The Sun's Financial Diary

The Digerati Life is hosting this week’s Money Question. The question that was asked this time is What are your investing strategies and how have you decided to allocate your money? What does your portfolio look like? I have discussed several times in the past about my portfolio, the most recent one was in April [...]

Not long ago, investors who are looking for investment opportunities in blue gold, water that is, could find themselves facing very limited choices other than individual stocks as there are only a couple of water related indexes and the only practical choice seems to be the only water related ETF, PowerShares Water Resources ETF (PHO), [...]

I have been long considering adding Altria (MO) to my investments because of its long history of dividend growth. On March 13, 2007, MO distributed a quarterly dividend of $0.86/share, equivalent to a $3.44 annual dividend (5.00% yield). Though the spin-off of Kraft Food will reduce its annual dividend to $2.75, MO has increased its [...]

I got an email a couple of days ago from Zecco [Affiliate link] about their new online account application process which eliminates all the paperwork for accounts opened after May 10, 2007. Here’s the section from their FAQs page regarding the e-signature account application: I signed the online application form electronically. Do I need to [...]

Sure Vanguard has some great funds with lowest expense ratio that you could find in the mutual fund industry. However, to invest with Vanguard, you would have to have a deeper pocket because most of its funds have a minimum requirement of $3,000, which essentially prevents investors with small amount of money to start investing [...]

I never knew there’s a millionaire index until I read a piece news from Reuters. The index, The Spectrem Millionaire Investor Index, created by The Spectrem Group, isn’t really a measure millionaires’ wealth, but rather the sentiment of investors who have more than $500,000 or more assets in the household that can be invested. The [...]

China Life Insurance (LFC) surges on Friday with no apparent reason. Currently, shares of China Life’s American Depositary Receipt (ADR) rise $3.66/share, or a gain of 7.75%. The only news I could find that is possibly related to the movement of the stock is a report from Lehman Brothers: The 12-month target price of China [...]

I like the idea of letting money work for me on its own. One way to do that is buying equities that generate dividends. Last year, about 10% of our gains are from dividends, capital gains, and interests. Since long-term qualified dividends are taxed at a much lower rate (at most 15%) than short-term capital [...]