The Sun's Financial Diary

This is the second part of the Model Portfolio Built with ETFs series, which convert Jonathan’s Model Portfolios into all-ETF portfolios. In this part (the first part can be found here), I looked at the four example portfolios in The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing and examined ways to reconstruct these portfolios using nothing but exchange [...]

Interested in trading stocks listed on London Stock Exchange or Tokyo Stock Exchange, but don’t have an account with them due to regulatory restrictions? So far US investors who want to access global markets can mainly invest through mutual funds offered by the domestic financial industry or individual stocks (ADRs or American Depositary Receipts) listed [...]

I got this email from Firstrade today, but somehow the date of the message shows February 7, 2007. While the message began with an exciting tone by saying “We are pleased to announce that Firstrade now offers over 10,000 mutual funds,” What it really wants to tell me, as well as all other investors (existing [...]

Last month, Jonathan at MyMoneyBlog ran a series on model portfolios which covered some (so far six) popular portfolios based on various investment philosophies. When these model portfolios were originally developed (some are more than thirty years old), the main investment vehicles were mutual funds, where were apparently the only choices at that time. However, [...]

The first planned investment service I have heard of and used was ShareBuilder, which was also the only brokerage other than Scottrade I used back in March 2006. The reasons I decided to open an ShareBuilder account (eventually, I got three of them for both me and my wife) were: Promotion bonuses: I collected a [...]

Before a company releases its earning, financial research firms such as Thomson/FirstCall and Reuters survey fund managers and stock analysts to predict what the earning will look like. Stock prices usually move after the earning release, with magnitude depending on the outlook and how far away the true earning is different from consensus estimates. However, [...]

After priced at $18.50 the day before going public, shares of Fortress Investment Group opened up 89% and rose as high as $37.00 on Friday in the first day of trading. At the close of Friday’s session, the stock went up $12.50, or 67.6% to $31.00. The success of FIG’s IPO may serve as a [...]

Hedge funds are for wealthy investors, not for small investors like you and me. But what if you can own a piece of the hedge fund company? According to USAToday, Fortress Investment Group , which has six hedge funds with a total about $9.4 billion of assets under management, has filed paper to offer 34.3 [...]