The Sun's Financial Diary

In his book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, author Burton Malkiel declared that A blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper’s financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by the experts. Do you believe random walk? Or do you follow your own research? Or maybe [...]

The Federal Reserve, as expected, delivered another three quarters of a point rate cut on Tuesday, bringing the benchmark lending rate to 2.25%, the lowest level since February 2005. The cut came after one of the Wall Street’s biggest investment banks, Bear Stearns, collapsed over the weekend after creditors rushed to the door. Though there [...]

Haven’t seen rally like this for quite a while. Actually, the last time it happened was more than five years ago. US stocks surged Tuesday after the Fed, in a coordinated action with other central banks, said it will pump $200 billion into the financial market to ease credit fears. Stock index futures jumped when [...]

In case you didn’t hear the news, Visa Inc., the largest credit card network, is preparing to go public next month under symbol V. According to terms filed with SEC, Visa plans to sell 406 million common shares in its IPO, plus additional 40.6 million shares that will be available for underwriters, priced at between [...]

I have had this idea on my mind for a while, but only implemented this month. The idea is to buy last month’s worst performing Chinese stock (ADR) at the beginning of the month and hold it for one money. At the end of the month, sell the stock and buy again the worst performer [...]

Around the new year, many previously closed mutual funds reopened their doors to new investors, including such well-known names as Fidelity Magellan (FMAGX) and Oakmark International (OAKIX), after a rough second half of 2007. For investors who had an eye on these funds, but were denied access due to the closure, the reopening present an [...]

I don’t know exactly when the worst ever start of the year was, but from the available data since 1928, the return of the first three days of the Dow in 2008 seems to be the worst since 1929. In the first 3 trading sessions of 2008, the benchmark lost a total of 464.64 points. [...]

At first, I was very excited when Alibaba.com announced its IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in early November, but then only to be disappointed by a regulatory procedure which blocks any purchase by US investors of any foreign IPOs within the first 40 days of trading. At that time, I thought I might [...]