The Sun’s Financial Diary

2009 is the Year of Bull in Chinese Lunar Calendar. After a miserable 2008, let’s hope for a better 2009!

Happy New Year To You All!

Are you familiar with the idea of Lazy Portfolios?
I first read about Lazy Portfolios a few years on MarketWatch and since then have been following them. The idea of Lazy Portfolios is to use low-cost, index mutual funds to build well-diversified portfolios so that you can be “lazy” with your investments, without having to actively [...]

Has the housing market bottomed?
It doesn’t look like so, at least not from what we can see from the S&P/Case-Shiller Index. Standard & Poors today leased its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index for October 2008 which shows a 18% plunge of U.S. residential home prices in the past 12 months.

The index has fallen every month since [...]

OK, it looks like it’s time to wrap up the annual Make a Guess Win a Prize Daily Giveaway with the last segment.
As I mentioned when the contest began that the last day will be difference from the previous five contests because  not only the prize will go up from $20 to $50, but also [...]

For many investors, 2008 will be a year to forget: With all three major indexes down close to 40% this year, investors are left nowhere to hide. However, if you suffered big losses from your investments in 2008, there are tax moves that you can take to ease the pain.
Early this month, I read an [...]

So the Christmas holiday is almost over, but our Make a Guess Win a Prize Daily Giveaway will continue for two more contests that bring us to the new year.
This Friday, on the fourth day of the contest, Andrew made the winning guess of the Dow’s closing number at 8,510 when the index actually closed [...]

Are you looking for a quick reference card that explains the basic concepts of personal finance?
I received a deck of NURU Personal Finance cards from the publisher a while ago, but have been putting off taking a look at it until now. Actually, I think this, putting some basic concepts of personal finance on 2.5″x3.5″ [...]

The U.S. job market remains gloomy.
Early this month, the government statistics showed that monthly unemployment rate surged to 15-year high last month. Today, the Labor Department says Americans who file for new jobless insurance claims rose 30,000 for the week ending December 20, 2008, to reach 586,000, the highest level since November 1982. The more [...]

Here’s the question for this Friday December 26th:
What’s your guess of the closing number of the Dow Jones Industrial Average on December 26, 2008?
Today’s contest will remain open till 9:00 am EST December 26th.
Yesterday, Steve made another near perfect guass of the S&P 500. His guess was 864 when the index’s acutal close was 863.16. [...]

Wow, that’s a big cut, isn’t it?
I just received an email from FNBO Direct with their latest rate at 2.80% APY, down from 3.25%, even below HSBC Direct, but slightly better than ING Direct (2.70%). But with ING Direct, you can refer people to make a little more extra ($10 per referral, check out my [...]