RMMXX no longer NTF at WellsTrade
In an earlier post, I noted that Russell’s Institutional Money Market Fund (RMMXX) is available as a NTF under WellsTrade’s free trade program.
Today, DaveTH posted an alert on the Boglehead’s forum:
Wells Fargo seems to have a real problem with paying decent returns on idle cash. Last July they switched from good money market cash sweep accounts to a pathetic replacement that pays next to nothing.
Many people dealt with the change by manually buying shares of 3rd-party money market funds such as the Vanguard Prime MM and the Russell Institutional MM.
Until Jan 31st that strategy worked fine because it did not eat up a free trade. Well as of Jan 31 most purchases of 3rd-party MM funds will cost you a free trade. Even worse, they retroactively went back and decremented my remaining free trades for MM trades I made in 2007!
So, it appears that this ‘trick’ is over. I think to get a MMF now, we need to revert to using Well’s Fargo’s WFGXX (currently 2.56%) or STGXX (currently 2.86%) or Pioneer’s Cash Reserve PMTXX (currently 3.39%). These are still listed as NTFs and they each requires a $1k minimum investment.
Stumble it!
March 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 am
That explains it, I was wondering why my trade counter had 2 extra trades, I’m having trouble linking an external account with them, I faxed the form, then 10 days later they mailed the fax back to me, with the account holders signature highlighted, I signed it once, I guess you have to sign the form twice????