With the stock market at its all time high, brokers at Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Asset Management are touting an instrument called “principal protected notes.” These notes come in a variety of different forms, but the structure is usually pretty similar. You buy a note with a 100 par value tied to an S&P price that is set on the day of pricing. If the S&P were to be trading at 2500, that would be your S&P price. At the point of maturity, usually 5 years, you receive a percentage of the increase in the value of the S&P (usually between 50% and 70%) with your total appreciation usually capped around 30%).

These things are actually selling like hot cakes, especially now that the market is at its all-time high. Brokers will tell you that you are not putting your principal at risk (which is correct so long as the underlying offeror does not default). The notes, therefore, are very attractive to people who are risk averse and are upset that they have missed a huge run in the stock market.

Even if fear of missing out (FOMO) is your issue, this is not the right instrument for you.

Proper investing and proper financial planning involves having a portfolio of equity, debt securities, cash and other instruments (such as real estate, gold or other commodities).

If you purchase one of these instruments, you are buying something other than equity. Rather, you are buying an instrument that does not let you fully participate of the market, instead only giving you fractional participation, and that does not provide you with the dividend income on the S&P 500, currently about 2.2% annually. That 2.2% dividend yield, when compounded, is roughly 11.5% over a five-year period. Foregoing that yield is your "cost" of hedging the offeror's downside exposure in the instrument, but it is also cash out of your pocket if you have a long-term intention to stay invested in the market.

Likewise, the idea that your purchase of principal protected notes is just as good as cash if the market is lower in 5 years is also erroneous. Your cash – if left in cash - will compound over the 5-year period no matter where interest rates go. But, with interest rates poised to rise in 2017, 2018 and beyond, your cash could potentially compound at quite a high rate. Even if you were to lock into a 5-year CD today (the best rates are currently just over the 2.2% S&P dividend yield), you are certain to see a compounded return over the life of the CD of just over 11.5%.

You need cash and you need equities. A principal protected note is neither.

Explore the best savings rates and CD rates on BestCashCow.

"It's very important, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old fashioned way because I'll tell you what, no computer is safe." Donald J. Trump, December 30, 2016, Mar-A-Lago, Florida

Donald Trump announced last weekend that he favored returning to the past – turning off the computer, writing it down and having a courier deliver it. I’m sure, he would also favor markets no longer driven by algorithms and millisecond transactions, returning instead exclusively to floor agents and floor trading.

In fact, following all this to its natural conclusion, Trump might also champion banks, once again, offering toasters to those who would open new accounts.

Any of this would be a hard sell today. Trump is going to discover quickly that there is no turning the clock back. He will be surprised, once he leaves Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago, that the world has changed dramatically. Typewriters and fountain pens are hard to find: couriers are few and far between and toasters as incentives have gone the way of prizes in Cracker Jack boxes.

That said, he might be on to something here. One could imagine, with interest rates finally on the rise and increased attention now on safety in very volatile markets, that banks might want to ADD toasters again to their menu of options. Who knows? It worked once, and with Trump as the champion, it might just work again.

Explore the most comprehensive database of bank rates to find the best rate here.

Banks have always used the end of the year as a time to cut rates on savings accounts or allow promotional rates to expire, and/or to reduce benefits. For the last eight years, rates have been falling and the lack of competition has offered depositors little recourse but to accept these changes.

Things have finally changed. Rates are already beginning to increase.

Several banks have also recently reduced their rates from competitive rates to ones that aren’t. Even if your bank has given you some sort of great first year interest rate (Salem Five) or great 3 month rate (EverBank), you should not sit by and let them quietly reduce your rate to one that isn’t competitive.

And, if you are a business customer at a bank like Chase which is using the turnover from 2016 to 2017 as an opportunity to strip benefits that they have always offered you, it is also not OK.

Pure and simple, there is competition for your money. Not only is the rate environment increasing, but Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin figures to change the landscape in 2017 to make banking as a whole much more competitive. You no longer need to start the New Year sitting idly by and letting it happen.

See the best savings rates here.