Investing

Stay Local, Trade Global

Posted by Sun on February 20, 2007 (3) Comment

Interested in trading stocks listed on London Stock Exchange or Tokyo Stock Exchange, but don’t have an account with them due to regulatory restrictions?
So far US investors who want to access global markets can mainly invest through mutual funds offered by the domestic financial industry or individual stocks (ADRs or American Depositary Receipts) listed [...]

Popularity: 14% [?]

Categories : Brokerage, Investing Tags: No Tags

Firstrade to Start Charging Fees for Mutual Fund Investments

Posted by Sun on February 19, 2007 (4) Comment

I got this email from Firstrade today, but somehow the date of the message shows February 7, 2007. While the message began with an exciting tone by saying “We are pleased to announce that Firstrade now offers over 10,000 mutual funds,” What it really wants to tell me, as well as all other investors [...]

Popularity: 10% [?]

Categories : Investing, Mutual fund Tags: No Tags

Model Portfolios Built with ETFs (I) — Couch Potato Portfolio

Posted by Sun on February 16, 2007 (5) Comment

Last month, Jonathan at MyMoneyBlog ran a series on model portfolios which covered some (so far six) popular portfolios based on various investment philosophies. When these model portfolios were originally developed (some are more than thirty years old), the main investment vehicles were mutual funds, where were apparently the only choices at that time. [...]

Popularity: 14% [?]

Categories : ETF, Investing, Mutual fund Tags: No Tags

Planned Investments: ShareBuilder, SogoInvest, and MyStockFund

Posted by Sun on February 13, 2007 (6) Comment

The first planned investment service I have heard of and used was ShareBuilder, which was also the only brokerage other than Scottrade I used back in March 2006. The reasons I decided to open an ShareBuilder account (eventually, I got three of them for both me and my wife) were:

Promotion bonuses: I collected a total [...]

Popularity: 15% [?]

Categories : Brokerage, Investing Tags: No Tags

Know Who’s Whispering What before Earning Release

Posted by Sun on February 12, 2007 (2) Comment

Before a company releases its earning, financial research firms such as Thomson/FirstCall and Reuters survey fund managers and stock analysts to predict what the earning will look like. Stock prices usually move after the earning release, with magnitude depending on the outlook and how far away the true earning is different from consensus estimates. However, [...]

Popularity: 6% [?]

Categories : Investing, Tools Tags: No Tags