That makes sense. So presumably, if I stay away from the CD, I’m implicitly being more optimistic than the bank: I believe they will keep the on-demand rate higher than 0.40% for at least a year.
There’s some further information that seems to contradict the hypothesis, however: If you look only at CDs, the yield curve is not inverted. The rate for a one-month CD is lower than that for a one-year CD, just as you’d predict. In fact if you go all the way up to a five-year CD you can get 0.90%, higher than the demand rate; presumably this indicates that the bank is more optimistic for this much longer term? But anyway, it seems strange that you’d have a regular yield curve down to one month, and then suddenly it inverts at demand deposits. I wonder if these rates are so low that fixed costs become significant for the bank? Perhaps there’s more paperwork with the CDs, or something.
I do note that the rates have been like this for quite some time now—every so often I wonder to myself “Hmm, what are the CD rates now?”, check them out, and get a bit annoyed. This is the first time I’ve been sufficiently annoyed to ask about it, though. So, it does seem to me that I have some reason to be more optimistic than the bank: To wit, they’ve been implicitly predicting falls in the interest rate for quite some time now, and it hasn’t happened yet.
That makes sense. So presumably, if I stay away from the CD, I’m implicitly being more optimistic than the bank: I believe they will keep the on-demand rate higher than 0.40% for at least a year.
There’s some further information that seems to contradict the hypothesis, however: If you look only at CDs, the yield curve is not inverted. The rate for a one-month CD is lower than that for a one-year CD, just as you’d predict. In fact if you go all the way up to a five-year CD you can get 0.90%, higher than the demand rate; presumably this indicates that the bank is more optimistic for this much longer term? But anyway, it seems strange that you’d have a regular yield curve down to one month, and then suddenly it inverts at demand deposits. I wonder if these rates are so low that fixed costs become significant for the bank? Perhaps there’s more paperwork with the CDs, or something.
I do note that the rates have been like this for quite some time now—every so often I wonder to myself “Hmm, what are the CD rates now?”, check them out, and get a bit annoyed. This is the first time I’ve been sufficiently annoyed to ask about it, though. So, it does seem to me that I have some reason to be more optimistic than the bank: To wit, they’ve been implicitly predicting falls in the interest rate for quite some time now, and it hasn’t happened yet.