Investing

If You’re Coming from Saving Bond Advisor

Posted by Sun on November 7, 2006 Comments Off

I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you to my diary and hope you find the information in my post "T-Bill Investment Rate: Is it APR or APY? And What Is Your Taxable Equivalent Yield?" useful. I will be very happy if the post, written with my best knowledge, can help you understand some [...]

Categories : Bond, Investing Tags:

How to be Successful in Investing from Kiplinger — Part II

Posted by Sun on November 7, 2006 Comments Off

The second key for you to be a successful investor is to Set Exciting Goals, whether they are short-term, medium-term, or long-terms goals.
If you visit any PF blogger's website and go through the posts, chances are you will see some personal goals. Some are as small as making a commitment when you starts a [...]

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T-Bill Investment Rate: Is it APR or APY? And What Is Your Taxable Equivalent Yield?

Posted by Sun on November 6, 2006 (27) Comment

If you go to TreasuryDirect’s website and check the latest T-Bill rates, you will find a table with the following seven columns: Security Term, Issue Date, Maturity Date, Discount Rate %, Investment Rate %, Price Per $100, and CUSIP. As a 4-Week T-bill investor, when I look at the table, the single item that concerns [...]

Categories : Bond, Investing Tags:

4-Week T-Bill Rate Kept Rising

Posted by Sun on November 5, 2006 Comments Off

The lastest 4-Week T-bill rate from last Tuesday's auction is 5.176%, already surpassing interest rates offered from some popular banks, such as EmigrantDirect and HSBC, which earn you 5.05% APY.

If you want to get some other alternatives for your cash reserve, you may want to consider E-Loan, which has a very appealing 5.50% APY and [...]

Categories : Banking, Bond, Investing, Personal finance Tags:

What You Want to Know Before Buying ETFs

Posted by Sun on November 2, 2006 (1) Comment

In my previous post, I summarized the reasons I invested in ETFs (I currently have six PowerShares ETFs: PEY, PFM, PGJ, PHO, and PID), including

ETFs are priced as stocks;
Many ETFs are designed to track some popular indices;
The fees for sector ETFs are usually lower than their mutual fund counterparts;
ETFs can be purchased at any discount [...]

Categories : Investing, Stock Tags:

How to be Successful in Investing from Kiplinger — Part I

Posted by Sun on October 31, 2006 (1) Comment

Kiplinger's Personal Finance has an on-going special series on successful investing. Today, the first segment of the "The Five Keys to Investing Success" is out and key number one is Make Investing a Habit, a principle that I couldn't agree more.
The article begins with a suggestion to people with small amount to invest every [...]

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4-Week T-Bills: Back into Action and How to Make a Purchase

Posted by Sun on October 26, 2006 (5) Comment

This week's auction result put the interest rate of 4-week T-Bills at 5.146%, better than what EmigrantDirect and HSBC offer (5%). For second straight week, the rates are above 5%, making T-Bills more attractive now than a month ago. And I decided to jump back in again. Well, considering that I have only canceled the [...]

Categories : Bond, Investing Tags:

Dollar-cost-averaging with ETFs: Bad Idea?

Posted by Sun on October 26, 2006 (1) Comment

I became a big fan of ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) in December 2004 when I sold my Matthews China Fund (MCHFX) holdings at Scottrade after it started to charge fees for no-load mutual funds and switched to PowerShares' Golden Dragon Halter USX China (PGJ), 10 days after its inception.
Now I own seven PowerShares ETFs, [...]

Categories : Investing, Stock Tags:

How often Do You Check Your Investment Accounts’ Balance?

Posted by Sun on October 26, 2006 Comments Off

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 [...]

Categories : Investing, Mutual fund, Stock Tags:

Sent Checks to Scottrade

Posted by Sun on October 24, 2006 Comments Off

Due to the apparent delay of our Roth IRA transfer process at Vanguard, I decided to mail the checks ($1000 each) to Scottrade for our forth quarter Roth IRA contributions. When I started the transfer process at the end of last month, I thought it could be done before the next quarterly automatic investment date [...]

Categories : Investing, Personal finance, Retirement, Stock Tags:
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