No I buy through my broker. When you pull up a quote it shows you the yield to maturity. I use Chase for these specific investments but I bet most of the brokers have an option to buy bonds.
Are you buying newly issued or on the secondary market?
I think the ones I bought were secondary market.
buying on treasury direct works like an auction. you put your bid in and if you get outbid then you don’t get it. they usually sell in a series of tranches so if you miss out on the first stop you can pick it up on the next. honestly, its just easier to buy through fidelity or one of the brokerages. make sure to shop around because not all brokerages have the same offerings at the same rate. i’ve been tracking 3mo Tbonds and Fidelity has had consistently higher offerings than Schwab overall.
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So what do you use your for foreign currency exchange?
Bank of America.
Preferred Rewards gives a slightly better exchange rate on the buy side (compared to their standard rate), and covers free “standard shipping” (which is FedEx Overnight) to our house.
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My local BofA are bunch of yahoos, last time I went in there for an appointment with a Trust and Estate Banker, the gave me a normal teller who didn’t even understand how a trust works…/sigh. Because the Trust person was on vacation. So why make me an appointment if they aren’t there?
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When rates were hovering around 0% for many years, I had cash sitting in BofA, Chase, and Schwab. With the recent rate hikes, I moved a lot over to Schwab and bought Treasuries and CDs. I received an offer for $5k free if I move funds to JPMorgan (Chase). This would have actually been convenient as Chase is my normal “operating” account and it would be easier to move funds between JPM and Chase accounts. I “assumed” the CD and Treasury rates would be the same at JPM and Schwab. Good thing I checked.
The CD rates at Schwab were substantially higher than JPM (as high as 0.5% difference depending on term). And JPM charges a fee to buy Treasuries whereas Schwab does not. So I ended up not taking the $5k offer and decided to mostly stick with Schwab.
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I think it was $50 or $65? Not significant but it’s still a fee. Interesting that your screen shows $0 commission.
I was also surprised to see that the Treasury rates offered by JPM were lower than Schwab. I was comparing rates in real time with the JPM VP/Client Advisor. Your screenshot shows a 3.064 YTM but I can’t see the term. Schwab is currently quoting Treasuries at 3.61% (3mth) going up to 4.42% (1yr). How does that compare to what you see on JPM?
$5k on a used 3 month treasury won’t produce enough interest to cover that insignificant fee. But I’m sure you did the math already.
The aforementioned non-brokerage is both free, and just got a new website.
I have been buying T-bills directly from Treasurydirect.gov
Last time I got the 3 months one was at 3.343%.
Your Schwab rates look better. Aren’t they supposed to be the same or lower than Treasurydirect?
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How do you know the rate initially? Sounds like it is an auction and the rate is only now after?
0.21% difference isn’t too bad for 3 months.
My guess is that the difference is even smaller because December 29 maturity is less than 3 months. You have to find this exact bill and pull up a quote on Schwab.
Rather than trying to find a 76 day CD on Schwab, it might be more helpful if you can post the current rates for standard terms 3mth, 6mth, 9mth, 1yr, etc. Easier to compare apples to apples.
Here are the current Fidelity rates:
And the current Schwab rates:
These are new issues and the one that I posted is secondary market. I will have to play with the Chase platform to see if they have an option for new issues. It’s not my favorite platform but I got some free money to open an account. I also have fidelity, E*trade and IBKR.
I look at their few days earlier auction data:
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/auctions/announcements-data-results/
e.g. Right now I see this:
3.51% for 13 week looks nice to me. 4% for 6 months is also pretty great actually.