Best place to park excess cash at Ameritrade/IB for short term?

Discussion in 'Retail Brokers' started by Spearhead, Jan 3, 2019.

  1. kmiklas

    kmiklas

    Well if you want essentially risk-free, perhaps a GS Marcus account? It's now paying 2.25 -2.75%
    https://www.marcus.com/us/en

    There are restrictions; if memory serves, only 6 withdrawals per year.
     
    #11     Jan 4, 2019
  2. The point is to keep uncommitted cash earning, but still allowing very fast access to it. If you generate cash from options sales, for example, a low margin (i.e. 1%) risk free product allows you to earn interest on the premium. But you need immediate access to that in case of assignment in addition to regular withdraws to meet ordinary expiry obligations.

    Sig's GSY is the product...depending on if it's commission efficient. (edit, not quite...doesn't have the low margin)
     
    #12     Jan 4, 2019
  3. guru

    guru

    He talked about specific brokers, not related to GS. There are plenty of options outside the brokers he mentioned.
     
    #13     Jan 4, 2019
  4. guru

    guru

    GSY doesn't look great (unless the chart doesn't account for dividends properly):
    upload_2019-1-4_12-29-9.png
     
    #14     Jan 4, 2019
  5. Sig

    Sig

    It doesn't, every one of those drops is the dividend.

    As an aside, if that was the actual chart this would be an absolutely astounding stock, you could short it at regular predictable intervals and make an infinite amount of risk free profit! If you can shed our natural bias for "up always good, down always bad" you can at a minimum evaluate situations more clearly, and possibly even spot opportunity others miss.
     
    #15     Jan 4, 2019
    guru likes this.
  6. guru

    guru

    Well, this shows (un)usefulness of Yahoo and Google data, which is supposed to be dividend-adjusted and usually is. I guess they miss stuff and that's what you get for free.
    (I was definitely suspicious of that zig-zag chart :) )
     
    #16     Jan 4, 2019
    kmiklas likes this.
  7. Thanks for all the great suggestions. I was looking for something similar to SWVXX and didn't realize IB was currently paying 1.9% on cash balances, so it makes sense to just keep my cash balance there as-is. SHY, DHS, and GSY all look in the ballpark of what I'm looking for for my Ameritrade balance. Will throw those in a list with some other bond ETFs and pick one.
     
    #17     Jan 5, 2019
  8. Be careful though that what they pay depends (a) on the currency, (b) on the size of your account (NLV) and (c) the amount of cash.
     
    #18     Jan 5, 2019
  9. kmiklas

    kmiklas

    Basically a form of reinvestment risk.

    Yeah IB started paying interest on sweep accounts under 100k.

    Maybe work a cheap stock like SIRI? At about $6/share, he could go long with his spare change, pull a few percentage points out, and even buy/sell derivatives thereon to better understand the underlying.
     
    #19     Jan 5, 2019
  10. birdman

    birdman

    #20     Jan 5, 2019