The Sun's Financial Diary

Two months ago, I took a look at the asset allocation of my taxable mutual fund investment. A result of that review was the decision to sell on of the large-cap holdings, CSVFX, as I found my investments didn’t have enough exposure in the mid- and small-cap categories. CSVFX was unloaded in February and part [...]

I have been investing with American Century Equity Income Fund (TWEIX) for quite some time. First I had it in my taxable account, then added to my wife’s Roth IRA. But now it seems the time will soon come to dump it completely. Morningstar reported that the fund company is planning to shake up its [...]

Morningstar is my choice for mutual fund research because it provides a broad array of data for me to analyze a fund in cost, return, and risk. This post is to discuss what kind of information I will consider when evaluating a mutual fund. If you already have a specific fund on your mind and [...]

Back in November, I had a post on why water could find a place in your portfolio. The main point of the article is as we face a global shortage of drinking water, investing in water makes a sound choice for long term investment. If you are also interested in investing in water, the most [...]

I am starting an irregular Mutual Fund Basics series where I will discuss some basic concepts in mutual fund investing. Though I have a larger portion of my taxable investments in stocks than mutual funds, I feel I know mutual funds better than stocks (and yes, I am still learning). Actually, I already have a [...]

I bought Mr. John Bogle’s new book, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, after reading an article on SmartMoney.com the other day about his comments on ETFs. The book was received early this month, but I didn’t get time to read it until recently. In his latest writeup, Mr. Bogle uses a chapter to [...]

I am a fan of dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP), though I didn’t start participating till late last year. Currently, I have several stocks purchased through DRIP programs: Bank of America (BAC), Progress Energy (PGN), and Procter & Gamble (PG). The first two are from ComputerShare while the last one is from the company directly. The [...]

In the April issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine, there’s an article, Why stokcs are a Bargain, by James K. Glassman and a section of the paper is devoted to the discussion of which is riskier, bonds or stocks. The article uses the following examples to show what investors can expect by investing in various [...]