Pimco 1-3 Year U.S. Treasury Index Fund  (TUZ) will have an expense ratio of 0.09%.  This compares favorably to iShares Lehman 1-3 Year Treasury Bond ETF’s expense ratio of 0.15%.
This is the first of seven ETFs that PIMCO has in the pipeline.  I am esspecially looking forward to the ETFs that allow greater maturity management with TIPs.

[...]

It is nice to see Schwab has finally followed Fidelity in cutting the fees for its basic index funds.

Schwab Equity Index Fund
Expense ratio

Schwab S&P 500 Index Fund (SWPPX)
0.09%

Schwab Total Stock Market Index Fund®(SWTSX)
0.09%

Schwab 1000 Index Fund® (SNXFX)
0.29%

Schwab Small-Cap Index Fund® (SWSSX)
0.19%

Schwab International Index Fund®(SWISX)
0.19%

Source:

Lower Schwab Funds Expenses

With tax-free money market funds paying well under 1% (Vanguard’s Tax-Exempt Money Market is currently paying around 0.61%),  it is hard to find a place to park cash if you are in a high tax braket.  You can still find high yield savings accounts that pay around 2%, but that interest will be fully taxable [...]

With banks and money markets paying virtually nothing these days finding good places for short term cash is a bit tricky. Even most of the traditional high yield savings accounts have gone under 2%.  Currently GMAC Bank is offering 2.5%.  As of 2008, GMAC Bank is FDIC insured and has full access to treasury [...]

After the rundown we have had over the last two weeks, I find it useful to take a step back and check on how current valuations measure historically.  I should reiterate that I don’t believe that I have the ability to time the market.  And for me, these valuation exercises are about assessing risk so [...]

The following graph comes from a recent morningstar article that reiterates how markets don’t follow normal distributions but instead follow a log-stable style distribution (i.e., distribution with fat tails).  What I like about this graph is that it highlights the fact that even over very long periods (e.g., 50 years), you still have over a 4% [...]

Many of the high yield savings accounts (e.g., Ing Direct, Emigrant Direct, and others you can find at bankrate.com) have lowered their yields to around 2.4%.  Interestingly, Emigrant Bank has created a new entity called Dollar Savings Direct that currently offers 3.5%.  As far as I can tell it is identical to Emigrant Direct except [...]

Here is the new breakdown for the DJ-AIG commodities index.  By January 15th, the index will have the following weights (2008 weights in parentheses).

Natural Gas: 11.89% (12.24%)
Crude Oil: 13.75% (13.16%)
Gasoline: 3.71% (3.78%)
Heating Oil: 3.65% (3.82%)
Live Cattle: 4.29% (4.89%)
Lean Hogs: 2.39% (2.55%)
Wheat: 4.79% (4.70%)
Corn: 5.72% (5.66%)
Soybeans: 7.59% (7.62%)
Soybean Oil: 2.88% (2.81%)
Aluminum: 6.99% (7.11%)
Copper: 7.30% (7.04%)
Zinc: 3.14% [...]

In my role as risk manager for my clients I try to envision what macro economic changes could happen and determine whether my portfolios are situated to weather that change.  I was looking at various hyper inflation scenarios (for when the economy gains traction again) and reexamined whether commodities would be a viable tool.
From 2000 [...]

Consumerism Commentary maintains a nice list of the top paying savings and money market accounts that are FDIC insured.  They also show how the interest rates have changed over the last four months to give you an inkling on whether the interest rate is a teaser or likely to stick around for a while.
The current [...]