The Oakmark Funds reopened its Global Fund (OAKGX) on May 9, 2008. The fund, which has been closed to new investors since December 2003, invests in both domestic and foreign markets, holding 42.6% of its assets in U.S. stocks and and the rest in developed and emerging economies outside the country. According to Morningstar.com, OAKGX has an expense ratio (ER) of 1.18% and yield 0.14%. The fund’s 3-year annualized return is 13.70% and 5-year 18.28%. To invest in this fund, a $1,000 initial investment is required. That amount, however, is reduced to $500 if automatic investment plan is used.

T. Rowe Price recently also announced that its Small-Cap Value Fund (PRSVX) reopened to new investors on May 1, 2008. The fund had some great runs in the early part of this decade and was closed in May 2002. PRSVX mainly invests in small companies with market capital within or below those in the Russell 2000 index. Morningstar data shows that PRSVX has a 3-year return 10.83%, 5-year 15.13%, and 10-year 9.58%.

The minimum initial investment of PRSVX is $1,000, which will be waived if an automatic investment plan with at least $50 a month is set up at the time when an account is opened. PRSVX’s ER is 0.81%, which is quite low for a small-cap fund. The fund also has a yield of 0.69%.

I have owned PRSVX since April 2002, shortly before it was closed and currently I invest $100 into the fund every month.

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Micro-cap fund specialist Washtch Advisors today announced that it will temporarily reopen two micro-cap funds, Wasatch International Opportunities Fund (WAIOX)
Wasatch Micro Cap Value Fund (WAMVX), to all investors. Unlike other funds that were recently reopened, these two funds seem never available to individual investors because they were both closed on the day when they were launched (WAIOX in 2005 and WAMVX in 2003), according to the announcement. That’s quite strange.

According to Morningstar, WAIOX has a 3-year annual return of 18.58% and a yield of 4.66%, both quite impressive. However, the fund’s 2.25% expense ratio (ER) is rather formidable. WAMVX’s ER is also at 2.25% with 13.94% 3-year return.

Both funds require a minimum initial investment of $2,000. However, for automatic investment plan, the initial minimum is reduced to $1,000.

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Since I began to actively use my Zecco account to trade stocks in March, I got myself a task that I don’t want: find a place to store the mail Zecco sent me every time I made a trade. It’s not really a piece of junk mail that I can just throw away, but close to that status because I really don’t need it. It’s the trade confirmation. When I did only one trade every few months, getting a piece of mail isn’t a problem. However, when I traded seven times a month, all the unnecessary statements become a problem.

Because of the large number of accounts we are using, I have tried to minimize paper statements I receive from banks, credit cards, and brokers. Since most transactions are already conducted online, I am more comfortable to go to their websites to find information I need than looking for a statement from a pile of paper. For Zecco, I have long wanted to opt-out paper statement and receive email confirmation instead. Eventually, I called them about two weeks ago after I failed to make the selection myself. The problem was when I clicked the Account Record, there was also a link to Account Statement in the window on the right in addition to the one in the pull-down menu. But when I clicked the link on the right, nothing happened (another evidence of their lousy website). After I called, I was told that I had to use the link in the pull-down menu

Anyway, I am glad that Zecco decided to force its customers to switch to electronic statement and if you don’t, it’s going to cost you for every paper statement you receive:

If you don’t sign up on or before May 30, 2008, you’ll continue receiving paper documents by mail, and you’ll be charged $1.50 per paper trade confirmation starting June 1, 2008 and $2.00 per paper statement starting June 30, 2008.

You pay $0 commission for a trade, why pay $2.00 to receive a paper statement? Actually, I hope all the banks, credit card companies, and brokerages eventually offer only electronic statements. Yes, they will probably lose some marketing opportunities (all those extra stuff that come along with your statement), but they can also save a lot of money from paper and postage.

BTW, I hope that when everybody switches to electronic statement, Zecco can increase their monthly commission free trades from 10 to, say, 15 as the operating cost is reduced further

Featured Information: Zecco Promotion Code

Ready to buy stocks for zero commission? Open a Zecco free trading account and get 10 commission free trades every month:

And be sure to check out my review of the broker and my first trading experience before opening your account.

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• Zecco Dividend Reinvestment: More of a Hassle than Convenience

A little over one year ago, I bought a Buffalo gold coin from Bullion Direct when the price was around $640 an ounce. Somehow, I never considered that as an investment, though gold has gained a lot in the past year. Currently at $885, gold actually made a good investment

Since then, I have always been thinking of getting another one, again not because of the rising gold price. We have two daughters, so we want to have two pieces. After watching gold went all the way to $1030/ounce then pulled back to under $900, I did what I have been waiting to do: I bought another piece of gold yesterday at $908 from Bullion Direct! This time I didn’t buy the coin. It’s a 1-ounce gold bar.

Will I buy another one? Probably not, at least not before it drops to under $640 if it can go down that much. I certainly hope it won’t return to that level

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Today, April 22nd, is Earth Day and one of the topic being discussed is how to live a green life and save our environment. On this year’s Earth Day, the government also announced a plan to boost fuel efficiency by 25%, increasing per gallon mileage from 27.5 to 35.7, on the same day when the price of crude oil reached another record high, only a few cents away from breaking the $120/barrel milestone.

I don’t know how much impact this new proposal will have on the nation’s oil consumption, especially when the net standard won’t take effect until 2015. As an investor, one way we can save our planet is investing in companies that are in the business of exploring renewable energy such as solar power. For that, the newly incepted Claymore/MAC Global Solar Energy Index ETF (TAN) comes handy.

TAN, which was launched on April 15th, is a passive exchange-traded fund (as oppose to active ETF) that uses MAC Global Solar Energy Index (ticker SUNIDX) as benchmark. The index mainly tracks companies that either manufacture solar power related equipment or supply materials used in solar power system, or provide consulting, integration, or financing for solar power industry. Currently, the fund currently invested in 25 stocks, including many popular Chinese solar power players such as JA Solar and LKD Solar, etc. Companies covered by SUNIDX have market caps from $300 million to nearly $18 billion. Specifically, 42.65% of the components are small-cap stocks, 29.67% mid-cap, and 27.68% large-cap. According to the fund’s prospectus, the index is rebalanced on a quarterly basis.

The complete list of TAN’s components and their respective weightings in the index are as following:

• First Solar (FSLR): 8.87%
• Renewable Energy: 8.25%
• Q-Cells: 6.65%
• Suntech Power (STP): 6.32%
• Solarworld: 5.51%
• JA Solar (JASO): 5.39%
• Yingli Green Energy (YGE): 4.81%
• Sunpower (SPWR): 4.73%
• LDK Solar (LDK): 4.55%
• Memc Electronic Materials (WFR):4.45%
• Solaria Energia Y Medio Ambiente: 3.63%
• Centrotherm Photovoltaics: 3.44%
• Trina Solar (TSL): 3.27%
• Energy Conversion Devices (ENER): 3.25%
• Ersol Solar Energy: 3.14%
• Solarfun Power (SOLF): 3.03%
• Canadian Solar (CSIQ): 2.85%
• Solon Ag Fuer Solartechnik: 2.78%
• Evergreen Solar (ESLR): 2.75%
• Meyer Burger Technology: 2.43%
• Roth & Rau: 2.17%
• Conergy: 2.09%
• Manz Automation: 2.09%
• China Sunergy (CSUN): 1.94%
• Emcore (EMKR): 1.60%

The fund has an expense ratio of 0.65%.

Note: Claymore has also created some exotic ETFs in the past, but had to shut them down early this year after the funds failed to get investors attention. Hope this new offering can avoid that fate. The average daily volume of TAN, 530K, is indeed much higher than those funds that have been closed.

Featured Information: Zecco Promotion Code

Ready to buy stocks and ETFs with zero commission? Open a Zecco free trading account and get 10 commission free trades every month:

And be sure to check out my review of the broker and my first trading experience before opening your account.

photo credit: edgelily

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In his book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, author Burton Malkiel declared that

A blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper’s financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by the experts.

Do you believe random walk? Or do you follow your own research? Or maybe experts recommendations?

Early this month I mentioned in my net worth update that I have been using Zecco account to do some trades recently and made a small money from the activities. Here’s what I am doing with my so-called “play account.”

When I opened my Zecco account in the summer of 2006, I was thinking of using it as a play account because of the commission-free trades it offers. For a play account, I plan only to put a small amount of money in it and play with the mo so even if I lose it all, it won’t hurt too much. If I can make any money from it, then good for me, though it won’t prove anything other than some luck.

I didn’t really start to play with the little money I have in my Zecco account until February after I published my first The Dog of the Chinese ADRs. Initially, I thought I would buy the Chinese ADR that performs the worst in the previous month and hold it for one month, then sell the stock at the end of the month and buy the next worst performer. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep up with this method, though I did trade a few Chinese ADRs in the past couple of months without doing any research (random?). I just bought the stocks when I had the money and sold them when the profit was acceptable, no really holding the stocks for a month as I originally planed.

Anyway, I made a total of 7 trades in my Zecco account in March, more than I did in the entire 2007 and made a little over $111 profits, a gain of more than 14%. Stocks I bought and sold since February include:

• Global Sources (GSOL)
• Xinhua Finance Media (XFML)
• Renesola (SOL)
• Baidu (BIDU)

And stocks I am currently holding are:

• China South Air (ZNH)
• WSP Holdings (WH)
• Agria Corp. (GRO)

For me, I think I have no problem deciding when to buy a stock. The problem is when to sell. For various reasons, I am always reluctant to take profits off table when I should. For example, one of my biggest holdings China Life Insurance went to a record high of $106 a share in late October 2007. I didn’t sell any shares when the stock, like many other Chinese stocks traded in U.S., was clearly going down since. Now LFC has lost nearly half of its value, taking away a big chunk of my paper wealth. I guess I am too greedy (always expect it to go higher and higher)! With this play account, I want to sell a stock whenever I think the profit is good enough. So far the average holding time is about a week.

Money in the account were from signup bonuses I got from Zecco for referring new customers to them. I have published the Google spreadsheet that I use to track my trades and performance. The goal of this play account is to make money, small money, and I want to see how much I will have at the end of this year.

Featured Information: Zecco Promotion Code

Ready to buy stocks and ETFs with zero commission? Open a Zecco free trading account and get 10 commission free trades every month:

And be sure to check out my review of the broker and my first trading experience before opening your account.

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Less than a month after Bear Stearns became the first firm ever to offer actively managed exchange-traded fund (ETF), PowerShares, an major player in the ETF arena, introduced its own active ETFs last Friday. The four new ETFs, including both equity and fixed income funds, are:

• PowerShares Active AlphaQ Fund (PQY)
• PowerShares Active Alpha Multi-Cap Fund (PQZ)
• PowerShares Active Mega Cap Fund (PMA)
• PowerShares Active Low Duration Fund (PLK)

Following are brief summaries of the new funds.
The Active AlphaQ Fund invests in companies, both domestic and international traded in the U.S., with more than $400 million market cap. Currently PQY consists of 50 stocks listed on NASDAQ. The fund’s investment objective is to seek long-term capital appreciation. PQY has an expense ratio (ER) of 0.75%.

The Active Alpha Multi-Cap Fund seeks long-term growth of capital. Similar to PQY, PQZ also invests in domestic companies as well as foreign companies listed on U.S. exchanges. It has 50 stocks with 35.76% in large-cap, 46.1% in mid-cap and 16.22% in small-cap. The fund’s ER is 0.75%.

The Active Mega Cap Fund holds stocks in the Russell Top 200 Index and other mega-cap stocks. Therefore, nearly 99% of the fund’s investments are in large-cap companies. PMA’s top five holdings are Exxon Mobil (XOM), Pfizer (PFE), Merck (MRK), Intel (INTC) and Verizon (VZ). PMA also has an ER of 0.75%.

The Active Low Duration Fund is a fixed income ETF that invests 80% of its assets in U.S. government, corporate, and agency debt securities. Nearly 98% of the fund’s investments have a maturity between 0 and 5 years, with a weighted average effective maturity of less than 3 years. As a fixed income investment, PLK has a low ER of 0.29%.

Before the introduction of active ETFs, all exchange-traded funds are passive investments, tracking their respective indices. Now we have the first actively managed stock ETF and more are expected to come, I am wondering if someday ETFs can completely replace mutual funds, given their advantages in trading and costs.

Featured Information: Zecco Promotion Code

Ready to buy stocks and ETFs with zero commission? Open a Zecco free trading account and get 10 commission free trades every month:

And be sure to check out my review of the broker and my first trading experience before opening your account.

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Do you invest in Treasury bills, notes, and bonds?

If you do, then there’s a good news. Starting early this week, Treasury Department has lowered the minimum purchase from $1,000 to $100. The change applies to Treasury bills, notes, and bonds with maturity from 4 weeks to 30 years, which means that 4-week T-bill is also included. I used to buy 4-week T-bills as short-term investment, but stopped last summer as the rates tumbled.

Now that Treasury securities are more affordable, will you plan to take advantage of change and buy “the world’s safest, most liquid investments”? I probably won’t. Affordability alone won’t make an investment a good choice. With 5-year notes at 2.595% and 10-year bonds at 3.510% (TreasuryDirect data), I’d rather keep my money in an online savings account that pays 3.28% APY (IGoBanking) and let me get my money at any time without a penalty

The Wall Street Journal yesterday has an article yesterday discussing ways individual investors use Treasury securities to build bond portfolio themselves. Check it out if you are interested in doing so.

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I bought my first share of Bank of America (BAC) through ComputerShare back in November 2006. Since then I have been making regular monthly purchase and consider it as a good alternative to buying stocks through a broker with a fixed commission.

If you’re also considering investing with ComputerShare, but haven’t started the process yet, then this post will give you a rough idea of what it takes to buy dividend paying stocks from ComputerShare. In this post, I will use Pfizer as an example to show the complete process of buying stocks directly at ComputerShare.

Investment plans

ComputerShare offers two kinds of investment plan: Direct stock purchase plan (DSPP) and Dividend Reinvestment plan (DRIP). Of them, DSPP is available to all investors, whether they own the stocks or not, and DRIP is for existing shareholders. If you haven’t purchased any stock from ComputerShare before, then you will need to use the DSPP link on the Investment Plans page to find the company you want to invest in to become a shareholder first.

Costs of DSPP plans

Since I don’t own Pfizer (PFE), which is available as a DSPP stock, I have to go to the DSPP list and find PFE. In this list, you can also find information such as the minimum initial investment for each stock. The minimum initial investments rage from $50 to $2,500, which are lower than most mutual fund minimums. One of my criteria when selecting a DSPP stock is low initial investment because I plan to buy the stock on a monthly basis, there’s no reason to make a big initial purchase. So I usually don’t look at stocks require more than $1,000 to begin with. For PFE, the $500 initial investment is within my range.

In addition to minimum initial investment, there are other factors to consider before making a decision on whether it’s worth it to buy stocks from ComputerShare instead of from a discount broker. Of those factors, what I concern the most is always the costs, which include (click on View of a particular plan to see details of plan fees):

• Initial Setup Fee
• Cash Purchase Fee
• Ongoing Automatic Investment Fee
• Per Share Purchase Processing Fee
• Dividend Reinvestment Fee
• Sale Fee
• Per Share Sale Processing Fee
• Maximum Sales Fee

As you can see, buying stocks form ComputerShare could involve more fees than from a broker, potentially making the investment too expensive. Therefore, when choosing a plan, I will try to stay away from those that charge a per-share based purchase fee and per-transaction based processing fee, though I can afford to pay a small one-time account setup fee. An example of how investing with ComputerShare can incur excessive fees is the Altria’s (MO) investment plan which charges:

• Initial Setup Fee: $10.00
• Cash Purchase Fee: $5.00
• Ongoing Automatic Investment Fee: $2.50
• Per Share Purchase Processing Fee: $0.03

In this case, it’s better to go directly with a discount broker such as TradeKing ($4.95 commission) or Zecco ($0 commission), or even Scottrade ($7 commission). Fortunately, for Pfizer, the plan only charges a $15 Sale Fee and $0.12/share Sale Processing Fee. On the other hand, sale fees, which are very common with direct investment programs, could become a big expense later when the shares are to be sold because the cost is proportional to the number of shares owned.

Make a purchase

After reviewing all the costs of investing in a particular plan, the next step is to setup an account and make a purchase (click the Buy Now link), which involve six steps:

1. Registration Details
2. Purchase Options
3. Bank Details
4. Dividend Reinvestment Options
5. Validation
6. Confirmation

For the Purchase Options part, there are two options: One-time purchase or Recurring purchase. Since this is the first time that I will buy Pfizer shares, I will need to use the one-time purchase option to make an initial investment. For recurring purchase, ComputerShare currently only offers monthly automatic investment.

With ComputerShare, purchase can be made via direct debit from a bank account. To establish direct debit, bank information such as routing number and account number need to be provided. And in Step 4, I chose Full Dividend Reinvestment over partial cash payout. Finally, after validating and confirming that the information I provided is correct, my new DSPP plan is ready.

Invest in DRIP plans

The above process for buying stocks offered by ComputerShare in DSPP plans. There are also many other stocks (from companies such as Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), etc.) available through DRIP programs which require investors to be become a shareholder first before using the dividend reinvest plans. In order to buy these stocks through ComputerShare, you will have to buy one share of the stock you want to invest from a broker then transfer it to ComputerShare, either electronically or by mailing them the stock certificate. I haven’t done a transfer like this before, but this is what I wasn’t told when I called ComputerShare last week, asking the procedure of investing in DRIP plans.

Once the transfer is completed, you will be able to see the one share you own from your ComputerShare account and start to make regular purchase using what I have discussed above.

Is it worth it?

With so many discount brokers out there which charge a small commission for buying a stock regardless the number of shares purchased, direct investment plans from ComputerShare are not that appealing, especially when discount brokers only offer free dividend reinvestments (TradeKing and Zecco do, but Scottrade doesn’t). So when does investing with ComputerShare make sense, given that there are more fees involved than buying the stock from a broker?

In my opinion, if you want to buy a stock in one lump sum, then there’s no reason to use ComputerShare because many plans charge account setup fee, purchase processing fee, and sale fee which could be mor ethan what a discount broker charge for buying and selling a stock. That said, it doesn’t mean ComputerShare will make a better choice if you want to invest in a small amount regularly (dollar cost averaging). In this case, a broker isn’t an option for DCA if it charges commission for each transaction. Since most DRIP/DSPP plans charge per-share based processing fee every time shares are purchased, you will need to consider:

1. The cost of buying a share;
2. The investment time frame;
3. The number of shares to be purchased every time.

so that it won’t cost you too much to buy a share every time and you won’t have to pay a big sale fee later either. Of course, always pick the stock that costs less to own and pays a fat dividend

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In December 2006, I bought my first share of Procter & Gamble (PG) through their Shareholder Investment Program (SIP), which is a direct investment program, as part of my effort to build a portfolio that generates passive income (other stocks I own in this category include Bank of America, Progress Energy, Altria, etc.). However, in the past sixteen months, I managed to make only one additional purchase of $200, not really a good effort One of the reason was there’s a $1/share investment fee charge for every additional purchase. So it doesn’t make too much sense buy a small amount frequently.

After P&G updated their SIP last summer, the additional charge was eliminated. At that time, I thought I can finally invest every month, but that was just a thought and I never started until early this week when I finally decided to give my dividend-paying investments a boost. I setup an automatic purchase plan to buy $50 PG every month starting this month. That’s not a big investment because $50 even isn’t enough to buy one share at the current price (PG is traded at $70.47 as of today), but it’s better than buying $200 every year. In addition, I also buy $50 of Bank of America (BAC) and Progress Energy (PGN) every month through ComputerShare’s DRIP program.

Speaking of Altria (MO), I received 72 shares of Philip Morris International (PM) early this week from my investment in MO. I have 72 shares of MO in my account at TradeKing. After Altria completed the spin-off of Philip Morris International last week, every MO share received one PM share. I plan to hold on to my PM shares for now to see if the growth expectation can materialize.

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According to a news release, mutual fund giant Vanguard has filed with SEC to offer a new, passive fund that invests in global stock markets. The Vanguard Global Stock Index Fund, which is set to be available for investors in the second quarter this year, tracks the FTSE All-World Index. The index currently covers 48 countries in both the developed and emerging markets and constitutes of more than 2,800 stocks, of which 55% are companies outside the U.S. At the same time, Vanguard also plans to introduce the ETF version of the new fund. The expense ratio of the mutual fund will be 0.45% with a minimum initial investment of $3,000, the same as most Vanguard funds. The cost of the ETF version of the fund will be at 0.25%.

Prior to introduction of this new fund, Vanguard already has funds that cover the U.S. stock market (Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, VTSMX) and stock markets outside the U.S. (Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Index Fund, VFWIX). Now investors will have the chance to own the entire global stock markets with a single fund.

Like Vanguard founder John Bogle said before, the best way to invest for small investors is own the entire stock market, then forget about it. That will soon become true. Now I just hope that someone comes up with a global bond fund to make investing really, really simple: a global equity fund and a global fixed income fund and that’s it

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Last week, I wrote about my experience with Scottrade when I was trying to place an order of Visa (V) when the markets opened. The day after that post was published, I got an email from Chris, Chief Marketing Officer of Scottrade, who expressed concern why I had to wait so long before being connected to a customer service representative:

I saw on your website that you tried to call us this week to buy Visa and were on hold for 20 minutes at the branch before being transferred. I am sorry for the delay on hold. Can you let me know the location of your branch? We are very focused on excellent customer service and I want to look into this long hold time.

Honestly, I didn’t expect anybody from Scottrade to contact me for that minor issue. In my reply to Chris, I told him that my statement (”had to wait nearly 20 minutes before my called was transferred to Scottrade’s national service center instead being answered by brokers at my local office”) wasn’t very accurate. I wasn’t really put on hold for the entire 20 minutes. Here’s what happened on March 19. I called my local Scottrade office a little after 9:30 am. However, the phone rang much longer than usual and nobody picked it up and I didn’t get a voice message either. So I hang up and dialed again. Still the same. I hang up and waited a few minutes before trying again and still nobody answered the phone. I called my local office quite often in the past and even when everybody was busy, I always got the voice message very quickly so I knew I needed to wait, but not on March 19th. Eventually I waited until I was told that my call will be transferred to Scottrade’s national service center during peak hours or in the weekend. After a few more minutes, I spoke to a broker and that was about 10:00 am.

I know March 19 was a busy day because of Visa’s IPO, but somehow the voice message I usually get didn’t work and that caused the confusion as I wasn’t sure what happened. If I had waited a little longer instead of dialing and waiting many times, I could have reached a CSR earlier.

Anyway, today I got a response from Kelly from Scottrade:

I manage public relations for Scottrade and I wanted to follow up with you on your correspondence with Chris and make sure you were satisfied. When you call your branch, the phone rings about five times and then rolls over to our Service Center here in St. Louis if no one is able to answer the call - either because they are assisting customers in the branch or are on the phone. Typically, however, they are able to answer within two to three rings. We’re not sure what happened in your particular the branch the day you called. We do know it was an unusually busy day due to the Visa IPO, but the calls still should have rolled over promptly. We appreciate being alerted to a potential issue and are glad that we had a chance to investigate it.

I have been a Scottrade customer for more than five year, having our brokerage account and IRA accounts with the firm since 2002. Though I have opened several brokerage accounts with other firms in the past couple of years, Scottrade remains our primary broker for reasons I have explained before. I am quite happy with Scottrade, though its commission wasn’t the cheapest.

On the other hand, I also have an account with Zecco, which offers $0 commission for stock trading that nobody can beat, but its customer service is just terrible. I have complained at here several times in the past about my experience with them, but nobody ever contacted me for the issues I, as well as other customers, encountered when dealing with Zecco.

I guess that’s the reason why I won’t jump from Scottrade to Zecco.

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The Federal Reserve, as expected, delivered another three quarters of a point rate cut on Tuesday, bringing the benchmark lending rate to 2.25%, the lowest level since February 2005. The cut came after one of the Wall Street’s biggest investment banks, Bear Stearns, collapsed over the weekend after creditors rushed to the door. Though there were expectations that the central bank may take a even bolder move by slashing interest rate a full percentage point to avert the economy from slipping into a deep recession.

US stock indices briefly cut their early gains after the Fed announced its rate decision, but rallied back to finish the trading session at the peaks. The S&P 500 climbed 54.14 points, or 4.2%, to 1,330.74, its biggest rise since October 2002, the Dow gained 420.41, or 3.5%, to 12,392.66, its fourth-biggest point gain ever, and the NASDAQ added 91.25 points, or 4.2%, to 2,268.26.

IRS announced yesterday that the economic stimulus checks will be mailed out on May 2nd and most people won’t get their checks until the middle of July. IRS also published on its website a payment schedule based on the last 2 digits of the social security number. From the schedule, our check will be sent to us by June 20. if you wonder how much you will receive, IRS has a payment calculator to help you determine the size of you stimulus check.

Finally, myFICO, the official provider of FICO credit score, is now having a 7-year anniversary promotion with 25% off on all products including credit scores, credit reports, and credit monitoring services. In the past, I bought my credit scores from myFICO.com several times after credit card arbitrage to see how my score was affected when I paid around $15 to get one report plus the score. To take advantage of this sale, use promo code 7yrsale at checkout. The promotion ends April 30th, 2008.

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Just when you think the stock markets might have turned the corner (stocks gained the most in five years on Tuesday and S&P issued a statement yesterday saying the end is near for subprime related writedowns), another bomb dropped on the Wall Street today: Bear Stearns, one iconic company on the Street, needs emergency funding from JPMorgan Chase and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to stay alive!

That news didn’t do any good to the stock markets which gained a little at the open after a mild inflation report from the government. Stocks dropped more than 300 points at one point and eventually closed almost 200 points down, giving up all the gains of the week.

As stocks got pounded, commodities surged and spot gold broke the $1,000 mark for the first in history (BTW, oil also reached a record $110 a barrel)! It was just six months ago, when gold was around $750, the manager of Tocqueville Gold Fund (TGLDX), that fund that I own, predicted $1,000 gold. And now, here we are, $1,000 gold!

*Photo from Goldinvestingsource.com

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Haven’t seen rally like this for quite a while. Actually, the last time it happened was more than five years ago.

US stocks surged Tuesday after the Fed, in a coordinated action with other central banks, said it will pump $200 billion into the financial market to ease credit fears. Stock index futures jumped when the news came out at 8:30 am and traded sharply higher from beginning to finish. According to Bloomberg, the Dow gained 416.66, or 3.6%, to close today’s session at 12,156.81, the NASDAQ surged 86.42 points, or 4%, to 2,255.76, and the S&P added 47.28 points, or 3.7%, to 1,320.65, the most since October 2002.

On the currency front, Euro is last traded at $1.5357 after reaching $1.5495 against the dollar and one dollar buys 103.08 Japanese Yen. Spot gold is at $974.80 an ounce, silver $19.73/ounce, and spot platinum $2042.50/ounce. Meanwhile, crude oil future traded at record price for fifth consecutive day as traders bet on commodities to hedge against the falling dollar. Crude oil for April delivery traded as high as $109.72 a barrel in New York, the highest level since oil contracts began trading in 1983.

Looking at my own investments, Global Resource (GSOL) led the way with a gain of 34.21% after Citibank upgraded the stock from hold to buy, followed by China Life Insurance (LFC) 11.16%, and Blackstone Group (BX) 7.93%.

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Jonathan Clements, who writes the Getting Going column on The Wall Street Journal, recently celebrated his 1000th column. In his milestone piece, Mr. Clements reflected his journey of the past 1o years for writing the Getting Going and summarized what he has observed from the developments in the financial industry in the past decade.

According to the article, Mr. Clements is a firm believer of investing in low-cost index funds, which can essentially be simplified to a three-fund portfolio: a US equity fund, a world equity fund, and a bond fund. While these three funds can, and should, be the core investments for any investor who wants to build a diversified portfolio, adding new elements, especially specialty funds offerings in the form of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), to the mix properly can reduce investment risk, which will in turn reward investors with healthy long-term performance.

But new, exotic ETFs are be introduced every day and some disappeared as quickly as they came out, how should regular investors embrace the flood of new investments? Mr. Clements offered his rules in the article that I think are quite useful:

• Stick with specialized index funds that you can see holding for the long-term. WisdomTree International Real Estate Fund makes the cut. WisdomTree International Consumer Non-Cyclical Sector Fund doesn’t.
• Add specialized funds in quantities that won’t leave you desperately unhappy if the market goes against you. Given that we’re talking here about volatile sectors like emerging markets and REITs, earmarking maybe 5% of your stock portfolio for each is probably plenty. As you add funds, write down your new target portfolio, spelling out what percentage of your money will be invested in each.
• Look to rebalance regularly, adding to those funds that have fallen below their designated percentage and lightening up on highflying funds that are above your written targets.
• When everyone’s ebullient, build your new fund positions slowly. You don’t want to be making short-term market predictions. But you also don’t want to be throwing great wads of money at overheated sectors.
• So when should you add new funds? That brings me to my final rule. Purchase new funds not for their return potential, but because they will reduce risk.

What do you think?

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Gold isn’t the only hot precious metal in town these days.

Spot silver surpassed the psychological $20 an ounce today to its highest level since October 17, 1980. Currently, silver is traded at $20.80/ounce (Kitco.com). So far this year, silver has gained more than 39%.

Then, there’s platinum which is also on fire since the beginning of 2008. Yesterday, platinum traded above $2300 an ounce in New York. Year to date, spot platinum has surged more than $750 an ounce.

As hot as platinum has been so far, I am wondering why there isn’t any platinum exchange traded fund (ETF) available. I searched in the past several times, but didn’t find any. There’s gold ETFs (GLD and IAU) and silver ETFs (SLV and DBS) (check out a list of precious metal ETFs), but nothing for platinum even after the metal keeps breaking record highs.

Then I read an article on ETFtrends today which explains why there’s no platinum ETF in US. According to Kevin Rich, CEO of DB Commodity Services:

“[Platinum] is not liquid enough to support an ETF,” is the simple answer. “There are not enough players transacting it.”

The last thing anyone would want, Rich says, is for a fund to take money in but find that it couldn’t buy the underlying asset. Platinum is scarce enough that it’s possible for an investment product to take away the supply. “When you bring in an ETF, you make sure the supply and demand of the commodity are still driving the market,” Rich says.

Gold, on the other hand, is in a different situation. For gold ETF such as StreetTracks’ GLD, the shares are backed buy the metal itself. The trust holds gold bars in bank vaults to support the shares issued to its clients (currently the trust holds 647.73 tonnes of gold, according to StreetTracksGoldShares.com). So by investing in GLD, investors owns gold without having to hold and store the precious metal themselves.

There probably isn’t such a large amount of platinum available for a company to create a platinum ETF without disrupting the market

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