Analysis
Those of you buying bonds and certificates of deposit from March 2022 through mid-October 2023 could revel at the continuously higher interest rates you received.
For example, the five-year Treasury yield soared to 4.95% on Oct. 19, 2023 from 1.74% on March 2, 2022. That ascension, of course, came as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 5.25 percentage points.
But now, financial markets are euphoric over the prospect of the Fed lowering rates. The median forecast of Fed officials calls for about 75 basis points of easing next year, and interest-rate futures positions put the probability of at least 150 basis points at 60.2%.
So, that same five-year Treasury yield dropped a full percentage point from October to 3.95% Friday. CD (certificate-of-deposit) rates have dropped similarly.
So what to do for an investor who has cash waiting to invest in CDs and bonds? My recommendation would be to buy the fixed-income paper as soon as possible.
Watch Out for Falling Rates
That’s because odds are the yields on that paper will keep dropping, as the money markets continue to anticipate Fed easing. So, you want to take advantage of current yields while they last.
You could just leave your money in a money-market fund for a while. Their rates haven’t moved in recent weeks, and many funds offer at least 5%. But if the Fed does cut rates, these yields will fall in response. So you’d want to lock in the higher rates of bonds and CDs.
Of course, it’s possible that inflation will stop descending, causing the Fed to either refrain from trimming rates or to lift rates further. So you may not want to get fully invested in bonds and CDs now.
If you’re looking for bonds, you can get the Treasury mentioned above for a 3.95% yield. If you’re willing to take some risk, a single-A Pfizer bond yielded 4.63% Friday.
As for CD rates, you can get a higher yield from brokered CDs at firms like Fidelity Investments and Schwab than from ones issued by banks themselves. I buy these CDs only from money-center U.S.-headquartered banks to cut down on risk.
For five-year CDs of that ilk, there were none showing Friday on Fidelity’s web site. You could get a 3.95% UBS Bank USA CD, but a Treasury bond would offer the same yield with less risk.
In any case, for those of you in the market for bonds and CDs, it’s time to get busy.
