So I had a lot of cash just sitting in a Fidelity Investment Brokerage account. I saw it listed as "SPAXX" but never understood WTF that meant and didn't really care all this time. I presumed my money was just sitting there, doing nothing, as if it were in a checking account. In my mind it was basically gathering dust and being outpaced by inflation, all because I had cold feet on what to do with it for a while.

I reviewed some of the activity for that account, and realized it was actually growing all this time in the form of dividends on a monthly basis. Had no pharking clue.

Apparently any "cash" sitting in any non-retirement Fidelity Investment Brokerage account is actually sitting in a money market fund the entire time. That's what SPAXX is, and there's a few others you can elect to change to as well. At the end of the month, it actually yields dividends. January 31st was a nice pay out of 0.0042 on the dollar. Sounds like nothing, but multiply that by 12 and you get 0.0504, or 5% annual growth.



People talk about 5-6% HSA's, but even just "leaving cash to rot" in an investment account with Fidelity, and probably many other institutions too, leaves it in something that gives you a fairly comparable return.

that is below zero percent after inflation

lol @ HSAcels

The real power of this is that it auto-sweeps it, that's great for someone who is going to be entering/exit positions at a reasonable rate and can't be arsed to go and put their spare cash to work at the risk-free rate. IBKR also does this but I usually recommend Fidelity to any layman for its comparable ease of use.

Yes see that's why I had a lot of cash sitting around. I was doing some NVDA call options trading the last couple of months. Every time I realized the position, and went days or weeks without doing anything else with it, I was feeling like I was an idiot letting the cash rot. But the auto-sweep chit seamlessly yielded a return all along.

No **** it’s automatically put in a money market fund.



What you don’t realize is it charges like .42% in fees which is ****ing ridiculous. I still leave my emergency fund there though because I’m lazy asf