What is the interest rate online brokerages paying out tied to?
The prime rate is the interest rate banks use amongst themselves to lend money to each other only. It is used as the basis (sometimes) for what interest rate banks charge you.  The prime rate is based loosely on the Fed rate.  There is a committee that meets regularly to set this and other industry interest rates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_rate I am not 100% positive the following is totally accurate The banks keep our deposits and pay us interest for doing so.  They are paying us interest because they take yours, mine and everybody elses deposits as a large lump sum and invest that money.  Sometimes as business loans, sometimes as mortgages and sometimes as credit card. The banks have a book of business that will be EXACTLY how much credit they have extended to everybody.  But they do not keep that amount of cash in the vaults, only some smaller percentage of that large amount.  When I use my credit card and they need to transfer money to amazon.com, if they don't happen to have enough cash that day, they will just borrow from another bank that does, and the interest rate they pay to do so is the prime rate.  Since they are paying interest on the money they borrow to pay the debt I charged because they told me my credit was worth so much (...???...) they charge me a little bit more than that. Hence your credit card or mortgage's APR being based on the prime rate. I THINK that is what they do  If I am wrong leave a comment and I will update, or the mods can.
"Transferring the balance of a credit card is what they call moving your debt from one credit card to another credit card or loan.  A debit card, however, is not debt. It is a card that is tied to a checking account with money in it. You can't transfer debt to your checking account. If you have enough money in your checking account to cover the balance of your credit card, you can pay it off.  That is a really good thing to do, because the balance on your credit card is costing you a lot in interest charges each month.  Were you perhaps thinking of ""transferring a balance"" from your debit card's checking account to a new credit card, where you would then have a new debt on the credit card, and extra cash in your debit card's checking account? This is possible with most credit cards, and is usually called a cash advance. However, just to caution you, cash advances typically have high interest rates. Often you will see promotions where they will offer low (or no) interest rate for a short time, but this is just a trick to entice you to borrow extra, knowing that if you need the money now, you'll most likely still need it in 6 months when the promotion expires. I don't recommend it." When evaluating a refinance, you need to figure out the payback time. Refinancing costs money in closing costs. The payback time is the time it takes to recover the closing costs with the amount of money you are saving in interest.  For example, if the closing costs are $2,000, your payback time is 2 years if it takes 2 years to save that amount in interest with the new interest rate vs. the old one.  To estimate this, look at the difference in interest rate between your mortgage and the new one, and your mortgage balance. For example, let's say that you have $100,000 left on your mortgage, and the new rate is 1% lower than your current rate. In one year, you will save roughly $1,000 in interest. If your closing costs are $2,000, then your payback time is somewhere around 2 years. If you plan on staying in this house longer than the payback time, then it is beneficial to refinance.  There are mortgage refinance calculators online that will calculate payback time more precisely.  One thing to watch out for: when you refinance, if you expand the term of your mortgage, you might end up paying more interest over the long term, even though your rate is less and your monthly payment is less. For example, let's say you currently have 8 years left on a 15-year mortgage. If you refinance to a new 15-year mortgage, your monthly payment will go down, but if you only pay the new minimum payment for the next 15 years, you could end up paying more in interest than if you had just continued with your old mortgage for the next 8 years. To avoid this, refinance to a new mortgage with a term close to what you have left on your current mortgage. If you can't do that, continue paying whatever your current monthly payment is after you refinance, and you'll pay your new mortgage early and save on interest. "I am in a different situation, because I earn more than I spend, but I have found that I need to make the money inaccessible if I want to really avoid spending it.  I used to just throw my paychecks into a high-yield savings account, but eventually the balance was large enough that a ""large purchase"" didn't seem like ""that much"" (because I would have had so much left in the account after the purchase).  It was way too easy for me to spend way too much. Now, I invest my savings automatically.  The obvious benefit is my money has a much higher growth rate than a simple savings account (especially with fed interest rates so low).  I invest most of my savings in 401(k)/IRA retirement accounts, where there are severe penalties for withdrawing prior to retirement age.  Then, I invest a significant portion to a regular brokerage account, where the money is invested in stock and bond funds.  This money is accessible within a few days of whenever I need it.  The remainder of my savings goes into a savings account as cash I can get to at any time.  All 3 accounts grow with every paycheck (market fluctuations aside).   This 3-tiered system helps me to categorize my savings as ""Never, ever touch"" (retirement accounts), ""Touch, only if I can wait 3 days and am willing to pay taxes"" (brokerage account), or ""touch whenever you need it, with no penalties"" (Savings account).  If my savings account grows too much, I'll move money from there to the brokerage account (where it has more growth potential).  The longer my money is invested in the brokerage accounts, the less taxes I'll need to pay when I sell/withdraw the funds, so that's even more incentive for me to keep those funds where they are. I have credit cards, so in my opinion, having to wait 3 days for funds from my investment account to become accessible is considered ""accessible in an emergency,"" because my credit cards can be used to cover a large purchase for 3 days, and as long as I pay it off within the grace period, there's no interest charged. tl;dr investing is probably the smartest way to both grow your money and prevent the urge to spend it right away.  My advice is to start with a 401(k) or IRA as soon as you can, since the younger you are, the more time until retirement that your money has to compound.  Investing $100 more a month can mean hundreds of thousands of additional dollars in your account when you're ready to retire." "Bank accounts are free, as are discount brokerage accounts (for stuff like IRA's).  Any time you think there might be an advantage to getting another one, go ahead and do so. I have a number of bank accounts.  Whichever has the best interest rate (typically an online bank) gets the bulk of my cash savings, whichever has the closest ATM gets as much money as I think I might want to withdraw, and I often have a bank account from which my credit cards are paid. Other banks have a token ""just in case I move"" amount of money. The only cost is that you have to check them from time to time to make sure each account has enough for its likely uses.  I use mint.com for that." "A 'indexed guaranteed income certificate' (Market Growth GIC) fits the criteria defined in the OP. The ""guaranteed"" part of the name means that, if the market falls, your capital is guaranteed (they cover the loss and return all your capital to you); and the ""index linked"" or ""market growth"" means that instead of the ROI being fixed/determined when you buy the GIC, the ROI depends on (is linked to) the market growth, e.g. an index (so you get a fraction of profit, which you share with the fund manager). The upside is that you can't 'lose' (lose capital). The fund manager doesn't just share the losses with you, they take/cover all the losses. The downside is that you only make a fraction of whatever profit you might make by investing directly in the market (e.g. in an index fund). Another caveat is that you buy a GIC over some fixed term, e.g. you have to give them you money for a year or more, two years." Short sellers have to pay interest on the borrowings to the shareholders. Although many times brokers don't pass on these earnings to the shareholders, this is the exchange. They changed the way trailing interest is calculated back in 2008 if I recall correctly. The idea at the time was that the interest charges to the customer were somewhat less, but it made trying to get a payoff quote a PITA. They used to take payments for more than the current balance due at that time, however. I can't provide any insight as to why they won't now, though. Don't have access to a Bloomberg, Eikon ect terminal but I was wondering if those that do know of any functions that show say, the percentage of companies (in different Mcap ranges) held by differing rates institutionally. For example - if I wanted to compare what percentage of small cap companies' shares are 75% or more held by institutions relative to large cap companies what could I search in the terminal?