The Sun’s Financial Diary

After five straight monthly loses, we finally saw some meaningful increase in our paper wealth in April, thanks to a strong showing in the stock markets. Our net worth has suffered huge losses since last November when stocks peaked and started trading lower and lower amid financial market turmoil. In the past five months, our [...]

Just when I thought maybe the worst was over last month after seeing a negligible drop in our next worth in February, we were hit again in March as the stock markets continued to struggle, though the amount lost on paper isn’t as bad as the first couple of months of 2008. In fact, except [...]

The harsh reality that the Dow lost more than 430 points in the last two trading days of February didn’t help when it comes the time to count our nest eggs. In fact, the benchmark held a little gain when the market closed on February 27th. But all three major indices sold off on the [...]

What used to make us, now broke us.
For a third time in a row, our paper fortune dropped after the broad market suffered deep decline in the first month of 2008. Our calculation showed that at the end of January 2008, our net worth, excluding house and vehicle related items, was at $551,521, down [...]

It’s that time again and what I am looking at is not pretty, as expected.
November turned out to be a very tough month for investors as both the S&P and the Dow had the biggest monthly decline in five years. Despite the second rate cut by the Fed in as many months, concerns over subprime [...]

The Federal Reserve gave investors a Halloween treat yesterday by cutting the key lending rate a quarter-percentage point. The second rate cut in two months gave the stock markets a boost, pushing major indices up more than 1% Wednesday to finish the month on a strong note. For the month, the Dow gained 0.3% to [...]

When the stock markets had the best September in 34 years, it’s hard not to make money, big money and that was indeed what happened to us last month. In fact, we saw so far the biggest jump in our net worth since I started the tracking in August 2006. For the month, the Dow [...]

I just realized that I have been tracking the growth of our net worth for more than a year already. One year ago today, we had a total of $369,550 without including house and car related items. Here’s a picture of our net worth at the end of August 2006.

How are we doing one year [...]

I am glad a tough month finally came to a close. Actually, July started quite nice, with the Dow hitting record high of 14,000 and S&P 500 crossing 1,550 for the first time. The first half of the month was very promising. Then things started to turn from bad to worse as credit worries weighed [...]

In addition to price appreciation, the other investment objective we have is to generate passive incomes from our investments. To that end, I have been investing quite heavily in dividend generating stocks and funds. Last year, our investments brought us more than $9,000 in interests, dividends, and capital gains. For the first half of 2006, [...]