The Sun’s Financial Diary

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 [...]

I don’t know if there’s anybody celebrating, but we had a new record for the Dow at the close, 11,727.34. The old record was 11722.98, set on January 14, 2000 at the peak of the Internet bubble.

Not sure if there's anybody celebrating, but we have a new record for the Dow at the close, 11,727.34. The old record was 11722.98, set on January 14, 2000 at the peak of the Internet bubble.

This is just to remind you that Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) will hold Kiplinger’s Jump-Start Your Retirement Plan Days on October 6. Members from NAPFA will be available to answer your questions on retirement planning for free via the toll-free number (888) 919-2345.

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 [...]

Yesterday’s auction set the latest yield of 4-week T-Bill at 4.721%, dipped 3 basis points from last week’s rate. After examining recent yield moves, I feel that we would be better of if we shift the cash currently invested in 4-week T-Bills to our savings account at EmigrantDirect, which pays 5.15% APY.
I will keep an [...]

Need help with your retirement plan? How about some professional assistance?
Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) will hold Kiplinger’s Jump-Start Your Retirement Plan Days on Thursday, September 21 (that’s tomorrow) and Friday, October 6 (only these two days). Members from NAPFA will be available to answer your [...]

 
After peaking at 5.227% APY on August 8th, the yield of 4-week T-Bill has been on the decline. The auction of last Tuesday set the latest rate at 4.757%.

This is the second part of my weekend reading: Aspects of Investor Psychology. In the first part, the focus was on overconfidence in investor’s decision making process. The topic of this part is optimism in investing of both financial advisors and investors like you and me. Take a look at the following question:
Question 2: [...]