Gyroscopic Investing

Welcome to the Cash discussion forum. This area is to discuss how to invest in cash for the Permanent Portfolio.

After the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11/01 the stock markets were closed for about a week, so it wasn't possible to redeem shares by phone and request a bank wire transfer to one's checking account.

American Century told it's account holders at the time that they would honor money market fund redemption requests. American Century has the first treasury bill only money market fund, Capital Preservation Fund. We recently switched some funds into Capital Preservation Fund, so it is currently open for contributions. (We are long time account holders - maybe this wouldn't be possible for a new customer) Vanguard didn't explicitly state whether they would honor MMF redemption requests during a time when the markets were closed, although I'm guessing they probably would.

Something to think about as a reason to keep some money in a MMF, despite the current low returns.

John

Why would it be important to be able to access all of your cash holdings during a few days when the markets are closed?

What would an investor want to do with funds that are already invested in the safest instruments in the world (t-bills) during such a period? 

If you are talking about accessing the funds for living expenses, it would probably be better to keep such funds partially in actual cash and partially in some type of bank account that you could access electronically at an ATM machine or at a local bank branch (though obviously nothing is 100% safe--what a boring world it would be if it were).

Tex, I was merely suggesting that sometimes liquidity might be a bigger consideration than yield.

I like your suggestions. I'm not advocating going all-in with one plan at any rate.

John