The Sun's Financial Diary

The recent development in the equity market made cash and safer investments such as government bonds look attractive. If holding on hard cold cash can calm your nerve in a time of market uncertainty, there are several options you can explore to safeguard your hard earned money and still make them grow. Of these choices, [...]

The S&P 500, as well as most of mutual funds and ETFs that track the benchmark, is a market-cap weighted index. This means the weights of the index’s components are determined based on their market capitals. The larger a company’s market value, the heavier the weight in the index. As a result, according to IndexArb.com, [...]

[This article also appears on SeekingAlpha, Equities Leave Investors Nowhere To Hide] Seeking refuge is this turbulent market? You probably won’t find any if you are looking only at the equities. It has been a very tough month since the Dow closed at record high of 14,000 on July 19, 2007. In the last 20 [...]

But not with a price, a very high price. Back in February when I first heard that E-Trade is going to introduce a global trading service to allow investors to trade stocks listed in other markets directly, I signed up to receive notification when it becomes available. Yesterday, the email came, announcing that the new [...]

There is an article in New York Time today with the title “Small Investors Feel Less Pain as Stocks Slide” (registration may be required). The main theme of the article can be summarized by this paragraph: The excesses in the financial markets are now generally believed to reside in complex mortgage securities and other esoteric [...]

It has been nearly two month since I stopped purchasing 4-week T-bill, once my favorite short-term investment, when its rate dropped below the rates from my online banks in June. After touching the 2007 low of 4.422% APR on June 21, the T-bill has made a nice comeback in recent weeks. Yesterday’s auction set the [...]

Then rotate them with Claymore/Zecks Country Rotation ETF (CRO). Last month, Claymore Securities launched a new international ETF that tracks Zecks Country Rotation Index (ZAXCR). According Zecks Investment Research, the index uses countries that are components of the MSCI EAFE Index. Currently, the index consists of 200 stocks from countries, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, [...]

China residential real estate service company, E-House Holdings, is scheduled to debut on NYSE today under symbol EJ. From the company website, E-House’s business includes “real estate agency services, secondary real estate brokerage services and real estate consulting and information services.” Based in Shanghai, China’s financial capital, E-House employs more than 1800 real estate brokers [...]