The Sun's Financial Diary

Where should I put my money? I was hoping that when the FNBO Direct 6.0% APY promotion ends in 10 days, I could go back to 4-week T-bills for short term investment. Well, it looks like that’s not going to happen any time soon as the investment rate of 4-week T-bill tumbled to 4.079% APR [...]

When evaluating a mutual fund, one of the major factors I will consider is the cost of owing the fund, which includes sales charges (load, redemption fee, etc) and management fees (12b-1, administrative and management fees). Since I use Morningstar quite heavily in mutual fund research, it is my main source for a fund’s fee [...]

As US housing market tumbled in 2007, REIT (real estate investment trust) investors have suffered big losses from their investments so far this year. In fact, 2007 is on track to become the first losing year for REIT investors since the beginning of the century. Year-to-date, the Dow Jones Equity All REIT Index (^DJR) has [...]

I have been considering an E-Trade Global Trading account for quite some time. I thought it’s a good idea to invest directly into foreign markets, in addition to buying ADRs that are listed on US markets. What held me back is the high cost of trading foreign stocks. However, I still want to try that [...]

This stock market in the past month didn’t offer investors much of joy as major indexes gave back a big chunk of their gains after peaked later July. At the same time, gold has made a quite come back to close at a six-month high of $694 an ounce yesterday. It could go over $700 [...]

It’s BRIC, not BRICK! For investors looking for growth outside US and other developed economies, emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) offer great opportunities. With 2007 estimated real GDP growth at 3.7%, 6.7%, 9.2%, and 10.7%, respectively (according to indexmundi.com), these countries just can’t be ignored. There are many options for [...]

It was just a week ago I was troubled by the steep decline of China Life Insurance (LFC) after the stock lost more than $12 in two weeks. Sure the market was cooperating during that time period when everything was down, but the more than 18% drop was a little bit scary. Then just as [...]

There are sellers, there are buyers, and there are investors doing nothing. In this stormy market, who are you? I think I belong to the third group with a little bit buy activities. Rather than seeing the current market as the prelude of a recession as some have predicted, I treat the month-long decline as [...]