The Sun's Financial Diary

China Life Insurance (LFC) surges on Friday with no apparent reason. Currently, shares of China Life’s American Depositary Receipt (ADR) rise $3.66/share, or a gain of 7.75%. The only news I could find that is possibly related to the movement of the stock is a report from Lehman Brothers: The 12-month target price of China [...]

In the past year, thirteen Chinese companies located in the mainland China offer their shares to the public and traded their stocks in the US. The following is a table showing their performance as of today. Company Symbol IPO date IPO price Current price New Oriental Education EDU 09/06/06 $15.00 $49.90 Mindray Medical Intl. MR [...]

Last week the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 13,000 points for the first time on April 25, 2007. Since then, the index has been setting record highs every day. The last time the Dow reached a milestone was on October 20, 2006, when it broke the 12,000 mark. That’s only 6 months and 5 [...]

Trading of China Life Insurance (LFC) was suspended in Shanghai, Hong Kong and NYSE Monday, pending announcement that is sensitive to share price. The rumor surfaced over the weekend is that LFC’s parent company, China Life Insurance (Group) Co., is an overall listing that covers its whole operation. However, there seems to be some contradictions [...]

I originally thought I should wait some time before jumping in on Xinhua Finance Media (XFML). Well, I did wait, but not for long. Around 3:00 pm yesterday when I saw the stock lost almost two dollars to around $11 per share from its open price, I placed an order and bought 360 shares XFML [...]

Xinhua Finance Media Ltd (XFML) went ahead its scheduled IPO Friday despite recent sharp decline of Chinese stocks, but the reception of this latest offering on the street was nothing but cold. Before the IPO, there were speculations that XFML may scrape its plan in wake of the plunge of Chinese domestic stocks on February [...]

1. Boost my 4-week T-bill purchases from $12,000 a month to $24,000 a month. The latest T-bill rate (March 1, 2007) is 5.267% APR, equivalent to a 5.40% APY. Considering that the interests earned from T-bill investment are exempted from state income taxes, the effective annual yield is as high as 5.77%, a rate that [...]

For a day like today, there’s simply no escape. With Dow off more than 260 points, the deepest drop since 2003, everywhere I look, all I see is red. When I checked my Scottrade account couple of minutes ago, I found my paper assets have shrunk nearly $8,000 already and that’s just stocks. The total [...]