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

beerntrading said:
OP is asking about a risk free product. SWVXX manages a US Gov't debt portfolio to maximize the rate while removing the day-to-day transaction cost for the retailer.
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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.
 
kmiklas said:
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.
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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)
 
GSY doesn't look great (unless the chart doesn't account for dividends properly):
upload_2019-1-4_12-29-9.png
 
guru said:
GSY doesn't look great (unless the chart doesn't account for dividends properly):
View attachment 196461
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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.
 
Sig said:
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.
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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 :-) )
 
guru said:
IB pays 1.5% - 2%/year interest on held cash (depending on amount, as its tiered), which may be comparable to SWVXX.
Not sure you can get more any other way risk free at a broker.
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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.
 
beerntrading said:
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.
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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.
 
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