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Monday, October 15, 2007

Interest Rate Freefall

Long story short. Fed cuts overnight interest rates from 5.25% to 4.75%. Result: Interest rates fall off a cliff.

Glad I locked in a 5.36% 12 month CD at E-loan before the carnage, but kicking myself for not locking in for 18 months. Unfortunately 2 CDs expired after the freefall and blah. My Wamu CD i rolled into a 4month CD @ 4.65% APY (They were offering ~2.7% for all other maturities!). My Emigrant Direct CD I transferred into my savings account earning 4.75%.

So there's little options out there as all banks seemed to have followed suit. There are higher rates at Countrywide and IndyMac, but their exposure to subprime worries me. Although they are FDIC insured, I don't feel like the small bump in rate would be worth the headache should they fail. So for now I'm going to sit tight and see how the rates play out in the coming weeks.

In other portfolio news, I'm roughly 50% cash which is way to conservative for my age bracket. Sadly, this is probably the lowest cash ratio I think I've ever had for my porfolio showing my uber conservativeness. I've been ramping down this cash number, however. I set up an auto-investment with Vanguard into my VTRIX mutual fund. I'd invest more, but with the market so hot right now and everything trading at all time highs, I'm hesitant to do more.

Well I guess we'll see what happens in the coming weeks.

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