Wall St. Cashes In on Cash Balances

According to the Wall Street Journal, the cash balance in brokerage accounts at the end of January totaled $350.2 billion dollars. The average interest rate paid on that total was 0.12%. Investors, or their advisors, could receive significantly higher rates of interest by inquiring about alternatives to the default interest rate that brokerage firms offer to clients. More competitive money market funds and Treasury bills pay approximately 1% or more.  The Wall Street Journal speculates that investors may have may have missed out on more than $3 billion dollars in interest in just one month.