Day: July 11, 2007

Categories
Business Life

Whole Food, Wild Oats and Trader Joe’s

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Last Updated on July 12, 2007 by stlplace

John Mackey, the founder and CEO of Whole Food Markets (WFMI), allegedly used pen name “RahoDeb” (his wife name is Deborah) publishing his opinion on the stock at Yahoo Message Board. Here is the link to the mesages.

Of course, the thing really hits news is his comments about competitors, such as Wild Oats and Trader Joe’s. These are now being used by FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to block the attempt take over of Wild Oats. One reason FTC given is this take over will reduce the competition and increase grocery prices for consumers.

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Categories
Life Stocks

My investing journey I: 2002 to 2003

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Last Updated on July 18, 2007 by stlplace

I bought my first stock back in 1994 when I worked for a manufacturing company in Shanghai, and I got to buy 250 shares when the company went public. After that between 1996 and 1997 I did some trade in stocks because at that time the Chinese stock market was very hot, if not as hot as the Chinese market a few months ago. But these are mostly speculations, I know the PE ratios, but that’s about all the financial analysis I did (I think many retail investors in China these days are still at that level, to them stock is not too different from a lottery ticket).

Fast forward to year 2002, I got a little money after I joined the work force. The US stock market was not good. But I did learned more about personal finance, mostly through reading Kiplinger, do my own tax, etc. Kiplinger mentioned this Sharebuilder, a discount broker through which one can buy factional stocks (e.g, 10.5 shares of GE), the idea was a person put a fixed amount of money to buy stocks each month, after a while that amount will grow to some meaningful amount (say, buy a car or something).

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Categories
Business

The Growth of Crocs

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Last Updated on July 11, 2007 by stlplace

1) International: no secret here, as you can count the stores (more stores in India than China), from their web site www.crocs.com (international). The trick here is they expanded internationally at much early stage compared to Nike, etc., considering they are just a few years old. We can attribute partly to the globalization of economy and branding.

CROX_intl

Keep in mind both CEO Ron Snyder and CFO Peter Case have significant international experience before joining Crocs. I think this is more relevant than just paying attention to their stock sales. As long as they can make me (shareholder) money, do I care how much money they make?

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Categories
Business

What is partner exactly?

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Last Updated on July 11, 2007 by stlplace

We all know Wal-mart calls its employee “associates”, today I noticed Starbucks calls its employee “partner”, from its annual report. We all know this is more a sloagn, or public relation, nonetheless it’s good public relation.

Seriously, what is partner or partnership exactly. It’s almost like spouse. According to wikipedia, “A partnership is a type of business entity in which partners share with each other the profits or losses of the business undertaking in which all have invested…The most basic form of partnership is a general partnership, in which all partners manage the business and are personally liable for its debts…”

Robert Kiyosaki, the author of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, has an article of “finding right business partner“. Interesting read. Some key points include: common goal, complementary expertise, good chemistry, etc.