The Sun’s Financial Diary

Full service broker Charles Schwab announced today (press release, PDF file) that it is reducing commission for online equity trades. Starting January 19th, Schwab customers will pay a flat $8.95 commission for each online stock trade, regardless the number of shares. The current commission schedule charges $12.95 per stock or ETF (exchange-traded fund) trade [...]

As the new year begins, many investors are looking for two things. One is an indication as to what the year ahead will bring and the second is a competitive edge to help them achieve above average returns. One thing that seasoned investors look towards to get answers to both of these questions [...]

Financially, the decade of the 2000s was one that most people would probably like to forget. We kicked off the decade with the bursting of the tech bubble and the events of 9/11. Along the way, we witnessed the housing market collapse and wrapped up the decade with the worst United States economic [...]

Despite the relatively high commission cost (Scottrade charges $7 for each online stock order, market or limit), I have been using Scottrade for years and it’s my primary stock broker, not only because of its excellent customer service, but also that I can actually trade with Scottrade for free. That’s right, I don’t pay [...]

Visa (NYSE:V) stock got a big lift today after Standard & Poor announced last Friday that the payment processor, along with four other stocks, will join the benchmark after the close of trading December 18th.
I bought the stock at $59.50 a share on March 18, 2008 when it went public, despite that the economy was [...]

OptionsHouse in an online discount broker which offers investors a wide range of products and services at competitive prices. I first knew the broker in April, then opened an account for myself in June (a $1,000 account minimum is required) and made a couple of trades. The reason I wanted to trade with OptionsHouse was [...]

Today, I’d like to share with you the story of both my greatest investing success and my greatest investing mistake. Unfortunately, you’re about to find out that both stories relate to the same investment.
It was the latter half of 1999. Tech stock mania was running wild and stocks were delivering unprecedented returns. [...]

Sina (NASDAQ:SINA) is one of the Chinese internet stocks I own. I have bought and sold the stock several times in the past. In early March, I purchased the stock again at $21.65 apiece when the overall stock market was heading to multi-year low. Now, 9 months later, the stock has more than double in [...]

This is the third segment of the broker trading platform review series. So far I have covered Scottrade and Firstrade. Today, I am going to take a look at another online broker, optionsXpress. I mentioned early that, though I have an account with optionsXpress for nearly 2 years, I didn’t make any trades with optionsXpress [...]

What are you using to track your investments?
I have been using Quicken Home & Business for investment tracking for years. It is a powerful and convenient tool that does a lot of other things than tracking stocks and mutual funds. However, the convenience comes with a price tag of $100. It’s not cheap for sure. [...]