The Sun’s Financial Diary

According to a statement released yesterday, Dodge & Cox will reopen its flagship Stock fund and Balanced fund next Monday, February 4th. The two funds were closed to new investors since 2004, though existing shareholders can still invest in both of them.
In the statement, the company cited the lackluster return of both funds in 2007, [...]

There was a short Q&A in The Wall Street Journal yesterday where the question being asked is the following:
I would like to buy only a few stocks in certain companies. Are there any online brokers that handle people with only a couple hundred dollars in their account and don’t charge heavy fees for infrequent traders?
In [...]

When evaluating a mutual fund, one of the major factors I will consider is the cost of owing the fund, which includes sales charges (load, redemption fee, etc) and management fees (12b-1, administrative and management fees). Since I use Morningstar quite heavily in mutual fund research, it is my main source for a fund’s fee [...]

As I stated before, my investment objective is to generate passive incomes from investments. To reach that goal, I am trying to build a portfolio with dividend-paying stocks and mutual funds/ETFs. Among my dividend generators, one that I particularly like is Alpine Dynamic Dividend Fund (ADVDX). I started investing in ADVDX in April 2006 [...]

The fourth segment of the Model Portfolios Built with ETFs series, is making an appearance at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity as a guest article. In this part, I discussed how to build an all-ETF portfolio based on a model in the book, The Intelligent Asset Allocator by William Bernstein, that consists of, among other asset [...]

You are probably familiar with the Rule of 72, which tells you when the one dollar you invest today will be worth $2 once you have a rate of growth. If your annual rate of return is R%, then it will take you (72/R) years to double your money. For instance, for a 6% return [...]

Morningstar is my choice for mutual fund research because it provides a broad array of data for me to analyze a fund in cost, return, and risk. This post is to discuss what kind of information I will consider when evaluating a mutual fund.
If you already have a specific fund on your mind and want [...]

I am starting an irregular Mutual Fund Basics series where I will discuss some basic concepts in mutual fund investing. Though I have a larger portion of my taxable investments in stocks than mutual funds, I feel I know mutual funds better than stocks (and yes, I am still learning). Actually, I already have a [...]

This is the third segment of the Model Portfolios Built with ETFs series. In the first two parts, I discussed two model portfolios, the Couch Potato Portfolio and the Bogel Head Portfolio, and considered possible choices to build these portfolios with ETFs instead of transitional mutual funds.
In this part, I continue the discussion with [...]

Morningstar is the my primary website for mutual fund research. When I look for a mutual fund investment (mostly actively managed funds), not only I am concerned with a fund’s past performance and costs, but its risk factors as well. Before getting into the details, let’s first see how risk is defined in finance.
According to [...]