The Sun's Financial Diary

In the past year, thirteen Chinese companies located in the mainland China offer their shares to the public and traded their stocks in the US. The following is a table showing their performance as of today. Company Symbol IPO date IPO price Current price New Oriental Education EDU 09/06/06 $15.00 $49.90 Mindray Medical Intl. MR [...]

Early last week, Morningstar has an article cautioning investors on bond ETFs. With the recent introduction of four Vanguard bond ETFs, it can be expected that investors will look into these new ETF offerings when building their portfolios. However, the article, Think Twice Before Investing in Bond ETFs by Paul Herbert, reminds investors that there [...]

The rates of 4-week T-bills tumbled in recent weeks, dropping nearly 50 basis points in a matter of four weeks. The investment rate from last week’s auction is 4.683%, equivalent to a 4.79% APY. Even when factoring in the NJ state income tax, the equivalent yield is only at 5.11% APY, falling quite far behind [...]

According to Wikipedia, socially responsible investing (SRI) describes an investment strategy which combines the intentions to maximize both financial return and social good. In general, socially responsible investors favor corporate practices which are environmentally responsible, support workplace diversity, and increase product safety and quality. In the May issue of Financial Planning magazine, there’s a special [...]

Last week the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 13,000 points for the first time on April 25, 2007. Since then, the index has been setting record highs every day. The last time the Dow reached a milestone was on October 20, 2006, when it broke the 12,000 mark. That’s only 6 months and 5 [...]

Good news mutual fund investors! Low-cost mutual fund giant Vanguard announced today that it’s simplifying its fee structure by replacing four fees with one account service fee. According to the announcement, effective April 26, 2007, the following four $10 annual fees will be eliminated: The custodial fee on traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, and SEP–IRAs with [...]

The fourth segment of the Model Portfolios Built with ETFs series, is making an appearance at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity as a guest article. In this part, I discussed how to build an all-ETF portfolio based on a model in the book, The Intelligent Asset Allocator by William Bernstein, that consists of, among other asset [...]

Trading of China Life Insurance (LFC) was suspended in Shanghai, Hong Kong and NYSE Monday, pending announcement that is sensitive to share price. The rumor surfaced over the weekend is that LFC’s parent company, China Life Insurance (Group) Co., is an overall listing that covers its whole operation. However, there seems to be some contradictions [...]