
After the Federal Reserve moved to lower interest rates by 50 basis points on Tuesday, banks around the country began to lower the rates on their Certificates of Deposit as expected. Last month GrowYourFunds urged readers to lock in those long-term CD's in anticipation of a Fed rate cut, and indeed it has come to fruition.
Bankrate.com (Nasdaq:RATE) numbers show that the average six month CD has
fallen from 4.58% to 4.52% since a week ago today. This numbers is likely to drop further in future weeks as more banks lower their yields in response to the rate cuts.
A good example of a major bank that has lowered its CD rates is E*Trade Financial Corporation (Nasdaq:ETFC). E*Trade has in the past had a six month CD rate of as high as 5.4%, but the rate has fallen to a current level of 5.05%.
Although rates have already fallen, if you need to make a quick decision on CD's it would probably still be a good move to lock in the rates that are out there. The Federal Reserve is expected by many to lower rates at least once more this year, and CD rates would likely fall even more at that point.
Bankrate has an interesting section posted monthly about the CD Rate Trend as predicted by industry experts. This months predictions show that 75% of their experts believe CD rates will fall in the short-term, while 25% expect them to stay flat.
Between the expert predictions and the economists expectations of future rate cuts, the current CD rates still look attractive now compared to what they might look like in the short to intermediate future.






I'm sure you already know this but GRMN is back in play on nice volume. DRYS and EXM are acting well too. A lot of good stocks are up big today.
--Doug
www.tomorrowsnewspaper.blogspot.com
Posted by: Doug | September 24, 2007 11:11 AM | Permalink to Comment