The Sun's Financial Diary

Which tool are you using to track your investment portfolio, in real-time and free? Actually, there are quite a few web tools that let you create and track your investments for free. For example, you can create a portfolio tracker using Yahoo or Google Finance and from there, you can either manually enter transactions yourself or [...]

When I opened my TradeKing account in 2007,  I also got a book, The Options Playbook, from TradeKing after I expressed interest in options trading. I have bought and sold stocks for several years, but never traded options because I feel that trading options requires a little more skills than buying and selling stocks. Before [...]

It was October 2008 when I last updated this list.  Back then, we were at the peak of the financial crisis after the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers on September 16, 2008. In October 2008, stocks went up and down like crazy and three of the ten largest single day drops of the Dow [...]

Do you trade stocks? If you do, have you ever wondered what happened after you clicked the button and submitted your trading order? In the early days, if you were to buy shares of a stock, you would have to call a stock broker who may hold a seat on NYSE floor and the broker [...]

The numbers at the pump never seem to stop going up lately. After bottoming out at around a national average of $1.62 per gallon back around Christmas of 2008 thanks to the implosion in the financial sector, gas prices have resumed their slow steady northward march and are currently back above $4.00.  Plus, we’re coming [...]

Are you afraid of stocks? It’s not the stocks you hold and trade in your brokerage account  that I am talking about here, but rather the asset allocation of stocks and bonds in your investment portfolio. The question is really that are you investing enough in stocks such that the mix of stocks, bonds, and [...]

At the peak of the financial crisis in 2008, Citigroup, one of the largest financial institutions in the country, had to be bailed out by taxpayers to prevent it from collapsing. In total, the bank received $45 billion from the government through the TARP bailout fund, of which $25 billion was converted into 7.7 billions [...]

I heard the news this morning that Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit bought 750,000 shares of Citigroup stock (C) on the open market yesterday when the share price dropped below $9. In addition to CEO Pandit, other three executives also bought a total of 550,000 shares. Is this the sign of confidence? Currently trading slightly above [...]