The Sun's Financial Diary

I have been a Scottrade customer for more than 10 years. As a long time user, I am glad to see that Scottrade keeps introducing new or improved products to its customers. This time, it’s the Scottrader Streaming Quotes tool, with more enhanced features. As I mentioned in my broker web-based trading platform comparison post [...]

Back in 2007 when the China’s stock market was red hot (Shanghai Composite Index peaked in October 2008 and since then lost nearly two-third of its value), I got myself an E*Trade Global Trading Account and bought two stocks that were traded in Hong Kong using the account. Though there are plenty of Chinese ADRs [...]

These days, I find myself using Scottrade Mobile App for Android phones a lot to trade stocks. The main reason is, of course, convenience because sometimes when I am at work, using company computer to trade stocks during work hours isn’t an option.  Not that I trade a lot, but by using the mobile app [...]

I opened a brokerage account with optionsXpress, now part of Charles Schwab, a few years ago when they ran a promotion that gave $100 bonus for a new account. Since then I have been running an optionsXpress referral program for people who want to receive some incentives to open an account with the broker (you [...]

A few years ago, I wrote a post about building my own portfolio with nothing but ETFs, when Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) have started to gain popularity among investors. The idea was that, because of ETF’s popularity, it was entirely possible to pick one ETF in each asset class I wanted to invest in and assemble [...]

TD Ameritrade is one of the leading discount brokerage firms that offers investors a wide range of products and services to meet their investment needs. The company is not stranger to me and I have written about it here a few times in the past. However, despite its well-known name, I have never really used [...]

I am not a customer of USAA, but I have heard some good things about some of its services, such as its No Fee Checking Account (given how much other big banks are charging these days for their checking accounts, truly free checking is pretty hard to find) and Auto Insurance services quite a few times in [...]

Nowadays, there are many online discount brokers to choose from if you want to open a brokerage account and begin trading stocks and/or options on you own. Of course, every broker is different in many ways including fees, services, and tools, and there are lots of things to compare and contrast before the final decision [...]