The Sun's Financial Diary

I forget when was the last time I traded stocks. It must have been at least a few months ago because since I started this new job in June, I barely had any time during the day for *my own business* , but today I made a couple of purchases: one IPO [...]

When E*Trade launched its global trading platform in 2007, I saw it as an opportunity to finally be able to buy some internationals stocks that are not otherwise available to retail investors in the U.S. At that time, Chinese stocks were as hot as they could be and buying Chinese stocks seemed to be the [...]

As you may know, discount broker OptionsHouse is currently running a promotion which gives 100 commission free trades for every new customer with $3,000 deposit.  This is a good deal if you can get the most out of the offer, even though trading 100 times in 2 months (the free trades will expire 60 days [...]

Scottrade is a leading online discount broker which offers a wide range of products at very competitive price. If you are considering opening an account with Scottrade and start to invest in the stock market yourself, here’s a good video that will help you get a better understanding of what Scottrade offers. In this video, [...]

Early last week, I took a look at Scottrade trading platform because it’s the broker that I use the most for stock trading (not that I trade a lot). As you know, Scottrade isn’t my only stock broker. In fact, it is one of many brokerage accounts I own. Another *old* account I have is [...]

OptionsHouse is one of the discount brokers that I have an account with.
I opened the account in June when I found that it charges only $2.95 per stock trade, much less than other brokers I use (Zecco offers free trade, but the requirement is rather high for small investors). However, it disappointed me when I [...]

The stock is down pretty badly so far today. For some investors,  this is an opportunity to buy stocks at a better price, given that the market was down four out of the six trading sessions. Suppose that you see a stock that you have wanted to buy and today it finally reaches the price [...]

Sottrade is a online discount stock broker which offers investors, from big to small, a wide range of products and trading tools at a competitive price.
One of the online discount stock brokers I use very actively is Scottrade. When I first selected Scottrade as my broker 7 years, I didn’t not much about it other [...]

It was October 3, 2008 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the 10,000 level at 10,325.38. In the following five trading sessions, the widely watched index lost 1874.19, closing at 8,451.19 on October 10, 2008. Actually, October 3, 2008 was right in the middle of a steep plunge of the Dow. The index [...]

I am not sure what role, if any, I had in this, but I was just informed by Shannon Paul, the Communications Manager of PEAK6 Online, the parent company of OptionsHouse, that the discount online broker has dropped the $100 cash reserve requirement (that’s different than account minimum, which is $1,000 to open an account) [...]