Cash rate question

Water Cooler Investing
#1

Have you guys ever seen those periodical charts that show different yearly returns for various different asset classes?

One of these asset classes is “cash”. But, I’m not sure how they’re measuring cash rates? Is it just 10-year rates? I pulled up USGG10YR then went COMP and returned -20.65% total return for the year 2000.

Then I realized I just had it tell me the total return on the ten-year yield.

So, I need to calculate what $1.00 would be worth at the end of the year if it were to be invested in that index for the full year right? That’s how these people get those values?

Or is the ten year not the true proxy they use for cash rates?

#2

Cash is generally money market rates… t-bills and other short term securities (state/provincial debt, commercial paper) with a maturity of less than 1 year.

The 10 year rate/investment would fall into your fixed income bucket on the asset allocation chart.

1 Like
#3

Thanks. I unded up using a citigroup 3-mo index for it.