The Sun's Financial Diary

Here's a complete chart of the 4-week T-bill rates of 2006. Overall, the rates were on the rise throughout the year. It was just above 4.0% when 2006 began, gradually moved up and peaked at 5.263% on November 30th, and ended the year with a 4.742% APR, a 17.6% annual increase in rates.   The [...]

According to Briefing.com, China Life Insurance (LFC) will conduct a 2:1 stock split when the trading begins on December 29th. There have been some rumors on Yahoo! Finance discussion board lately about the split, but this is the first official announcement. Closed near $140 yesterday, the price after the split will be much more affordable. [...]

Legg Mason’s Bill Miller, the manager of Legg Mason Value Trust (LMVTX), has beaten S&P 500 for 15 consecutive years since 1991. His winning streak, however, is about to come to an end as LMVTX returns only 6.71% as of yesterday compared to the 16.5% gain of S&P 500. According to a Bloomberg.com article, the [...]

Early this month, I posted an entry on my mutual fund portfolio. I also mentioned in the post that all the mutual funds I have in the taxable account are actively managed funds.  A reader asked me the question why I chose actively managed funds instead of index funds which, by common sense, have low [...]

If you are a Do-It-Yourself investor and want to start to trade stocks or ETFs (exchange traded funds) or even options, you will need to get yourself a brokerage account first, which will allow you to buy equities at a low cost and provides other tools, such as screeners and analysis, to educate you to [...]

Early last month, I sent the account application form together with a $500 check to P&G to invest in their stocks. The confirmation mail arrived yesterday, saying the initial purchase was made on December 1st. This part of my recent DRIP investments in dividend-paying stocks. So far I have bought three stocks: Bank of America [...]

As we entered the final weeks of 2006, mutual fund companies start to make year-end distributions. Yesterday, another fund in my mutual fund portfolio, Oakmark Equity and Income Fund (OAKBX), paid out annual dividend and capital gain. So far, two of my mutual funds distributed dividend and capital gain (CSVFX distributed on September 20th): Symbol [...]

More than half of our taxable investment assets are in individual stocks. Currently I have 14 stocks/ETFs at four discount brokerage firms plus ComputerShare, the DRIP program provider. Following is a list of stocks I own: Symbol Value First purchase %Gain Monthly purchase BAC $1,014 11/10/06 -3.37 $50* GRRF $3,544 03/30/06 -12.17 $0 LFC $50,910 [...]