for my CCR credit card. Will purchasing airline tickets (from Alaska Airlines website) come under Online Shopping or should I change my category to Travel ? Not sure about directly purchasing but if you can purchase with PayPal, Google, or Amazon pay it should count as Online. I use PayPal with American Airlines and Airbnb and it counts as Online. Also, you can change categories anytime in the month and you can again after the 1st of the month, you don't have to wait 30 days or anything. It will be travel. Generally, online shopping is for physical things that are shipped to you. Or businesses who mainly sell physical things. Are you positive or just guessing? The Transaction Category is a separate fi...

It's a good question though if selling now turns the 6k of interest into capital gains and thus state income taxable. I haven't tried this before so I don't know how it gets reported by the broker. I assume that there's a straight line interpolation of the value between the purchase and maturity date of the bill and if sold early there would be (state-taxable) capital gains/losses on the difference between the interpolation and the sale price. If that's correct, I don't know if the brokerage figures that out for you, or if you have to do it yourself. I think it's covered in the Taxation of Treasury bills, notes and bonds topic somewhere. I've never sold a bill in a taxable account before maturity, so I don't have to deal with this issue.

sycamore wrote: ↑Sat Mar 18, 2023 12:16 pm Treasuries are traded on the open market -- there's no "net asset value" pricing like with mutual funds.

Also note that unlike stocks and ETFs, I don't think there's a single market for these bills. You may see better or worse bid-ask spreads from different brokerages, and you may get better pricing when buying or selling smaller quantities.

I've found Vanguard and Fidelity to have similar pricing, and Schwab appears to often have slightly better pricing for lower quantities. This could have more significance for the less liquid Treasury securities where the bid-ask spreads are wider.

Historical auction results might be preferable if anyone knows of a source for that data. Sure. https://www.treasurydirect.gov/auctions/auction-query/ Under Security-Term, put in the term, like "4-Week", and you can get the price per $100 for Bills auctioned from November 1998. Currently, 4, 8, 13, 17, and 26 week are auctioned every week. 52 week is auctioned every 4 weeks. Until they became "official" weekly auctions in October 2022, 17-week bills were auctioned every week as "119-Day" Cash Management bills from December 2020, and most weeks since April 2020. Recent auctions are posted here: https://www.treasurydirect.gov/auctions/announcements-data-results/, where they list the high rate and investment rate...

vaylie wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 10:56 pm Anyone here use the Unlimited Rewards card to pay their taxes? I don't have any experience with how reliable the third-party processors are. But at 1.85% (payUSATax) fee vs 2.625% cashback that we get, it seems a better deal than paying it via bank ACH. That said, I'd rather nothing go wrong with my tax payment than try to squeeze out 0.775% rewards.

I've made well over a hundred Federal tax payments over the years using the approved credit/debit card processors listed on the IRS website. I've never had a lost payment.

I keep an electronic copy of each receipt, but I've never had to use them.

SnowBog wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 10:54 pm Yep - last I checked (around 3/9) - even at the 35% bracket, TEY on FZEXX was 3.6% vs. 4.46% on FZDXX... No comparison...

FZEXX generally tracks the the SIFMA municipal swap index, which is volatile and is generally is released on Wednesday. It went up slightly today.

It could make sense to swap in and out when the TEY yields of FZEXX are higher than other options, though the benefits may be marginal.

Electron created a chart comparing FTEXX and the Swap index. viewtopic.php?p=7156764#p7156764

I used FZEXX from around February 8-March 1 this year when the yield was higher.

Replying to myself, note my last line: "the process for setting up auto-pay with BoA credit cards has changed over the years." I just got bit by this. I have a CCR card that I setup auto-pay on years ago. Apparently that auto-pay system has no connection to the current system and today you can find no reference to it on the BofA website or on your on-line account information. It just continues to work but is otherwise opaque. So I used Bill Pay to what I thought would change the auto-pay. Nope! Turns out I now had two auto-pays set up on the same account - one through the legacy system and one through Bill Pay. And sure enough, the account was double-paid. Fortunately the amount was only about $130 and the old account it was paid...

I used the Fidelity card for several years in Australia at ATM's, and tried to compare it to the exchange rate I got on POS purchases I made with a Capital One "No FTF" credit card on the same day, and from what I could tell there was no difference in the exchange rate received. It may have been a 1% 'spread' relative to the mid-market exchange rate, but it wasn't any different that what I got from a card explicitly saying there was no FTF. It would be interesting if someone with a Schwab and Fidelity ATM card made a withdrawal at the same time from the same foreign location and could compare the exchange rate they received on both. You should get the same rate with Schwab and Fidelity. I've done identical ATM withdrawals in the ...

drumboy256 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 11:02 am So question from a T-bill newbie---
(CUT)
I chose not to auto-roll which my assumption is the capital ($996.39) becomes available and settled back into my CMA account after market close on April 11th? Assumption is the yield on $1,000 will then be part of that settled money?

Either way, if all is this painless at Fidelity, I'm surprised anyone wants to deal with Treasury Direct?

The face value of the bond ($1000) should be available shortly after midnight on the maturity date.

Until your auction purchase settles on Tuesday, the funds required to purchase ($996.39) is deducted from your cash available to withdraw, but it should still be earning money in the settlement or money market fund.

Leesbro63 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 9:32 am I think there was some discussion about free safe deposit boxes for those with $100,000+ at the Merrill/BOFA group. Am I remembering correctly, and how hard is it to get one?

Platinum Honors ($100K tier) gets the box.

Difficulty depends on the branch.

When I wanted to open one, the closest financial center was "temporarily closed" (and still is over a year later). Existing safety deposit boxes could be accessed by appointment only.

Another nearby one had a 9 year waiting list. I called another one and they had a few different boxes available.

I’m curious how many banks this requires in your experience because to keep $400M under FDIC limits requires 1,600 banks which doesn’t seem realistic so trying to understand the alternatives as a business. Not all banks are the same. If I had $400M that I had to keep in cash at a bank, even for a short period of time, I would only keep it in one of the top 4 banks by assets in the US. They are all Global Systemically Important Banks , and undergo regular stress tests that are greater than those smaller banks in the US do. Because of their size and importance to the US and world economy, I would be comfortable that my money is very safe there, even above the FDIC limits, and I would expect that the government would bail out one of these ban...

Obviously all the employees are worried. Is it true the company will get all their deposits back that are above the limits? I've read that many Silicon Valley companies use this bank and they're definitely under the $250k FDIC limit? Will this likely lead to a string of tech companies going bankrupt and worsen the current recession?! At this point, I don't think there's much public information about this and I don't want to guess. If you have an affected account, contact the FDIC, as they stated in their press release. The FDIC has promised an advanced dividend in the next week to uninsured depositors. I assume they're adding up all the assets and liabilities of the bank, and trying to find a buyer. There will probably be a lot more inform...

GP813 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 11:08 am I'm not trying to scaremonger please don't characterize my posts. But it can take years for depositors to get payed back, we saw this with the failure of Lehman Brothers and WAMU.

Is this correct?

It looks like uninsured Wamu depositors got 100% of their money back in eight days.

It looks like almost all retail depositors of the broker/dealer got recovery quickly from Lehman Brothers, though some institutional accounts took longer. https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkf ... ankruptcy/

bbrock wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 1:50 pm If I’m looking at it correctly, the premium rewards has an annual fee of $95, correct?

Yes, and $25 minimum redemption. I think the signup bonus is pretty good $500 of points on $3000. You also get $100 in airline incidental credit a (calendar) year. AA gift cards can be useful redemptions that have worked in the past. I think Southwest ticket purchases under $100 also count.

For me, the travel category is worth a lot to me as my rent counts as travel but not on non BoA cards, and I don’t have enough CCRs to cover my rent yet.

manlymatt83 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 09, 2023 11:15 am Here's how we can verify:

- Take trip to Europe

- Insert Schwab ATM card and Fidelity CMA ATM card into two side by side ATMs at same time. Withdraw $500 from both.

- Compare total USD charges. Should be identical.

I may try this on my next trip.

I've done this before and got the same rate from as another Visa network ATM withdrawal that had no forex fees in at least one foreign country. I think the rate should also match the rate on the Visa website: https://usa.visa.com/support/consumer/t ... lator.html

anon_investor wrote: ↑Wed Mar 08, 2023 8:34 pm How small are the denominations can you buy for the digital ones? Can you use the digital gcs to checkout at the Costco self checkout lanes? Do you need a print out, or is there a way to have it on your phone?

Both Physical and Digital cards are currently available online in these denominations: 25, 50, 100, 250, 500

They can be used at regular and self checkouts in the US and Canada and can be scanned from a phone or printout. One option is to save a screenshot of the bar code.

Digital may not work at food court, membership counter, refunds, price adjustment, gas.

Digital should be able to be used to reload or purchase physical cards in warehouse.

Costco app cannot store gift cards, but can be used for membership card.

anon_investor wrote: ↑Wed Mar 08, 2023 7:54 pm I dont think BoA issues new MC CCRs anymore. All 4 of my CCRs are Visas. I never saw an option for a MC version.

Ah, I had forgotten the details of the previous discussion in this thread. Warehouse clubs offer 2x (3.50% back with 75% bonus), while online category offers 3x points (5.25% back).

Before with lower interest rates and physical cards, I kept larger balances on the physical "shop" cards. Now I buy smaller denomination digital ones, that are delivered faster, and I don't have as much float and the risk of loss is less.

anon_investor wrote: ↑Wed Mar 08, 2023 7:23 pm
She can just shop at Costco with the CCR and get 3.5% cash back on up to $2.5k/qtr. That is what we do.

Some CCR cards use Mastercard, and are not accepted at US Costco warehouses.

For folks with states/local income tax(es), after factoring in taxes, FDLXX currently may actually yield a little more than FZDXX. FDLXX is a retail treasury only money market fund so it is not subject to liqudity gates, so in theory it is a little safter than FZDXX. Thanks for the pointer. I’ll switch now. Even with the 0.42% ER, it seems to be better when interest rates are higher at my marginal state tax rate. Too bad I haven’t found a feasible workaround to get FSIXX, a lower cost Treasury Only fund at Fidelity. ($1 million minimum). You can get it at Merrill Edge with a $1000 minimum, but they reportedly won’t transfer out in kind. I wonder if a transferring a security to another Fidelity user would work to bypass mutual fund minimums...

Got it. Sounds like there's no way around the initial $100k purchase. I have that in stock but don't really want to sell any - I wonder if I could do an overnight purchase with margin. Yes. There appears to be some interest cost to it. See the previous post and subsequent posts in this thread: https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6906499#p6906499 You'd need to decide if it's worth it to you for the slightly higher rate. There's some delay after purchase before it can be transferred to another account, but you can probably sell the excess after a business day, so it may make sense to buy the minimum on a Monday-Thursday, and sell some on the next day. I've elected to not enable margin on my Fidelity accounts. I think there's som...

manlymatt83 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:34 am If you transferred $100 in kind to your CMA, wouldn't that cause a distribution penalty?

You could try transferring $0.01, which rounds to $0. I keep small amounts of minimum purchase Fidelity MMF in a separate brokerage account in order to replenish my main account if I sell off all of the fund. Note that it takes a business day or so for the system to recognize the fund in the new account and for you to be able to purchase additional shares below the minimum purchase.

... So you have to setup autopay before a statement closes? Otherwise you have to manually payoff the current statement? That's what the rep told me. And they won't make a one-time adjustment even though they can see this was an honest mistake and that the autopay was set up in advance of the due date. Apparently there was some fine in print in the autopay agreement that I missed. If I remember correctly, there's no way to set up AutoPay for the first statement. I think you need to set it up after that statement is sent and manually schedule the first payment. On the Desktop web site you can see Scheduled payments on the right of the Payment Center page. The new Autopay is better than the old one, which isn't saying much. The two Autopays ...

VUSXX did not invest in repurchase agreements in the past and I wonder what has changed. Is it related to cash flows, liquidity, investment return, or the Federal Reserve Reverse Repo Operation? Vanguard's taxable Money Market funds are all listed as eligible Reverse Repo counterparties. Look at the links under Resources. Without much evidence one way or another, I wonder if the debt ceiling being hit is related. The extraordinary operations from the Treasury could result in less availability of new bills than previously expected. That combined with the higher demand for cash could result in higher repo usage. The January refunding statement said : Until the debt limit is suspended or increased, debt limit-related constraints will lead to ...

Assume a retail investor who: - can purchase Treasury bonds on the secondary market through their broker without any fees or markups (e.g., via Charles Schwab ). - can only submit non-competitive bids when purchasing Treasury bonds on the primary market, i.e. cannot submit competitive bids (e.g., that's a limitation of the Charles Schwab website ). Is it financially preferable to purchase Treasury bonds on the primary market or on the secondary market? E.g., the secondary market has a bid-ask spread, while non-competitive bids typically give sub-optimal yield-to-maturity. Let's ignore the fact that the investor may have to wait for the auction date on the primary market. It can depend on what you're looking for. I've been buying long term ...

The Vanguard site has updated the weighted exposures for VUSXX as of 2/28/23. Repurchase Agreements 24.30% U.S. Govt. Obligations 4.10% U.S. Treasury Bills 71.60% Many of us were hoping to see a lower percentage in Repurchase Agreements compared with last month. I believe the percentage increased by a small amount. The details on the actual holdings are not yet available. I'll be interested to see if the fund is holding another large overnight repo. If the yield rises sharply following the next Fed rate hike, that would indicate a meaningful position in overnight repos. I'm feeling better about my decision to move to my own T-Bill ladder for purposes of the state tax exemption. Thanks for the update. While I plan to hold a small amount of ...

exodusing wrote: ↑Mon Mar 06, 2023 2:27 pm Please link to the relevant SIFMA index.

At the moment, I'm monitoring NY MM and VUSXX 7-day yields. VUSXX has been pretty stable recently, while NY has been moving a fair amount. I'm also looking at Blackrock's muni MM (since it's easy to pull), comparing the 1-day and 7-day yields and figuring NY MM's direction can be predicted by the spread between the two Blackrock numbers.

It looks like most holdings of muni MM funds are tied to the SIFMA swap index, so most of the change in the index, usually released on Wednesdays, is reflected in the fund yields on Thursday.

BoglesBeagle wrote: ↑Sat Mar 04, 2023 2:57 pm

stilllurking wrote: ↑Sat Mar 04, 2023 2:46 pm This is the first time I used Chase auto pay with my Fidelity CMA. I see that the money was credited to my Chase cc this morning for a payment made on 3/3/23. However there Is no pending transaction in my CMA. I used the long 17 digit account number. Has anyone used that one for auto pay with Chase or am I going to be late with the payment?

That’s normal… ACH doesn’t process on weekends so you should get the direct debit withdrawal alert early Monday morning.

I usually get an extra business day of interest on my Chase card payments. When you set up a new payment method for any important bill, it can be useful to make a small test payment in advance of the due date to make sure that it is working properly.

I have some money in Stable Value my Boeing 401K. The annual interest approaches 2 % in that fund. Can I transfer some of that Stable Value money into Vanguard's VMFXX without being taxed, or do I have to open up a Vanguard 401K? In April 2023, I will turn 72 years old. In 2024 I will begin mandatory RMD withdrawals. Thank you. My current employer's plan has a Vanguard Stable value fund that's yielding around 2.4%. Fortunately, they have a brokerage option available where I can buy VMFXX, so I use that instead if I want to hold some cash in the account. My employer's plan waives purchase/redemption fees for Vanguard mutual funds. Based on the publicly available information I see online, I don't see any brokerage option in the Boeing 401(k)...

I'm hoping they transition soon. My employer's 401k plan uses TD Ameritrade for the brokerage option and I prefer Schwab for purchasing Treasuries on the secondary market.

Unfortunately, I assume these types of accounts will be the last to transition. Hopefully it will be during that weekend, but I wouldn't be surprised if it took longer.

Kevin M wrote: ↑Fri Mar 03, 2023 12:38 am

kalarama wrote: ↑Thu Mar 02, 2023 6:43 pm I bought some of the 2053 TIPS at auction in mid Feb and am looking to add some more. Now that they have settled on 2/28/23, I do see them on Fidelity secondary market. However, for the past 2 days, I've seen very limited bids/asks with only quantity of 50 or 75. Does it generally take time for the depth of book to fill in like the rest of the TIPS?

That's a great question. Market is closed, but what I see now is no depth of book at all. Just min qty 50.

Let's take a look tomorrow.

Looks like Vanguard and Fidelity have a pretty shallow book right now, with min quantities of 50.

Schwab is much better, offering the almost ask price for min-quantity of 1, and a better bid price.

dchobo wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 10:52 am
This leads me to another newbie question -
When I file for tax, say, using TurboTax and importing Fidelity tax forms, does it automatically figure out my applicable federal / state taxes for me?

Thanks again!

I don't think so. For each fund, you have to check if it meets the threshold and report it on your state return. Presumably TurboTax will ask you about this.

I wonder when Vanguard will update the portfolio composition report for VUSXX. As of the moment, the website is still showing 1/31/2023 numbers. https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vusxx#portfolio-composition It should be up within a week. From the statement of additional information: In accordance with Rule 2a-7 under the 1940 Act, each of the Vanguard money market funds will disclose the fund’s complete portfolio holdings as of the last business day of the prior month online at vanguard.com no later than the fifth business day of the current month. The two most recent N-MFP2 filings, which also contain this information were on January 9 and February 7, 2023. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?acti...

When you say "likely" do you mean we dont know yet? At end of feb? We won't know until early 2024. VUSXX fund needs to be at >50% US Obligations on the last day of each quarter, so even if 99.5% of 2023 dividends are US Government obligations, it could might still not qualify for NY state tax exemption it if it has 50%+ repos on December 29, 2023. There were some indications that the ~23% repos at the end of January was a blip, and the percentages were lower immediately before and after. (The change in SEC yield over the period seemed to be consistent with close to 100% T-Bills.) I doubt we'll see any public statement that they will commit to meeting the 50% threshold for each quarter end. I would hope they would be aware of it a...

But you can’t move funds in the other direction (from your brokerage account to your CMA) as long as money lockdown is engaged. Since I am retired i am not in the position of having a direct deposit of a paycheck to cover my bills. Seems if I want to keep my excess cash at Fidelity, I may have to turn lockdown off when I need to move funds and back on when the transfer is done. You can have multiple brokerage and cash management accounts and you can enable lockdown on a per account basis. Fidelity often offers cash bonuses for opening an additional account. So, one possible setup would be to have one brokerage account on lockdown for long term investment accounts, and another one for investing excess cash that you want to be able to transf...

I wonder if having the customer do this extra work (loophole or not) is because Fidelity's software hasn't been updated to figure out that a customer has maturing Tbills that would be able to cover the purchase of a new Tbill on the settlement date, or whether Fidelity has some internal policy to disallow exactly the case of purchasing a new Tbill based on the expected maturity of an older, held Tbill. Ideally, I could envision Fidelity's Web interface offering a drop-down list of maturing Tbills that would coincide with the settlement date of the Tbill the customer wants to purchase as sources of funding the purchase. I think it's because their software can't tell that there's a maturing bond on the settlement date. If there was an intern...

In the opposite direction, may I cancel an auto roll of T-bill purchase before the auction date at Fidelity if I have a change of mind? You can cancel auto roll in at least 4 ways that I know of - Cancel order between announcement and auction. This might not be possible with 17 week bills since the order might only appear on Wednesday, the day of the auction, and after it is too late to cancel. - Call in to bond desk to cancel auto-roll - Disable auto-roll alert on an account, which should cancel all autorolls - Sell the bill Another related question, may I purchase a T-bill with the proceeds of a T-bill maturing on the same date as the settlement of the new T-bill - a manual "auto" roll? Technically, yes, you can do that, but yo...

Thank you for the helpful reply. That makes sense. Series i bonds still make sense, but do series ee bonds? I'm guessing that the 20-year treasury rate now being above 3.5% makes series ee bonds undesirable at the moment? I saw the rate was raised to 2.10% So I suppose it's a defensible investment. Less obvious than before? I sold all my series EE bonds (1-2 years after purchase) when long term rates rose last year. I bought them because they had a better yield than 20 year bonds, and as a hedge against long term rates rising. They replaced a large portion of my US Bond allocation. If I had bought 20 year Treasuries instead, they would have lost a lot of value last year. This way, I was able to reinvest in longer term bonds at a discount. ...

Marseille07 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 24, 2023 3:21 pm
I'm not following. I thought PD is Preferred Deposit, what's maturing in this context?

It looks like there is confusion between the ongoing discussions about needing to call to sign up for Preferred Deposit and needing to call in to purchase Treasury Bills at auction.

One interesting thing I've noticed is that the quotes for limit-at-market FOK T-Bills in the secondary market are different at ETrade, Fidelity, ME and Schwab for the same CUSIP, sometimes noticeably so. Not sure why that is if the market is very liquid. There’s no centralized market for T Bills, so each broker may have better or worse prices or bid/ask spreads than others. Vanguard and Fidelity seem pretty similar in execution. Schwab seems to be noticeably better than Vanguard or Fidelity for the small quantities of long term TIPS I looked at. TD Ameritrade seemed to be missing some of the TIPS I was looking for and had a minimum of 5. I am hoping my TD Ameritrade account for my 401k plan transitions to Schwab soon and I can hopefully ge...

I guess, I'll see. I just transferred some settled funds from CMA to a brokerage account. Immediately, the full amount (including the funds that were already settled in the Brokerage CORE position and the amount just transferred which shows as "pending") show as available to withdraw. That's good. I plan to check tonight to see if there is a period where the amount transferred during the day is unavailable to withdraw as it settles into the CORE position, which is also SPAXX. Perhaps this is all common knowledge. I've used Fido brokerage for years but never paid attention to after hours settling status. I had a CMA in the past for emergency ATM withdraws, but never used it and Fido closed it. Now with better MMF rates, I'm moving...

There's also a 3rd option of just opening a Fidelity brokerage account and using the core MMF directly without having a CMA account at all. ATM/Debit card, BillPay, and check writing features are all available (to be separately enabled) on the regular brokerage account. By default the account will have ACH routing/account numbers for direct deposit/debit. You don't get the unlimited ATM fee rebates on the brokerage ATM card, but not everyone uses that, and there are lots of fee-free ATMs available (same ATM network that PNC Bank uses) FWIW, the only explanation I've read that made sense to me for having multiple accounts is if you're actually using it as an account to trade securities in, you run the risk of having your funds available for...

Maybe this direct link would work? Seems to work for me when logged in or out.

https://personal.vanguard.com/us/XHTML/ ... ncesbydate

EDIT: See next post for a better link.