The Sun's Financial Diary

I got an email from a reader other day about buying exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The question is really about what ETFs to invest in, but how. How to buy ETFs to be exact. I am no stranger to ETFs. Actually, I have became a fan of ETFs over the years. Having bought my share of [...]

Well, maybe not exactly tricky, but the whole process isn’t as straightforward as one would expect at least. I have an IRA account with Vanguard for years. The investments I have in that account until now are all Vanguard mutual funds and since I only buy Vanguard funds, it is pretty easy to buy, sell, [...]

More than two years ago, I had a post on why there’s no exchange-traded fund (ETF) for Platinum when the price of the metal was soaring. Back then, the explanation was, the scarceness of platinum made it difficult to form a GLD (SPDR Gold Trust) like fund that’s backed by the physical metal without driving up the [...]

One of the biggest advantages of Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) over traditional mutual funds is that ETFs usually cost much less to own because of the way ETFs are structured. Also helping to reduce the cost is that not before long, all ETFs are passively managed, meaning that they all track their respective index, minimizing the [...]

Back in August 2008, I designed a diversified, all-ETF portfolio before the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the huge sell-off of the stock market. The goal I had in my mind when I built the portfolio was to have a portfolio that covers a wide range of asset classes such that it gives me the [...]

The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) on June 26, 2009. The act mandates a 17% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 2005 level by 2020. It also requires that by 2020 more than 20% the nation’s electricity should be generated from reusable sources, [...]

On one hand, the exchange-traded fund (ETF) industry continues to expand at a record pace (the total number of ETFs at the end of 2008 grew to 747, up 118 from 2007); on the other hand, funds that get no love from investors are being eliminated. Last Friday, PowerShares, one of the major players in [...]

Mutual fund giant Vanguard Group launched a new exchanged-traded fund (ETF) last week. The Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Small-Cap ETF (VSS), incepted on April 2, tracks the performance of the FTSE Global Small-Cap ex-US Index. According to FTSE, the Global Small-Cap ex-US Index is a freefloat-adjusted, market-capitalization-weighted index that covers more than 3,300 small-cap stocks [...]