The Sun's Financial Diary

Washington Mutual keeps their effort to lure new account, increasing their online savings account rate to 4.00% APY (as of now, their website hasn’t been updated yet). The latest rate change puts WaMu at the top of the interest rate table. To get the 4.00% APY, you need to open a WaMu Free Checking Account [...]

Where do you keep your cash now? In August 2007, when this crisis was still in the early stage, I talked about where to put cash in an uncertain market. One year later, the uncertainty remains and things are not getting better. The housing market, the stock market, and the overall economy. All struggling. In [...]

This is a picture I took two years ago in Shanghai. It’s the building where American International Group (AIG) used to be located 80 years ago. AIG was founded in 1919 by American entrepreneur Cornelius Vander Starr in Shanghai under the name American Asiatic Underwriters. In 1927, Starr moved his office to this building on [...]

So HSBC Direct’s three-month promotion has ended yesterday and, as promised, the bank rolled back the yield of its online savings account from 3.50% APY to 3.25% APY, a mediocre level. The purpose of the promotion was, I suppose, to attract new customers, but I am not sure how successful the campaign was because, even [...]

Here’s where we are today: A look from the past three months Oil price is falling Gas price is coming down (the latest spike is due to hurricane Ike) Gold is getting cheaper and cheaper And U.S. dollar is getting stronger and stronger Yet the stocks keep falling All because we still have companies like [...]

I have written about Freddie Mac (FRE) a few times recently after I purchased a small number of FRE shares in early July. The reason for making the purchase was that I thought the two companies, as government sponsored enterprises, are too big to fall. At one time, I thought I was wrong of owning [...]

Site Problem I moved this site from Bluehost to Media Temple in early August, the site has been running very well. Those problems that I had with Bluehost never occurred again and the site didn’t have a single minute of down time. I am glad that I made the move. However, some issues at Media [...]

Are you using AMEX Costco TrueEarnings credit card? If you are not, here’s a chance to get the card and receive a $25 bonus. The bonus isn’t much, considering you are getting a new credit card and taking a hit on your credit score, though temporarily. Nonetheless, this is a quite nice card that I [...]