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birb_cromble  1mo ago (text post)   1092 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread - 2026-08-08

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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I have a portion of my portfolio that I would like to be highly liquid and effectively zero risk. Currently, my approach is to buy Blackrock money market ETFs, but these present a problem in that a) my broker does not have good tools for daily cash sweeps, so getting compounding interest requires too much micro-managing and b) the gains are subject to income tax.

Do you guys have approaches to the risk-free parts of your portfolios that are brainless and optimized? I'd strongly, strongly prefer for it to be accessible through Merrill so I can keep high status.

I have one more thought on this. If you can afford to lose a little bit I like Tlt a lot here. My guess is a 10% loss would be max. I just checked with grok for some dirty data and that would equal a 70 bps rise in long rates. Inflation seems to be soft. So a lot of it is real yield at current inflation rates. The curve is steep (difference between long-term rates and short term rates). Market seems to be concerned about capex from hyperscalers right now. You get 139 bps more than short term rates. The real reason to do it is to hope for long-term rates to fall and make 10% on the speculative side.

I am wrong all the time. I wouldn’t call it a screaming buy right now but I do think duration risks has value here. It’s not zero risks, but if you can stomache some risks it’s worth considering.

Liquidity would not be an issue. But you would have a risks that could correlate with the stock market.

You would be inclined to bet on long term rates falling right now? I mean, zig when others zag, but Trump/Iran aside, hard to see how that happens in context of US debt levels.

Real rates are high not just nominal. Despite the debt inflation is benign.

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