# MINT for high yielding US cash



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

I ran into this ETF while recently reviewing my options for storing USD "cash" and found this one, with about 1.3% yield and $6.5 billion in assets.

http://www.morningstar.com/etfs/ARCX/MINT/quote.html
http://www.pimcoetfs.com/Funds/Pages/PIMCOEnhancedShortMaturityStrategyFund.aspx

Up to now I've been using BSV for cash storage. This one is a 3 year maturity short term bond fund, similar to XSB/VSB on the Canadian side. These still have some volatility though and you ideally should be keeping the money in there for at least a couple years. So it's not really "cash".

MINT - the duration is 0.35 years which is considerably less, almost cash -- very low interest rate sensitivity/volatility. The yield is around 1.3% which is quite high. This has international exposure to debt securities and somewhat lower credit grades, which boosts the yield.

The yield is considerably higher than SHV which is a treasuries-only (high credit quality) short duration fund at 0.7% yield.

Any thoughts on MINT? Maybe this is becoming more attractive with the Fed raising rates.


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## jargey3000 (Jan 25, 2011)

These type of threads is why I love CMF!!


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

I need to find more articles on MINT. It's definitely riskier than a t-bill fund such as SHV. I think MINT has some lower grade corporate paper which is how it's getting the higher yield.

Unfortunately it has only been around since late 2009 so we don't know how this would handle credit market turmoil. My guess is that if it would have seen a significant dip in its share price during the 2008 crisis, due to high corporate and asset-backed paper exposure.

This WSJ article I found mentions "In the third quarter of 2011, MINT returned a negative 0.57%" -- so it certainly can fall in price.


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## gibor365 (Apr 1, 2011)

Yes, MINT looks interesting. YTM 1.94 - 0.36MER = 1.58% . It's almost 3 times higher than ATL5500. However, for every buy/sell I have to pay 6.95 fees, ATL is 100% free trades. So, MINT is not really for a short term. For example , now I hold all US cash in ATL5500 getting 0.55%, if I buy any US stock, I just sell ATL5500 for the same amount... with MINT , I should pay 6.95 for every sell.

From inception it never closed below $100 , so so far it's pretty stable, even though distributions vary a lot from month to month.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Yes it definitely matters how frequently you intend to trade this. For example let's say it's $50,000 cash.

MINT with $7 trades, let's say 10 trades a year, assuming 1.4% interest ... result in one year is $50,630 after fees.
The same amount in ATL5500 at 0.55% interest with no trade fees ... result in one year is $50,275

If you're talking a large amount of $ then MINT might still be justified even with trade fees.


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