The following post might better fit on the bond board. But that forum’s all but dead. Also, managing one’s cash IS a part of trading. So, here goes.
A year ago, the interest-rate on short-term debt was a rounding error above zero. Then it became obvious even to the Fed/Treasury cartel that inflation was on the rise. So, instead of doing what they should have been doing three decades ago, namely, not abetting a spendthrift Congress and reckless speculation on Wall Street by running the printing presses wide open, the cartel reached into it bags of tricks and decided to raise interest-rates to dampen demand. We all know that won’t work. But meanwhile, cash and cash-equivalents are paying better than a year ago, and the Treasury is paying better than commercial borrowers. E.g., compare the after state-tax yield on T-Bills to what banks and CUs are paying on CDs. Heck, even Money Market mutual funds are paying better than CDs, and they come without the burden of mandatory holding-periods.
How much cash is carried in one’s trading account is a function of two things: #1, whether there are viable opportunities to deploy it. #2, the extent to which one prefers to be de-leveraged than fully invested.
Schwab, TD, and Fido make it easy to bid for T-Bills at auction. ET will do so as well, but the min is five. (I have no idea what Robinhood offers by way of MM funds or access to Treasury auctions.) But a workaround is this. Just deal with the Treasury Dept. directly. The advantage is that now mins drops to $100 bucks and one has access to I-Bonds, which were all the rage in the financial press Fall, for good reason. Some of the yield are fat. Here’s my tiny position in them where the third column is the current interest-rate, which changes every six months.
9-5/8% for minimal-risk debt? Holy Molly. Back up the truck. But I-bonds have a max/yr purchase amount of $10k face. T-Bills , OTOH, have no limits, as don’t MM funds.