CD rates Blog

The saga of R. Allen Stanford and his certificate of deposit Ponzi scheme is coming to a close – at least one part of it, anyway: the trial and conviction. On Tuesday, a Texas jury found Stanford guilty of 13 out of 14 criminal charges including mail fraud, wire fraud, obstruction of an SEC proceeding and

CD investors often think of a CD’s terms as being set in stone once they’ve been purchased, but that’s not always the case. In the case of a bank or credit union failure, CD rates and terms can be amended, since one of the parties of the contract you signed is now officially gone to

As you probably know, Bankrate tracks and compiles CD rates from around the country. The U.S. is a pretty big place with dozens of diverse markets; as a result CD rates are all over the map. (Ah, a CD rate joke.) Depending where you are, one-year CD rates can vary by as much as a

Is the current stock market rally being fueled by habitual CD investors finally getting fed up with low CD rates? That’s exactly what one wealth manager wrote in a really interesting column for the Montgomery Advertiser this week. From John Norris, head of wealth management at Oakworth Capital Bank: Investors want a higher rate of

In these dark days of negative real yields, CDs make good place to park cash for a set period of time and that’s about it. Not to understate, CDs can be a very valuable resource when return of principal is more important than return on principal, thanks to the deposit insurance from the Federal Deposit

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the multi-decade low in U.S. CD balances. As you can see in the chart below, researched by our own Chris Persaud, there’s little mystery to why that is. When the Federal Reserve lowers its key federal funds rate, CD rates dive. CD investors, in turn, refuse to roll

On Tuesday, Bloomberg.com reported that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, has turned the spotlight on derivative-linked CD products. With no substantial yields to be found in conventional CDs and savings products, savers have looked high and low for safe investments with better returns. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers these days. Enter the

The drop in the national unemployment rate from 8.5 percent in December to 8.3 percent in January made big news nationwide, and seemed to a lot of folks to signify a solidified economic recovery. But if CD investors are hoping the stronger-than-expected employment report will cause the Fed to accelerate its timetable for a rate

It’s no surprise that the tremendous volatility in the stock market has scared investors away from stocks. According to the Investment Company Institute, the trade association for domestic investment companies, in 2011 investors fled equity funds in droves — about $125 billion flowed out of stock mutual funds for the year. For some investors, particularly

It’s hard to overstate how grim things are in the CD market right now. CD balances hit a nearly three-decade low this week, falling to $750 billion, according to the Federal Reserve. That may seem like a lot, but the last time the total amount of money Americans held in “small-denomination time deposits,” Fed-speak for