Day: July 20, 2007

Categories
Fun

Bill Miller’s childhood story

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on July 23, 2007 by stlplace

From CNNMoney, the full article is here:

I was nine years old, and I walked in to see my father reading the financial pages of the newspaper. And they didn’t look like the sports pages or the comics or whatever.

So I asked him what they were. And he said they were financial pages.

And I said, “What does that mean?” And he said, “Well, these are stocks.”

I said, “What’s a stock?” And he said, “Well, look at this thing. See this thing? This represents a company.” And he said, “And see this ‘+ .25’?”

And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well, that means that if you own this company, one share of it, which cost you like ten dollars, then if you owned it yesterday, then today you have 25 cents more than you had yesterday.”

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Categories
Fun

Week in review 07-15 to 07-21

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 20, 2007 by stlplace

1) StrengthTrader listed the greatest investors of all time (in Chinese). Among them I am familar with Buffett, Fisher and Lynch. I think Bill Miller is the Peter Lynch in current Mutual Fund world.

2) Alibaba is hiring, they are adding 2,000 people by the end of 2007. Meanwhile, Ali’s little bro Ninetowns is shrinking, they are laying off people after recent acquisition.

3) Save $10 off Crocs through CrocFans.com.

4) Investor Trip Starbucks experience. My comment: it’s about experience, not just about coffee (i.e., coffee buyers at McDonald and Dunkin Donuts are different groups).

5) Sun’s Financial Diary’s “Pay ourselves first”. I remember seeing one of the guest on CNBC “Millionare Inside” said similar things. Well, Sun has made significant progress on this aspect too. Very good job.

Categories
Fun Stocks

IS Dow 14000 relevant?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on August 15, 2007 by stlplace

Yesterday Dow Industrial closed above 14,000 the first time in history. Many people, bulls, bears, analysts, CEOs, ordinary workers,…all get excited about this. Many US workers have 401k plan, and I bet some of that is invested stocks (indirectly through Mutual Fund).

But Dow Industrial is NOT a good indicator of the overall stock market. I read it first in Ken Fisher’s latest book “The Only Three questions that count“, this was also confirmed by Mark Faber (CNBC) and trader Mike. Here are the reasons:

1) The 30 stocks of Dow Industrial made up a tiny fraction of overall US stock market. It does contain stocks from different industries, but it’s not as diversified as S&P 500.

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