The Sun's Financial Diary

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 [...]

I have shared the asset allocation of our mutual fund investments a few times in the past. However, as you may have noticed, I didn’t include everything in the analysis. The reasons for only looking at the allocation of mutual funds invested in our taxable accounts instead of the entire portfolio, which includes taxable accounts [...]

I write about Scottrade quite often here for a couple of reasons: I have most of our investments with Scottrade, including regular brokerage account and IRA accounts; I am happy with their customer service. Usually customer service doesn’t play a big role when I select a bank or a broker (it wasn’t a factor when [...]

Online discount broker Zecco Trading keeps rolling out new service. Early this year, Zecco introduced Zecco Forex Trading, a platform that allows Zecco customers to trade foreign exchanges. Now you can even buy gold and silver if you are interested in investing in precious metal, right from the Forex platform. Gold has crossed the $1,000/ounce [...]

I have been quite active in investing with Lending Club since February. However, for months, I can only buy loans on the secondary market because of Lending Club’s residence restriction which prohibits residents of New Jersey from lending directly. Though I was able to buy some notes at discount early on, most of the notes [...]

Are you using Lending Club? If not, then here’s your chance to win $2,500. The popular peer-to-peer lending site is going to have its 25,000th investor some time this month. To celebrate this milestone, Lending Club announced yesterday that the 25,000th registered investor will receive a total of $2,500 cash from LC! I started investing [...]

Popular online discount broker Zecco Trading is running a promotion which offers 20 commission free stock trades, a $90 value, to all new brokerage customers! Zecco is one of the brokers which I have an account with and I have written about it quite frequently here (read my first trading experience for more information about the [...]

I am not sure what role, if any, I had in this, but I was just informed by Shannon Paul, the Communications Manager of PEAK6 Online, the parent company of OptionsHouse, that the discount online broker has dropped the $100 cash reserve requirement (that’s different than account minimum, which is $1,000 to open an account) [...]