Treasury bills. Can’t beat them for liquidity and safety. Yield isn’t quite so hot. But it’s still higher than what they get in both Euroland and Japan. The corporate debt market offers higher yields, but is extremely illiquid and kind of risky, given the recent tumult around the credit markets (related to Fortune 100 companies borrowing huge sums of money and keeping this debt off the books).
Amen, bro. I have in the past done customer service work for a brokerage firm, and found that the clients with the largest portfolios -- into the double-digit millions of dollars -- aren't active traders. Their holdings are low-yield and "boring" (T-bills, Muni bonds, CDs, etc.) but their dough kept on rolling like the Mighty Mississippi.
OTOH, the day traders I dealt with that made dozens of trades per day, hundreds per month, and thousands per year usually lost as much as they gained and typically had a net worth of less than $500,000.
Now, if someone would just give me that first million so I can prove my point...
That would be the safe way. T-bills would pay about 4 per cent. I could live on 40k a year (keep my job too) in interest and never touch the principal. Tough job but somebody has to do it.