The Sun's Financial Diary

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 [...]

One year ago, I had a post discussing the return of 4-week T-bill, whether it’s APR or APY, and how to calculate the equivalent yield based on the state income tax. In that post, only the formulas on how exactly the calculations should be done were given. Though it isn’t difficult to put the formulas [...]

I didn’t. I made a few bucks when Chinese stocks were the hottest on the street, but not lately. As a matter of fact, not just that I didn’t make any money from my investments in Chinese stocks, my brokerage account has been hit pretty hard since last November after some once high flying Chinese [...]

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 [...]

I knew Zecco offers free dividend reinvestment, the only problem is I don’t know how to set it up. When I logged into my account yesterday, I noticed that there’s a $20 dividend from my investment in Blackstone Group (BX) (not that I appreciate the money given how much the stock has dropped since it’s [...]

After learning that Zecco relaunched its referral program last December, I set up a referral program of my own shortly after. With my program, I promised to share $20 of the $50 bonus Zecco rewards me for each new account I refer to them. In the first 2 weeks after I put up my program, [...]

One of the selling points of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is they are tax efficient because they funds themselves almost don’t generate any capital gain distribution, which can be taxed at a rate as high as 35%, comparing to their mutual fund counterparts. ETF capital gains are usually realized when investors sell the fund at profit. [...]