Cash, Money Market Funds etc.

Re: Cash & Money Market Funds

Postby winston » Wed Jul 13, 2016 8:35 pm

Here's How Much Cash You Should Hold Right Now

By MICHAEL E. LEWITT

My suggested portfolio is 10% to 20% cash.

Incidentally, that's the exact same amount I allot to gold, so you know I'm a cash fan.


My favorite "alternative" place to put cash is in one-month or three-month Treasury bills.


Source: Money Morning

http://moneymorning.com/2016/07/13/here ... right-now/
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Re: Cash & Money Market Funds

Postby winston » Wed Jul 20, 2016 7:56 am

To the mattresses: Cash levels highest in nearly 15 years

Cash levels are now at 5.8% of portfolios, up a notch from June and at the highest levels since November 2001, according to the latest Bank of America Merrill Lynch Fund Manager Survey.


“Record numbers of investors saying fiscal policy is too restrictive and the first underweighting of equities in four years suggest that fiscal easing could be a tactical catalyst for risk assets going forward”


Positioning changed, with a rotation from euro zone, banks and insurance companies shifting to the U.S., industrials, energy, technology and materials stocks.


The one place where risk has risen is in emerging market equities, with allocations hitting 22-month highs. European stocks went to underweight for the first time in three years, while Japanese equities hit their lowest weighting in 3½ years.


Source: CNBC

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/19/investor ... urvey.html
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Re: Cash & Money Market Funds

Postby winston » Mon Jul 25, 2016 7:21 pm

3 Reasons Cash Is a Smart Position in Your Portfolio

By Jeff Krohnfeldt

Holding cash as a portfolio position provides benefits for aggressive traders as well as investors with less tolerance for risk.

Aggressive traders can take advantage of portfolio liquidity for opportunistic purchases, while others can opt to reduce risk using dollar cost averaging strategies.

Cash holdings can make periods of high volatility more tolerable by providing an anchor to reduce the swings in the value of portfolios.

Cash also provides a solution for investors seeking to rotate out of equities after a prolonged bull market due to high P/Es across the market, the correlation of commodities to equities and the risk of buying bonds at or near their all-time highs.


Source: Investopedia

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/in ... z4FQ0HOhAu
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Postby behappyalways » Sun Aug 14, 2016 1:23 pm

Europe’s disappearing cash: Emptying the tills

Some Europeans are more attached to notes and coins than others


ONLY tourists pay in cash, says the young barista in Espresso House, a Swedish coffee chain, on Vasagatan in Stockholm. “They don’t understand we don’t use that anymore,” she rolls her eyes, gesturing to the card machine.

The contactless “taps” that locals use are much faster, and she frequently runs out of change when foreigners bring large-denomination notes, fresh from the ATM.

Swedes rarely handle cash; the volume of card payments has increased tenfold since 2000 and only one in five payments—5-7% if measured by value—are made in cash today. In much of northern Europe the situation is similar, with “no cash” signs increasingly popping up in shop windows. But travel south or east and a different picture arises; in Italy 83% of payments are still in cash.

Whereas Norwegians made 456 electronic transactions per person last year, Italians made only 67 and Romanians 17, according to the Boston Consulting Group. Most surprising is Germany’s reluctance to dispense with “real money”. Over three-quarters of German payments are still made in cash and “cash only” signs are not that uncommon.

As countries become richer, they tend to move away from cash on grounds of security, convenience and cost. Consumers may think that cash is free but for banks and retailers it is not; it needs to be counted, bundled, transported, cleaned, replaced, checked for forgery, stored and guarded. Around 0.5-1% of GDP a year is spent on managing cash.

Moreover, in a new book, “The Curse of Cash”, the economist Kenneth Rogoff argues that cash in the rich world aids tax evasion and other illegal activities, and that monetary policy would be more effective in a cashless world. Yet some Europeans are far more reluctant to abandon paper and copper than others.

In the Benelux and Scandinavian countries, banks were early promoters of electronic payments and made it easier (and cheaper) for customers to use cards. In thinly populated Sweden and Norway, maintaining a large branch and ATM network is costly; Swedbank, Sweden’s largest retail bank, has only eight branches that handle cash. Banks also helped to develop mobile-payment technologies, such as MobilePay in Denmark, an app now used on nine out of ten Danish smartphones.

Yet in Germany and much of the south and east, banks have been less proactive. German banks have been much slower to promote electronic and card payments. In Italy relatively few people have bank cards and those who do use them infrequently (25 transactions per debit card per year, compared with 114 in France). This is partly because Italian merchants dislike cards, as banks have tended to charge high fees.

To iron out differences between countries, in December 2015 the European Commission capped interchange fees at 0.2% per debit-card transaction and 0.3% for credit cards.

Scandinavian authorities have helped facilitate card use. In Sweden the installation in cash registers of “blackboxes” that directly send sales data to the tax agency to fight VAT evasion, has helped make cash less attractive. In Denmark paying benefits onto debit cards aided the transition.

Dimitri Roes, the owner of ‘t Vlaams Broodhuys, a Dutch chain of bakeries, says the decision to become cashless was motivated by security and hygiene. “Bakeries are soft targets for robberies. For a few hundred euros you get a knife in you.”

Customers also didn’t like staff touching their croissants after handling coins. Some clients angrily threw their coins across the counter when bakers stopped accepting them, but over 90% didn’t care.

Culture plays a role, too. Digitally sophisticated Scandinavians may be comfortable buying groceries on their smartphones but a deep-rooted aversion to being tracked—a scar left by the Stasi—lies behind German distrust. A recent survey by PWC revealed that two in five Germans don’t use mobile payments because of concerns about data security (and nearly nine in ten worry about it).

When the German finance ministry recently proposed capping cash payments at €5,000, as in some other countries, Bild, a daily newspaper, organised a reader protest.

Italians were equally enraged when a cap on cash payments over €1,000 was introduced in 2011. Matteo Renzi, the prime minister, last year loosened it to €3,000. Mr Rogoff thinks weak governance in countries such as Italy and Greece is largely to blame for high rates of tax evasion and other crime, and consequent hefty holdings of cash. Practices such as paying part of salaries in cash-stuffed envelopes are deeply rooted.

Despite such slower progress, Andreas Pratz of AT Kearney, a consultancy, thinks that once a country reaches 100 point-of-sale card transactions per person per year, people realise they can survive without cash. As the share of transactions made in cash falls, their overall costs increase.

Panteia, a research firm, estimates that in the Netherlands the average cost per cash payment grew from €0.22 to €0.25 between 2009 and 2014 and the cost per pin payment dropped from €0.21 to €0.19.

Of course there are downsides to moving away from cash. Installing card machines can be costly. The poor, many of whom lack bank accounts, would need to be included. Concerns about losing anonymity are legitimate. And cash has always been the obvious contingency in case systems break down.

But the advantages of cashless commerce grow ever more apparent. Back in Stockholm, at the Radisson Waterfront hotel, two American seniors bicker over who will fetch “local money” so they can get a taxi. If only they knew that cabbies here prefer cards and only 7% of Taxi Stockholm’s payments are made in cash.

Source: The Economist
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Re: Cash & Money Market Funds

Postby winston » Mon Aug 15, 2016 1:38 pm

Forget the stock rally, investors are holding cash

by Spriha Srivastava

Cash levels were at 5.8 percent of portfolios and at the highest levels since November 2001.


The world's billionaires are holding more than $1.7 trillion in cash.


Given where markets currently are, the time of year and the growing number of downside risks for investors, it's not a huge surprise that we're seeing more conservatism,"


Source: CNBC.com

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/15/forget-t ... yptr=yahoo
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Re: Cash & Money Market Funds

Postby winston » Fri Aug 19, 2016 9:22 pm

Nearly 500 million people are living in countries with negative interest rates, according to S&P Global — a factor that could fuel a return to a "cash-only" society, and people putting savings in personal safes rather than banks.

Source: CNBC
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Re: Cash & Money Market Funds

Postby winston » Wed Aug 31, 2016 7:52 am

German Savers Lose Faith in Banks, Stash Cash at Home

German savers are leaving the security of savings banks for what many now consider an even safer place to park their cash: home safes.

Savers now face the prospect of being charged fees on their deposits. Some companies and large private depositors already incur charges.

The latest such sign that penalty rates are creeping in comes from a small cooperative bank in the Bavarian town of Gmund on the Tegernsee lake. As of Sept. 1, the bank, Raiffeisenbank Gmund, will charge its customers 0.4% on deposits above €100,000.

Source: Wall Street Journal
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Re: Cash & Money Market Funds

Postby winston » Fri Sep 02, 2016 8:56 am

Two more reasons why you should be holding plenty of cash OUTSIDE of the bank

by Steve Sjuggerud

Source: True Wealth

http://thecrux.com/sjuggerud-now-is-the ... -the-bank/
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Re: Cash & Money Market Funds

Postby winston » Fri Sep 09, 2016 7:15 am

Why You Should Be Paying Attention To America’s Quiet War On Cash

By Shaun Bradley

Source: Zero Hedge

http://www.thetradingreport.com/2016/09 ... r-on-cash/
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Re: Cash & Money Market Funds

Postby winston » Wed Sep 14, 2016 5:16 pm

BlackRock sees $70 trln in cash on sidelines that could boost stocks


NEW YORK, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Stocks could continue to rise as interest rates remain low as investors who have stockpiled some $70 trillion in cash seek higher returns from the market, BlackRock Inc president Rob Kapito said on Tuesday.

"People are tired of earning zero," Kapito said at an industry event, referencing the now-negative yields on a large portion of the international bond market.

"There's more cash in the system than ever before."

BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager.

Source: Reuters
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