The Sun's Financial Diary

OptionsHouse first came to my attention in April when I compared online discount brokers for their commissions to trade stocks, mutual funds, and options. However, at that time I didn’t get much interest in the broker at that time because back then, the commission it charges was $4.95 per stock trade, which is the same [...]

ShareBuilder isn’t the online discount broker that I would recommend.
Even though $4 per investment is quite low, the planned investment scheme itself lacks the flexibility if you want to invest at your own time, instead of a fixed day every month. In addition, the actual cost  of each investment can be rather high if only [...]

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 [...]

I am a firm believer of investing in gold.
Having been investing in gold since 2002 (Tocqueville Gold Fund (TGLDX) is my main vehicle to invest in gold though I have also bought a few gold coins in the past couple of years), I was pretty excited when gold broke the key $1,000/ounce mark in March [...]

General Motor (GM), the world’s largest car maker for 77 years until 2008, filed for Chapter 11 protection this morning, the same day its fellow car maker Chrysler could exit bankruptcy. The bankruptcy filing is expected after GM failed to reconstruct its debts with bondholders before the June 1 deadline imposed by the government. In [...]

I have heard some rumors that Chase no longer gives 3% cash back to Freedom Card holders for shopping at gas stations and grocery stores. I haven’t got the notice from Chase myself yet and my latest statement on May 13 still shows 3% cash back for every $1 of eligible purchases made at gas [...]

Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway filed its first quarter 13-F with the SEC last week. From the filing, you may find a few investment ideas from where Buffet is putting his money, as noted by Morningstar. At the end of the first quarter, Berkshire holds a total of 41 stocks in its equity portfolio, with American [...]

Despite all the troubles at the financial service company, E*Trade Financial scored a big win in the latest SmartMoney Broker Survey, leading four out of five categories. Though I don’t use E*Trade as my stock broker, nor do I have a savings account with them, I do have a E*Trade Global Trading Account to [...]

Many industrial groups got hurt pretty badly in this one and a half year long recession. Banks, homebuilders, retailers, just to name a few. However, the recession has also proven to be an opportunity for others to bloom in this environment because when the wallet got tight, we cut our spending: we postpone purchase of [...]

It has been nearly three months since I last updated my Lending Club loan portfolio, even though I wasn’t quiet during this period of time. In fact, I have already more than doubled the number of loans I own since I got into the peer-to-peer lending business in February. Right now, I have 54 notes [...]