What Changed? | Cash is still the market's comfort food. But the comfort is paying less. | With the Fed's target range steady, the front end stops "repricing" higher and the easy carry trade fades. When policy is stable, the real competition shifts to tiny gaps between instruments that all claim to be "cash": government money funds, repo, T-bills, and bank deposits. | The plumbing tells the story. The Fed's overnight reverse repo facility—once a massive parking lot for cash—now sits near empty. On February 13, 2026, usage is just $0.377B, down from $2.844B the day before. | That does not scream stress. It signals that excess liquidity is getting absorbed elsewhere, and that small supply-and-demand swings can matter more for the marginal yield investors earn in cash-like vehicles. | | 30 Years of Gains in One Day? | What if you could compress a lifetime of wealth-building… | Ten… twenty… even thirty years… | Into a single 24-hour window? | It sounds absurd. | But Elon Musk is about to make it a reality with something I'm calling… | "Day-One Retirement Plan." Click here to see the details. | | The Numbers | Fed funds target range (upper limit): 3.75% SOFR: 3.65% Overnight reverse repo usage: $0.377B U.S. money market fund assets: $7.77T FDIC national deposit rates: 0.39% savings and 0.56% money market accounts
| | Why It Matters | First, "cash" is no longer one decision. It is a set of trade-offs. When ON RRP is near zero, cash has to clear through bills, repo, and fund flows. That can make short-term pricing more sensitive to routine shifts in bill supply, quarter-end balance sheet behavior, or big reallocations across money funds. | Second, the gap between the policy ceiling (3.75%) and the market's core overnight print (SOFR at 3.65%) is not large. That leaves less room to pick up yield without changing something else—extending maturity, accepting different liquidity terms, or paying closer attention to fees and settlement cutoffs. | Third, deposits remain the outlier. The FDIC's national averages are still well below market rates, which keeps nudging balances toward money funds and government paper. But when the spread you are "paid" to optimize shrinks, the frictions start to matter more than the headline yield. | | Takeaway | Money markets rarely break loudly. They tighten quietly. When the payout to perfect safety gets slimmer, investors do not abandon cash—they just become more sensitive to where cash sits and what it costs, operationally, to keep it effortless. | — Lauren
Editor, American Ledger | Resources | Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), February 2026
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFEDTARU | Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), February 2026
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SOFR | Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), February 2026
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRPONTSYD | Investment Company Institute, February 2026
https://www.ici.org/research/stats/mmf | Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, January 2026
https://www.fdic.gov/national-rates-and-rate-caps |
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