The Sun's Financial Diary

Early this week, I mentioned in one of my posts that I am in the process of transferring money out of Scottrade account. Since it’s the first time for me to withdraw money, I had to set up checking writing and apply for a Visa check card so I can use them whenever I want [...]

I just realized that I have never taken any money out of my Scottrade account, in nearly 9 years since becoming a customer in 2001. All I did in the past was adding more and more funds into the account and buying more and more stocks. As I mentioned before Scottrade is my primary stock [...]

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 [...]

I don’t trade a lot, but there were occasions in the past when I did want to make a trade, the work environment either prohibited me from trading right away or made it inconvenient to do so. In those cases, it would be nice if I could trade without relying on the internet at work [...]

Online discount broker TradeKing recently introduced to its customers a new stock screener, called Strategy Builder, provided by Recognia. If you are already using TradeKing, you can find the new Strategy Builder in your account under Tools. Since Strategy Builder is a stock screening tool, what it does is help investors identify which stocks to [...]

Here’s another broker promotion for new IRA account. Online broker optionsXpress is offering 5 commission free trades for a new IRA or rollover IRA account. Eligible IRA accounts include Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, Rollover IRA, and SEP-IRA. If you open an account with optionsXpress before April 15th, 2010, which is the tax deadline, with at [...]

I am still investing in Lending Club loans as an alternative investment, but I must admit that I am a little disappointed by the performance of my investments, especially when two loans went bad after only two months since they were issued. Overall, the number loans and the number of late and charge-off all grew [...]

Though it’s still almost two months away from the 2009 tax deadline, April 15, 2010, brokerage firms and mutual fund companies have already rolled out promotions to lure taxpayers to open IRA accounts with them. Among them, OptionsHouse is offering 100 commission free trades if you open an IRA account, such as Traditional, Roth, SEP, [...]