The Sun’s Financial Diary

Like about 100 million people across the country, I spent my Sunday evening watching Super Bowl XLIV between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. I didn’t have a particular rooting interest in either of the teams although I did enjoy the feel good fairy tale ending for the city of New Orleans. [...]

Warren Buffett is in the news again!
Well, I suppose in the world of Wall Street, Warren Buffett never really leaves the news but the information that came out of Omaha, Nebraska this past week is particularly noteworthy.
On January 26th, it was announced that Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett’s holding company, would be replacing Burlington Northern Santa Fe, [...]

After a dismal year of 2008, the U.S. IPO market recovered a little bit in 2009. According to Renaissance Capital, there were a total of 63 deals last year, up more than a third from the year before when only 43 companies went public. To give you an idea of how bad the past two [...]

As the new year begins, many investors are looking for two things. One is an indication as to what the year ahead will bring and the second is a competitive edge to help them achieve above average returns. One thing that seasoned investors look towards to get answers to both of these questions [...]

Visa (NYSE:V) stock got a big lift today after Standard & Poor announced last Friday that the payment processor, along with four other stocks, will join the benchmark after the close of trading December 18th.
I bought the stock at $59.50 a share on March 18, 2008 when it went public, despite that the economy was [...]

Today, I’d like to share with you the story of both my greatest investing success and my greatest investing mistake. Unfortunately, you’re about to find out that both stories relate to the same investment.
It was the latter half of 1999. Tech stock mania was running wild and stocks were delivering unprecedented returns. [...]

What are you using to track your investments?
I have been using Quicken Home & Business for investment tracking for years. It is a powerful and convenient tool that does a lot of other things than tracking stocks and mutual funds. However, the convenience comes with a price tag of $100. It’s not cheap for sure. [...]

I forget when was the last time I traded stocks. It must have been at least a few months ago because since I started this new job in June, I barely had any time during the day for *my own business* , but today I made a couple of purchases: one IPO [...]

When I opened my TradeKing account in 2007,  I also got a book, The Options Playbook, from TradeKing after I expressed interest in options trading. I have bought and sold stocks for several years, but never traded options because I feel that trading options requires a little more skills than buying and selling stocks. Before [...]

General Motor (GM), the world’s largest car maker for 77 years until 2008, filed for Chapter 11 protection this morning, the same day its fellow car maker Chrysler could exit bankruptcy. The bankruptcy filing is expected after GM failed to reconstruct its debts with bondholders before the June 1 deadline imposed by the government. In [...]