The Sun’s Financial Diary

After the streak of 10 straight monthly increase was snapped in January, the growth of our net worth returned last month as the overall stock market recovered from January’s poor performance. Even though the gain wasn’t big enough to offset January’s market loss, it was big enough to put net worth to a new high [...]

I know sooner or later, this is going to happen.
Since last March, our net worth has ridden the recovering stock market higher and higher month after month, going up like a straight line from March to December. While I was very happy with the growth of our wealth on paper, I know every well that [...]

How time flies.
Now that 2009 is officially in the books, it’s time to look back last month and the whole last year to see where I was this time last year and where I am now.
Despite the 120-point drop of the Dow on the last trading day of the year, December 2009 turned out to [...]

Can’t believe it’s the last month of 2009 already.
November turned out to be a very good month for us, especially for our investments which so far have been the main driver of our net worth growth. Overall, the stock markets worked in our favor in November, with the Dow gaining 6.51%, the Nasdaq adding 4.86%, [...]

I feel that the last few days of October kind of ruined the whole month for investors. Even though the Dow closed above the physiologically important, but symbolic 10,000 mark for the first time in a year in October, the stock market sold off in the second half of the month. Major indices closed October [...]

Another solid month is in the books.
September didn’t turn out to be the month of market sell-off as I heard from some predictions when the month began. To the contrary, September was a good month for stock investors with all major indices finishing the month in positive territories: The Dow gained 2.2% for the month, [...]

Another good month is in the books. Though the August performance isn’t as good as July, it’s still good enough to push our net worth to another all-time high, which is pretty exciting. The gain in August is the sixth in a row since March. Comparing to the returns of the stock market last month [...]

What a difference one month has made!
Given how much better the overall stock market has performed in July (the Dow up 8.6%, the S&P 7.4%, and the Nasdaq 7.8%), I expected a good month for our net worth. However, I am very surprised, and pleased, after finishing the calculation that not only it increased [...]

After three straight months of robust growth of our net worth, which added a total of $148,420.12 to our paper wealth, the gain in June was a little disappointing. Nonetheless, I am still very happy to see that the positive trend has been extended into the forth month, even though the stock market didn’t exactly [...]

May 2009 turned to be another solid month for our net worth as the stock market recorded its third straight monthly gain. After reaching the lows on March 9, which now seems to be the bottom of the stock market, the Dow has gained nearly 30% as of May 31, the Nasdaq almost 40%, and [...]