The Sun's Financial Diary

I hope you have bought some I-bonds before May 1, so you can still enjoy a little bit the 5.64% yield I-bond rate that was good till April 30. If you missed the deadline and bought some bonds yesterday, May 1st, then too bad because the rate for Series I Savings Bonds issued between May [...]

The S&P 500 Index lost about 46% between August 2008 and September 2002 when the internet bubble burst. Then it took the benchmark 5 years to reach a new all-time high in October 2007. Then there came the subprime mortgage crisis, the collapse of the housing market and the financial market, eventually, the recession. In [...]

I am by no means a trader. I am not always looking for stocks to buy. However, since last October when the stock market started to sink, I have been active, relatively, on trading stocks. In fact, stocks I bought and sold since October 2008 are more than the total number of trades I did [...]

Prosper, once the largest operator of peer-to-peer lending until it shut down its operation in October 2008 amid regulatory scrutiny, has relaunched yesterday and now it’s called Prosper Loans Marketplace, with a twist on how to lend and borrow. However, since the Prosper is still in the process of completing registration with the Security and [...]

Before the April 15th tax deadline, I opened and funded a SEP-IRA account with Fidelity. The reason I chose Fidelity is that it is also the custodian of my 401(k) and my daughter’s 529 account (I am using the Fidelity UNIQUE plan which is tied to the Fidelity 529 Rewards Card). In addition, I also [...]

Are you investing in equity mutual funds? If so, are you using index funds or actively managed funds? I have mentioned a few times in the past that even though I use all index funds in my retirement savings accounts, I have nothing but actively managed funds in taxable accounts. The reason isn’t that I [...]

One of the main advantages of target-date funds, or lifecycle funds, is that the asset allocation of these funds is automatically adjusted as the target date approaches, going from aggressive (more stocks, less bonds) in the early stage to conservative (more bonds, less stocks). With target-date funds, investors leave the the job of adjusting and [...]

Whenever I need data on mutual funds, whether it’s a fund’s expense ratio, risk measures, or return, I always go to morningstar.com. It has been my trust tool for fund research for year, not only for mutual funds, but for ETFs as well. Then yesterday when I went to Morningstar to get some data for [...]