The Sun's Financial Diary

According to SeekingAlpha.com, now you can buy the ETF QQQQ at QQQDirect commission free. The article on SeekingAlpha.com also reported that The NASDAQ is sponsoring and subsidizing this arrangement. After opening an online account and choosing a payment option, QQQQ can be purchased automatically in amounts of as little as $25 per month. After I [...]

The auction of last week's 4-week T-bill set the rate at the highest level of the year. Even without considering the equivalent taxable yield, the rate of 5.243% APR almost matches what GMAC bank has to offer (5.30% APY with $500 initial deposit).  At 5.243% APR, the annual percentage yield (APY) is 5.37%. Since interestes [...]

And the suspension is indeed related to the acquisition of 20% stake of Guangdong Development Bank. According to announcement, China Life will pay about $730 million in cash for the acquisition. Trading of LFC will resume tomorrow at 9:30 am in NYSE. The announcement can be found here.

Citigroup announced today that it won a $3.1 billion bid to take control of Guangdong Development Bank, a regional bank with more than 500 branches in south and east China. A consortium led by Citigroup, also including IBM, China Life Insurance, China’s State Grid Corp, CITIC Trust, and PuHua Investment, will take 85.6% percent of [...]

Bank of America is expanding its $0 trade program to Alabama, DC, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, according to Reuters. Customers who have $25,000 or more in all asset across BoA deposit accounts, including checking, savings, and CDs, can get up to 30 free trades per month. The bank also hopes [...]

The next key for you to be successful in investing is to have a good judgment between the return you expect and the risk you are willing to take in order to reach your investment goals. In the third segment of the Kiplinger's "The Five Keys to Investing Success" series, the author made the argument [...]

Since I found out that I can directly purchase stocks from issuing companies (not all listed but still quite a large selection) last month, I didn’t waste too much time before getting into action. After going through DRIP stocks offered at Computershare and some research, I opened accounts with Computershare (ComputerShare reviews) to buy shares [...]

An article in yesterday's USAToday prompted to check the fees I paid for those funds in my 401(k) plan. Unlike mutual funds holding in my taxable accounts, in which I have the flexibility to choose from perhaps hundreds of funds in the same category from as many companies, the number of funds in my 401(k) [...]