The Sun's Financial Diary

John Bogel, founder of Vanguard and pioneer of index mutual funds, is aiming his firepower at ETFs this time, especially the index and sector ETFs. Of the total asset in all index mutual funds is about $900 billion, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) now take a 38% share.
In an article appeared on Bloomberg.com yesterday, Mr. Bogel, the [...]

I have been investing in China for more than three years and the first China related financial product I purchased was Mattews China Fund (MCHFX) held in my brokerage account with Scottrade. I sold all my position at the end of 2003 when Scottrade started to charge commissions for even the non-load funds. Shortly after, [...]

An article in yesterday's USAToday prompted to check the fees I paid for those funds in my 401(k) plan. Unlike mutual funds holding in my taxable accounts, in which I have the flexibility to choose from perhaps hundreds of funds in the same category from as many companies, the number of funds in my 401(k) [...]

If you look to add some mid-cap funds into your portfolio. Here's the good news. According to Morningstar.com, Vanguard Strategic Equity Fund (VSEQX) (a Mid-blend fund with an EP of 0.82% and YTD return 10.31%, 3-year return 14.89% and 5-year return 14.50%), which was closed to new investers in April 2006 due to asset size [...]

Every day? Every week? or Every month?
When I first started investing in 2001, I was so eager to see how my investments (mutual funds) were doing, I just couldn't wait till 6 o'clock in the eventing to get the closing prices. So I entered the top 10 or 15 holdings of each mutual funds I [...]

This is the last item on the September 2006 score card: asset allocations of the taxable accounts.
In addition to investing regularly in our retirement accounts (401(k)s, Roth IRAs), I also have some stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds in taxable accounts. Right now, these accounts serve as supplements to our retirement investments. When it comes [...]

This is the title of an article from Kiplinger's Personal Finance. The article suggested several options to start investing with a small amount of money (less than $500). According to the article, youngsters can start stock investment with Sharebuilder, which charges $4 for each transaction. For the long-term, the article brought up a couple of [...]

One of my mutual fund holdings, Columbia Strategic Investor Z (CSVFX), lost more than $2.60 in NAV on September 20th. At that time, I thought it must be due to income distributions. But I forgot to check my account from their website and didn't take the distribution into consideration when calculating my September net worth.
Last [...]

There’s an article in the T. Row Price Investor magazine I received today on mutual fund distributions. If you are a new mutual fund investor or planning to invest into mutual funds, it could used as fundamentals about mutual fund investing. So I summarized and expanded the article a little bit for this post.
Ok, what [...]

On my way to work this morning, I heard Bloomberg radio (yes, I alsmost never dailed any music channel) mentioned a mutual fund that has a 12-month return of 18% (maybe the number I remembered is a little bit off, but it's in that area). The return was great but I think there are plenty [...]