Stocks and Shares ISA: What are the options for “near cash equivalents”?
You can actually hold cash in your account as long as the manager has reason to believe it is awaiting investment. As for your question, some near cash equivalents are: It's difficult to go into more detail about which investments are eligible due to the variety of risk characteristics, but you can certainly find investment opportunities in the assets mentioned above. A good money manager can advise you better since he'll have an idea of their risk characteristics as well as tax status.
With a lot excess cash you eventually have two goals: Since interest on cash bank deposits does not exceed inflation and you have currency risk, you may want to get into other asset classes. Options that might be, but not limited to are: According to HMRC it seems that if you overpay, then at least part of the interest generated by that ISA is taxable (emphasis mine): If, by mistake, you put more than £10,680 into your ISAs in a tax year, the excess payments are invalid, and you are not entitled to any tax relief on investments purchased with the excess payments. You should not try to correct this mistake yourself. Instead, you should call the ISA Helpline and explain the problem to them. They will advise you what action you need to take. However, as AlexMuller pointed out, HMRC also states (in section 6.1 here) that the ISA Manager (ie. the bank/building society) should not allow you to overpay. Managers’ systems must ensure that ... no more than the cash ISA subscription limit can be subscribed to a cash ISA in a tax year and that no more than the overall subscription limit can be subscribed to a stocks and shares ISA in a tax year. As to what an individual ISA Manager would do should you attempt to over-pay, I imagine it would vary from Manager to Manager. ING Direct, for example, has the following policy (Taken from Section 12.5 here): ...f you send us a payment for an amount which would take you over the ISA investment limit under the ISA Regulations, we will send the excess above the investment limit,   or, if you sent us the payment by cheque, the whole of that payment, back to you. im shorting stocks and gold.  the only way stocks and gold can go up is coz of QE3.   if no QE3, then im shorting gold and stocks.  but more gold than stocks.   and i'm holding cold hard US FIAT dollars in my mattress.    i'm letting my mattress manage my cash, nah' mean. API wise there's just one at the retail level: Interactive Brokers (India). Brokerage is high though - 3.5 bps for F&O and 5 bps for cash.  I've used Sharekhan (good, can get to 2 bps brokerage, trading client software, no API). Also used multiple other brokerages, and am advising a new one, Zerodha http://www.zerodha.com. API wise the brokers don't provide it easily to retail, though I've worked with direct access APIs at an institutional level. There's no best strategy. Options are just pieces of paper, and if the stock price goes below the strike price - they're worthless. Stocks are actual ownership share, whatever the price is - that's what they're worth. So unless you expect the company stock prices to sky-rocket soon, RSU will probably provide better value. You need to do some math and decide whether in your opinion the stock growth in the next few years justifies betting on ESOP. You didn't say what country you're from, but keep in mind that stock options and RSUs are taxed differently and that can affect your end result as well. "Your dec ision is actually rather more complex than it first appears. The problem is that the limits on what you can pay into the HTB ISA might make it less attractive - it will all depend. Currently, you can put £15k/year into a normal ISA (Either Cash, or Stocks and Share or a combination). The HTB ISA only allows £200/month = £2,400/year. Since you can only pay into one Cash ISA in any one year you are going to lose out on the other £12,600 that you could save and grow tax free. Having said that, the 25% contribution by the govt. is extremely attractive and probably outweighs any tax saving. It is not so clear whether you can contribute to a HTB ISA (cash) and put the rest of your allowance into a Stocks and Shares ISA - if you can, you should seriously consider doing so. Yes this exposes you to a riskier investment (shares can go down as well as up etc.) but the benefits can be significant (and the gains are tax free). As said above, the rules are that money you have paid into an ISA in earlier years is separate - you can't pay any more into the ""old"" one whilst paying into a ""new"" one but you don't have to do anything with the ""old"" ISA. But you might WANT to do something since institutions are amazingly mean (underhand) in their treatment of customers. You may well find that the interest rate you get on your ""old"" ISA becomes less competitive over time. You should (Must) check every year what rate you are getting and whether you can get a better rate in a different ISA - if there is a better rate ISA and if it allows transfers IN, you should arrange to make the trasnfer - you ABSOLUTELY MUST TRANSFER between ISAs - never even think of taking the money out and then trying to pay it in to another ISA, it must be transferred directly between ISAs. So overall, yes, stop paying into the ""old"" ISA, open a new HTB ISA next year and if you can pay in the maximum do so. But if you can afford to save more, you might be able to open a Stocks and Shares ISA as well and pay into that too (max £15k into the pair in one year). And then do not ""forget"" about the ""old"" ISA(s) you will probably need to move all the money you have in the ""old"" one(s) regualrly into new ISAs to obtain a sensible rate. You might do well to read up on all this a lot more - I strongly recommend the site http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ which gives a lot of helpful advice about everything to do with money (no I don't have any association with them)." That is a weird one.  Typically one never needs to layout cash to exercise an option.  One would only choose to use option 1, if one is seeking to buy the options.  This would occur if an employee was leaving a company, would no longer be eligible for the ISO (and thereby forfeit any option grant), and does not want to exercise the options.   However, what is not weird is the way income tax works, you are taxed on your income in the US.   I assume you are talking about the US here. So if you exercise 10K shares, if under either option, you will be taxed on the profit from those share.   Profit = (actual price - strike price) * shares - fees I'm answering in a perspective of an End-User within the United Kingdom. Most stockbrokers won't provide Real-time information without 'Level 2' access, however this comes free for most who trade over a certain threshold. If you're like me, who trade within their ISA Holding each year, you need to look elsewhere.  I personally use IG.com. They've recently began a stockbroking service, whereas this comes with realtime information etc with a paid account without any 'threshold'. Additionally, you may want to look into CFDs/Spreadbets as these, won't include the heavy 'fees' and tax liabilities that trading with stocks may bring. I am not required to hold any company stock. I also have an ESOP plan carrying a similar number of shares in company stock.  So if it were to be sold, what would the recommendation be to replace it? I can move the shares into any option shown, and have quite a few others.  Not dealing with any huge amounts, just a 4.5% contribution over three years (so far). Depends on your contract, cash or shares delivered? If shares, then you get 5     BIG shares. Theres no longer any options. If you sell instantly, theoretically you will net the $10 difference + profit above strike. If cash, same thing just that you get cash $50 less strike.  Applies to cash and stock deals Options are binary, never pro-rated. if converted, basically you end up with BIG shares. I think George's answer explains fairly well why the brokerages don't allow this - it's not an exchange rule, it's just that the brokerage has to have the shares to lend, and normally those shares come from people's margin, which is impossible on a non-marginable stock. To address the question of what the alternatives are, on popular stocks like SIRI, a deep In-The-Money put is a fairly accurate emulation of an actual short interest.  If you look at the options on SIRI you will see that a $3 (or higher) put has a delta of -$1, which is the same delta as an actual short share. You also don't have to worry about problems like margin calls when buying options.  The only thing you have to worry about is the expiration date, which isn't generally a major issue if you're buying in-the-money options... unless you're very wrong about the direction of the stock, in which case you could lose everything, but that's always a risk with penny stocks no matter how you trade them. At least with a put option, the maximum amount you can lose is whatever you spent on the contract.  With a short sale, a bull rush on the stock could potentially wipe out your entire margin.  That's why, when betting on downward motion in a microcap or penny stock, I actually prefer to use options.  Just be aware that option contracts can generally only move in increments of $0.05, and that your brokerage will probably impose a bid-ask spread of up to $0.10, so the share price has to move down at least 10 cents (or 10% on a roughly $1 stock like SIRI) for you to just break even; definitely don't attempt to use this as a day-trading tool and go for longer expirations if you can. "Ultimately you are as stuck as all other investors with low returns which get taxed. However there are a few possible mitigations. You can put up to 15k p.a. into a ""normal"" ISA (either cash or stocks & shares, or a combination) if your target is to generate the depost over 5 years you should maximise the amount you put in an ISA. Then when you come to buy, you cash in that part needed to top up your other savings for a deposit - i.e. keep the rest in for long term savings. The help to buy ISA might be helpful, but yes there is a limit on the purchase price which in London will restrict you. Several banks are offering good interest on limited sums in current accounts - Santander is probably the best you can get 3% (taxed) on up to 20K - this is a good ""safe"" return. Just open a 123 Account, arrange to pay out a couple of DDs and pay in £500 a month (you can take the £500 straight out again). I think Lloyds and TSB also offer similar but on much smaller ammounts. Be warned this strategy taken to the limit will involve some complexity checking your various accounts each month. After that you will end up trading better returns for greater risk by using more volatile stock market investments rather than cash deposits." Yep, but it you didn't answer my question (edit: I know it was phrased as a question, but I do know youre supposed to model changes in cash). When bankers calculate all three approaches, how do they compare them? From what I see, the conclusion of each approach gives us:  * Public Company Approach: Enterprise Value * Transaction Approach: Enterprise Value * Discounted Cash Flow Approach: Enterprise Value + Minimum Level of Operating Cash  Does an investment banker subtract out that minimum level of operating cash at the end of the calculation to get to a value that he can then compare? Another option is the new 'innovative finance isa' that allow you to put a wrapper round peer to peer lending platform investments. See Zopa, although I don't think they have come out with an ISA yet. Thanks for the correction it was just a story my dad would tell me so the details have likely blurred.  My point is that even if we could automate all physical jobs there could still be work to do, distribution of resources would likely need to be handled differently then now some sort of utopian communism or something not really the main point though.