Month: September 2006

Stocks

Stock lesson II

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Last Updated on September 29, 2006 by stlplace

Follow the crowd; follow the stock picker or gurus such as Jim Crammer without doing own research; follow the friends.

Following the crowd is dangerous because statistically majority of small investors lose money in the stock market (I know I am since got into market in late 2003). I think one reason for doing this is the “herd” mentality – most of us have it. We feel safe to buy the stocks when the market is up; vice versa. But as the famous investor Warren Buffett says “buy when people are scared; sell when people are greedy”. 1999-2000 dot com is a perfect example, many people made money on the paper but they did not get out, while some others (who did not follow crowd) did make real money.

So “follow the crowd” is out, how about follow Warren Buffett? It’s a good idea and it’s usually safe approach (because Warren makes safe bets these days, and sometimes he just sits on the cash). But remember Warren’s investment objective is not same as yours: he may expect a 10% return because he got 40 billion already. Another thing is we don’t know when he will sell. This applies to Jim Crammer’s mad money also well.

Follow the friends: I did this when I first started. I bought a stock called “LookSmart” after he bought (and I paid a higher price); I sold after he sold (and I sold for a lower price). Looking back, I think I was pretty stupid (not smart). It’s not that my friend’s pick is bad, the timing is an issue (because the friend can not be available 24×7). Also tangling the stock (money) with friendship is not a good pratice. We can talk about stocks, but do our own research and make own decisions.

The bottom line: only you know your own objective. Doing the stock research not only helps making wiser decisions; it could also be fun. Don’t blame the friends for our own mistakes.

China Stocks

Home Inn IPO

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Last Updated on September 29, 2006 by stlplace

I heard it first from Bill Bishop’s blog.

Home Inns (如家), China’s leading budget hotel chain, filed for an IPO about a month ago and is expecting to hit the NASDAQ sometime in September, assuming market conditions hold.

A few day ago I got more info From Pacific Epoch

Shanghai based hotel chain Home Inn plans to hold a road show in Hong Kong starting on October 9 and then in the United States on October 19, eNet reports quoting Home Inn CEO Sun Jian. Sun said that Home Inn plans to list on Nasdaq in the fourth quarter of 2006. Home Inn currently has 104 hotels with 11,754 rooms, ranking second among Chinese economy hotel chains. The underwriters for the IPO are Merrill Lynch and CSFB. Online travel services provider Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP) and Beijing Travel Group invested a total of 10 million Yuan in Home Inn in 2002. Home Inn has received investment from Sycamore, IDG and Susquehanna (SIG). Ctrip co-founder Neil Shen founded Home Inn.

Life Stocks

Stock lesson I

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Last Updated on September 29, 2006 by stlplace

Grass is always greener on the other side. I first heard this from a coworker and I found it describes human nature very well. Remember when we were kids, some of us felt the meals at our neighbours or relatives’ home taste better the our own home?

I made this mistake when I first started trading into stock markets a few years ago. It ususally happens like this: so I bought this stock, hope it to go up higher (it did not); on the other hand, other stocks in my watch lists went up. So what did I do? I became impatient, I swap out of my stock with the one went up. The results? Not so good (certainlly this is not the only mistake I made in past 2 years).

This year I took a different approach. I bought Symantec (SYMC) last December and I still hold some of them (the reason I sold some is another lesson I will talk in another day). So far this security/storage software giant did not disappoint me: it went up more than 20% from the price I bought. From time to time I also had the distractions I mentioned above. I had about 10 stocks in my watch list and some times I felt it’s a real good time to buy a stock because it’s cheap (relative to its intrinsic value). Panera Bread (PNRA) fell to $48 about a month ago, it traded at $60 lately. But when I examine more carefully, the percentage gain for those stocks is similar to Symantec stock I have, if we ignore the duration of time, for instance, NBR (large cap oil service) went from $56 low to $70 high, JCG (retailer new IPO) went from $25 to $32, and AGIL (small cap software) went from $5.50 to $6.50. Note the new IPO or small cap stocks usually has more risk, and we should expect more rerurn for more risk (otherwise, why all these sleepless nights before quarterly earning reports 🙂

By the same token, sometimes we make the same mistake on work and personal lives. When I first started programming job (using C and C++), I wasted a lot time taking certifications on Java and some other areas in IT because I thought those are “cool”. I also thought about moving back to China because I thought life back home is much more colorful than midwest; and the development in China means more opportunities in career development. This probablly has some merits. But again we should not ignore the downside of the other side either: more competition, more stress at work, more crowded (on street and housing), and hard to drive a car 🙂

I believe we should resist this “greener grass on the other side” thinking when looking for the life partner. For instance, when you look at other attractive girls when you are with your girl friend, you know what you will get from your girl friend 🙁

Saint Louis

Search this site

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Last Updated on May 29, 2007 by stlplace

I understand search is very important functions for blog. There are three ways to search this blog; they are all at the right Side Bar.

1) WordPress Search: available at side bar (top right), a “word search” on all the posts, matched results will be shown on one page.

2) Google search: available at side bar, footer, and each post, it searches by the Google index. Note Google does the index once every 3 or 4 days. So sometimes you don’t get the latest result from google search.

3) Tags: I created “tags” for some of the posts, you can click on the “tags” to see related articles. Think this as the “index” at the end of a book.

Also I added “related posts” when you browse each post (click on the title of each post, then scroll down), hopefully this will help you navigate better 🙂

Life

An interesting story

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Last Updated on September 27, 2006 by stlplace

On the plane I met an old guy from Washington DC, he told me his 2 weeks China trip is wonderful (he and his wife went to Beijing, Xi’an, Congqing and Yangze River). To light up the conversation, I asked him if he is a politician. He said “No” seriously, then he said: I am not a politician, or a lawyer; I am an honest person. We all laughed.

Being in the States for a long time, I can certainly understand what he is talking about. And now I know another reason some people don’t like Bill Clinton 🙂

Travel

More Shanghai travel tips

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Last Updated on August 27, 2008 by stlplace

1) If you decide to stay at home inn (Rujia), book early (2 to 3 weeks in advance), here is the web site and their phone No. 800-820-3333. I booked through their web site. Note their web site is designed slightly different from some of the US travel web sites. Couple times I thought I already booked but the system did not think so. Make sure you get a confirmation email.

Home Inn front desk

2) Get the money (RMB): the best way for me is bring the USD (or other hard currency). You can exchange it at the Pudong Development Bank at the Pudong airport (they waive the fee if you exchange more than $500). You can also exchange any amount at Bank of China without any fees. I also tried my Citibank ATM card at the ATM machine outside Citibank Branch at Marine Tower in Pudong, it still treated me as non-citi customer and charged 1% transaction fee. Later I found out I can do it at the Super Mall (Zheng Da Plaza) itself: I walked 15 minutes from the Marine Tower to Super Mall.

Don’t bring money order, or travellers check, as they can not be cashed immediately.

3) Maps: I found the dingding map to be handy. You can search places (e.g., 中国银行 bank of China), or get the bus transmit toute from point A to point B. It seems could not understand English very well, for instance, when I typed “bank of China”, I only got one 中国银行, the rest is all coffee places (maybe it thinks China and coffee are close?).

BTW, there are many web based maps in China, Wang Jianshuo has a short review at his blog. He also suggested there is no good maps in English language.

Tags China, shanghai, travel

Life

真诚

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Last Updated on September 29, 2006 by stlplace

Just got back from a 3 weeks China trip and it was fantastic, except now I have to recover from the jet lag. I received an email from a new friend titled “给最真诚的人敬礼“. To be honest, this email made me feel real good. While in Shanghai I had similar experience when a friend gave the comment that I am a 真诚 person. Seriously, I know I am far from perfect. In most times I do have 真诚, but sometimes I do fall short.

真诚 probablly is the single most important factor in friendship and relationship, especially in the online world (e.g., dating). But we all ignore it sometimes. We craved for something else instead: appearance, height, weight, education level, status (single/divorce; green card or citizenship), wealth, etc. Not that those things are not important. I think some are very important for a good match (such as education); some are very practical, for instance, if you have only Green Card and want to bring your spouse over, the waiting time is about 5 years at this time. But, (borrow a word from a friend), without 真诚, where is the love?

I believe in 真诚 because deep in my heart I am still optimistic. Although I have heard and read many not-so-good stories in past 2 years, e.g., while in China I got this book titled “网络姻缘”(Matching on Internet) by Jie Huang, it is a collection of some real stories of Chinese girls who eventually married guys in the US. While some are for the love, some are not 🙁

Another reason I believe in 真诚 is because of an old saying “what comes around, goes around”. In simple English, it says if you treat people unfairly, you will also be treated not fairly by other people soon or later. This probablly is hard to prove but I found it’s usually true in many occassions.

Finally I want to end my essay with my own story (not about love). Yesterday while I was in Panera Bread, the old lady sits beside me could not find her cell phone, she asked me in very suspicious tone. I told her maybe her husband has taken it and suggest her use her husband cell to call her own cell. My guess was correct. The lady eventually apologized to me.

I wish I would meet fewer people like the old lady in the future.

China

SAT and NFL

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Last Updated on September 27, 2006 by stlplace

I saw some of the newest USA exports to China today: SAT (the US college admission test) and NFL (National Football league). At Chicago O’Hale airport, I met a girl who just graduate from high school (middle school in China) and will attend a college in the Mid-west US. She told me she has some friends coming to other colleges this year. This is not the first time I met Chinese High school students coming to the States. The thing surprised me is that the New Oriental (recently did IPO on NYSE, ticker symbol EDU) and many others have already offered SAT/ACT (another US college admission test) in China. In another word, there are many Chinese high school students are going to take the SAT or ACT and attend US colleges. When I came to the US for graduate school in 1997 I remember seeing undergraduate students from southeast Asia and Taiwan/Hongkong. Now a new wave of students are coming from mainland. This is obviously attributed to the growth of China’s economy. I admire the vision and determination of those students and their parents as I believe their oversea education experience will be helpful for their future.

This reminded me of another thing. I was always thinking that the kids will be better off raised in the US than in China: less homework and competition, better facilities, and the atmosphere to foster creativity. I always think China’s education system produces more “testing machines” than “creative and open minded students”. This is probablly a little biased. I believe Chinese students get more rigorous training on Math and Sciences. By taking SAT/ACT, if a Chinese high school student is real good, he/she can come to the US for undergradute study. Tom Freeman wrote a book titled “the World is Flat” a year or two ago. While we all know the students in China and US won’t in the same level of playing field for a long time to come, it seems to me the gap is narrowed down a little (due to China’s economy growth).

On another news, NFL (national football league) will host a game “China Bowl” on August 8 2007 in Beijing. To be honest I was curious why NFL has not done anything substantial in China as I know NBA has already promoting basketball and being very successful in China. I remember this Feb. when I happened to be in Shanghai, nobody in my office cared about the No. 1 show in the America “Superbowl”, the championship game of NFL. Note Superbowl is also the showcase of many innovative adverstisements of US business giants (or dot com upstarts). Many people here watched superbowl just for the ad. The half-time musical performance is also usually good, except the infamous Janet Jackon’s “wardrobe malfunction” incident couple years ago. I am sure it won’t happen again because the broadcast will be delayed from now on (used to be real time).

China

Stay connected

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Last Updated on February 24, 2025 by stlplace

In order to stay connected in China, cell phone is a must. For short stay visitors, I believe “pre-paid minutes” or “pay as you go” card is good. There are a few minor things I found out by using China Mobile:

1) Text messaging: it’s much popular here and it’s less expensive compared to phone call. I started to love this thing after using that while. I found the “iTap English” and “Pinyin Chinese” input methods have suggestions and that saved me some typing. After all I am a guy knows how to use “vi”, the UNIX editor many people think it’s not user friendly. I think the design philosophy of them to be similar: use your imagination, if you know one, you should know two and three 举一反三.

2) No voice message: I have not encountered anyone set up voice message. So “do as Romans do when in Rome”, use the text message.

3) Roaming charge: China mobile charges RMB 7 cents (per 6 seconds) for the roaming. Unfortunately, there is no way to get around it. So keep the fee in mind if you are out of home-service area (for instance, when you have the Shanghai mobile number and you travel in Beijing).

4) Long distance: you can save some money if you dial 17951 followed by the long distance number (don’t forget area code for the land line).

On the other hand, I found my IP phone (iTalkBB) is handy from time to time. I bring the IP phone adapter this time. Once I plug it into the broadband internet and the regular phone, I could call my friends in the US using the IP phone. The only downside is once I got tele-marketing call early in the morning (late afternoon in the Midwest US): the tele-marketers think I am at home.

(Update 02-25-2025) After about 16 years from this post, I decided to cancel the iTalkBB phone service. I haven’t used it much, also, most recently I found out it stopped working (don’t know why exactly). Nowadays most incoming phone calls are spams. And we have mobile phones for real phone calls. So, I just went ahead to cancel it. Next, I will sell my phones – those traditional cordless phones.

China

I like Hangzhou

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Last Updated on September 21, 2006 by stlplace

Not that I don’t like Shanghai. Not just because Hangzhou has the world famous West Lake. Hangzhou’s size is about right, it has the convenience of the big city and the friendliness of a small city. I think St. Louis is similar in this aspect. There are fewer cars on the street, and people spend less time on commuting.

I also visited two web 2.0 startup companies. They are found by people much younger than me yet they are very humble and practical. I think in a way they are similar to Hangzhou the city itself. It’s much harder to have this attitude in big cities. I remember once my friend told me the famous investor Warren Buffet stayed at Omaha (instead of New York) because he wanted to stay away from the daily noises in the Wall Street.

If I had to pick between Hangzhou and Omaha, I will pick Hangzhou without doubt.