The Sun's Financial Diary

It has been some time since I last wrote about Zecco. The reason is that I don’t use Zecco a lot these days as I used to in the past after it dropped the commission free trades last year, making it the same as any other discount brokers. But I still have an active account [...]

This Friday, August 12th, online discount broker TradeKing will offer its customers commission free trades for any and all trades placed during the days. If you want to take advantage of the recent sharp drops on the Wall Street, not that that’s a good thing unless you consider it as a good buying opportunity, you can [...]

It was October 2008 when I last updated this list.  Back then, we were at the peak of the financial crisis after the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers on September 16, 2008. In October 2008, stocks went up and down like crazy and three of the ten largest single day drops of the Dow [...]

Even though the debt reduction deal reached just before the deadline prevented the United States from defaulting on its national debt, the crisis isn’t really over. There are still a lot of uncertainties going  forward. During uncertain times, investors often run towards the safest investments they can find.  Historically, that safe haven has been government [...]

Do you trade stocks? If you do, have you ever wondered what happened after you clicked the button and submitted your trading order? In the early days, if you were to buy shares of a stock, you would have to call a stock broker who may hold a seat on NYSE floor and the broker [...]

The numbers at the pump never seem to stop going up lately. After bottoming out at around a national average of $1.62 per gallon back around Christmas of 2008 thanks to the implosion in the financial sector, gas prices have resumed their slow steady northward march and are currently back above $4.00.  Plus, we’re coming [...]

When I first started to buy mutual funds outside my retirement account 10 years ago, I basically avoided Vanguard funds. It wasn’t that I didn’t know Vanguard funds. I did a lot of research before buying the funds that I chose and I knew very well Vanguard funds, most of them are low-cost index funds, [...]

Are you afraid of stocks? It’s not the stocks you hold and trade in your brokerage account  that I am talking about here, but rather the asset allocation of stocks and bonds in your investment portfolio. The question is really that are you investing enough in stocks such that the mix of stocks, bonds, and [...]