MoneyRates Blog
CDs the Toirtose to the Stock Market Hare
Before the market crash of 2008, it had become accepted wisdom that stocks, over the long-term, will outperform conservative deposit account investments like Certificates of Deposit.
But is this accepted wisdom true?
CD Performance Weighted for Risk Aversion
The first item of business, when making such a comparison, would be to note the lack of risk in CDs. [...]
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Are New Savings Account Fees Driving You to Change?
Besides locking in interest rates, one potential advantage that certificates of deposits have over savings accounts is that they should not be subject to sudden fee increases. Looking to shore up profitability, banks have been raising a variety of fees lately. In turn, rising fees have increasingly been cited as the reason why customers switch [...]
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Savers, It Seems, Have Saved the Banks
Saving is back in style.
After years when many people thought it irrelevant to be worrying about getting the best savings account interest rates, the best CD interest rates, or the best money market account interest rates, Americans are realizing that if you don’t save for a rainy day, you get rained on.
The headline statistic highlighting this [...]
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Current Mortgage Rates May Represent a Fleeting Opportunity
When markets are volatile and the economy is uncertain, it is easy to take a wait and see attitude toward financial decisions — especially major ones such as buying a house. However, it is precisely at such times when opportunities can be greatest. To think of it with even more urgency, sometimes failing to act [...]
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Time to Get Back Into Stocks?
Stocks are surging, with the Dow passing 9,000 today. What does this mean for conservative investors in search of the best CD rates and the best money market rates? Is it time to shift more savings into equities?
Risk vs. Reward, and the Danger of Getting Greedy
Stock market returns, when they’re good, are really good. Since [...]
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There’s More to Deposit Accounts than Interest Rates
Whenever deposit accounts are discussed — including savings accounts and certificates of deposit – much of the attention naturally falls on interest rates. There’s nothing wrong with all that. Interest rates are, well, interesting…. Still, you have to look beyond them when choosing bank products. They are a great starting point, but then you have [...]
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Bernanke Gives Congress the Scoop–and Fair Warning
Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke is speaking before Congress as we speak, and he’s covering a lot of ground. Major points of Bernanke’s speech include: unemployment is likely to remain high throughout 2010, inflation is likely to remain low in the next few years, and Congress should leave the Fed alone.
Indeed, Bernanke directly [...]
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Higher Interest Rates are a Good News/Bad News Story for Deposit Accounts
The last week has seen a sharp climb in bond market rates across the board, which could start to influence money market, savings account, and CD rates. While depositors in those accounts have been starved for higher rates, in this case there is a good news/bad news story behind the rise in rates.
In part, the [...]
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JPMorgan Sees Record Profit in Q2–How?
Following Tuesday’s strong report from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan reported a record profit of $2.52 billion during the second quarter of 2009. So much for the U.S. banking industry keeling over dead. In fact, less than a year after then Treasury chief Henry Paulson requested $700 billion to save the banks, the banks look quite healthy.
How [...]
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June Inflation Number Adds a Wrinkle for Interest Rates Watchers
Just when many were ready to pronounce inflation officially dead, June’s Consumer Price Index report showed a surprisingly strong 0.7% increase for the month. This is worth noting for anyone watching interest rates on certificates of deposit, money markets, or savings accounts.
The inflationary blip in June marked a bounce back in prices by the energy [...]
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Reverse Mortgage Statistics Show Widening Appeal
House prices have declined steeply over the past couple years, no doubt, leaving 21 percent of homeowners with no or negative equity, according to Zillow.com. But some people still have plenty of equity: seniors.
Of late, many seniors have been using that equity to increase quality of life, pay for medical costs, or satisfy some other [...]
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Low Capacity Utilization Signals Continued Low Interest Rates
The rising unemployment rate seems to be one of the most closely-watched indicators of a weak economy and a deflationary trend. However, an equally significant measure is capacity utilization, and this presents one of the strongest arguments for continued deflation.
According to Federal Reserve data going back to 1967, capacity utilization reached what had been an [...]
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Get the Best Rates, But Watch Out for Fees, Too
Jennifer Waters at MarketWatch.com had a nice story the other day about how banks are hiking up a variety of fees as they attempt to return to profitability. Fees are something that anyone who’s interested in the best CD rates or the best savings account rates should be watching closely, as high fees can cancel [...]
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Interest Rates and the Inflation/Deflation Debate
The debate about whether inflation or deflation is the greater risk continues to rage among economists and market commentators — but is it possible both are right?
That may seem like a direct contradiction, but the steepness of the Treasury yield curve provides a clue to how it might be possible. At the short end of [...]
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Is There Such Thing as “Too High” Rates on Deposit Accounts? Ally Enemies Think So
Savers looking for the best CD rates have noticed a “new” player on the scene: Ally Bank. In addition to attracting eyeballs with high interest rates on deposit accounts, Ally Bank has become famous for putting out a series of funny, irreverent TV ads portraying other banks as stingy tightwads.
However, Ally Bank is new only [...]
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Worry Meter Tilts Toward Deflation
If you could hook economists and financial commentators up to gauge that measured what they worried about, the needle on that gauge would have spent the past few months swinging back and forth between deflation and inflation. Most recently, the needle on this “worry meter” seems to have swung back toward deflation.
On Thursday, July 2nd, [...]
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One Obscure Acronym That May Actually Mean Something to Depositors
People who hold their money in conservative investments such as CDs and money market accounts can be forgiven for not knowing the definition of every acronym the financial world and/or U.S. government invents. After all, these acronyms–TARP, TALF, MBS–fly fast and furious, and often don’t much affect deposit accounts.
One acronym that may more immediately impact [...]
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Housing Still a Good Bargain — For the Long Term
The S&P/Case-Shiller housing data for April was released yesterday, and as much as some optimists tried to spin the numbers as showing a slowing of the downward trend, the fact is that housing prices have yet to show signs of recovery. For home shoppers buying for the long term though, that should be no reason [...]
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