The Federal Reserve holds the target Federal Funds Rate at 5.00% or so, the first rate-pause in nearly a year.

For those unaware, the Fed is the central bank of the USA. Their goal is to minimize inflation and maximize employment, largely through their control of the FFR.

Money market funds, such as Vanguards VMFXX or Schwab’s SWVXX, closely track the FFR minus a few fractions-of-a-percent that they take for fees. So all investors have the ability to access this incredibly low-risk investment.

As this “low risk” investment makes more yield, the general theory is that everyone else in the economy takes slightly less-and-less risk. After all, if you can make money off of low-risk, why bother chasing the high-risk portions of the economy?

That leads to either riskier-portions being more expensive (ie: if a risky-company wants to borrow money, they have to borrow it at higher %). Or lose value (if a risky company wasn’t planning to make a profit for another 10 years, those 10-years of no-profits just got far more costly, and therefore the company loses theoretical value).