The Sun's Financial Diary

ShareBuilder continues to make changes after being acquired by ING. ShareBuilder today announced that it now allows investors to buy mutual funds through it’s automatic investment plans. ShareBuilder is one of the popular discount brokers which offers investors to buy stocks at dollar amount rather than share amount at $4.00 commission. The new service makes [...]

The Oakmark Funds reopened its Global Fund (OAKGX) on May 9, 2008. The fund, which has been closed to new investors since December 2003, invests in both domestic and foreign markets, holding 42.6% of its assets in U.S. stocks and and the rest in developed and emerging economies outside the country. According to Morningstar.com, OAKGX [...]

Micro-cap fund specialist Washtch Advisors today announced that it will temporarily reopen two micro-cap funds, Wasatch International Opportunities Fund (WAIOX) Wasatch Micro Cap Value Fund (WAMVX), to all investors. Unlike other funds that were recently reopened, these two funds seem never available to individual investors because they were both closed on the day when they [...]

According to a news release, mutual fund giant Vanguard has filed with SEC to offer a new, passive fund that invests in global stock markets. The Vanguard Global Stock Index Fund, which is set to be available for investors in the second quarter this year, tracks the FTSE All-World Index. The index currently covers 48 [...]

According to a statement released yesterday, Dodge & Cox will reopen its flagship Stock fund and Balanced fund next Monday, February 4th. The two funds were closed to new investors since 2004, though existing shareholders can still invest in both of them. In the statement, the company cited the lackluster return of both funds in [...]

Around the new year, many previously closed mutual funds reopened their doors to new investors, including such well-known names as Fidelity Magellan (FMAGX) and Oakmark International (OAKIX), after a rough second half of 2007. For investors who had an eye on these funds, but were denied access due to the closure, the reopening present an [...]

Early this month, I read an article on USA Today with title, Index funds are never out of style. The article pointed out that for the past 10 years, the return of diversified US stock funds, which include small-, mid-, and large-cap funds, averaged at 6.7% while the S&P index returned 5.9% a year. The [...]

The Fidelity Magellan Fund (FMAGX), which was once the nation’s largest mutual fund with an asset at $100 billion, will reopen to new investors tomorrow, January 15, 2008 after shutting its door more than 10 years ago, according to a Fidelity announcement. The main reason to make the flagship fund available to new investors is [...]