November 15, 2007

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Last Updated on November 15, 2007 by stlplace

Yesterday morning when I went to Panera (St. Louis) Bread to get morning bagel, I noticed they raised the price from 89 cents to 95 cents. I can fully understand the pressure they are facing: the rising wheat, diary, and energy cost.

Today Starbucks came out with earning, and understandablely a disappointing outlook (bloomberg).

SBUX and PNRA are hit on two sides: the rising costs of raw materials; and shrinking pockets of US consumers.

Long term, I do believe Starbucks will do very well in China, and other emerging markets; but right now, the sales from China is just too small to overcome the difficulty in the US…So I will NOT try to be hero at this time.

Homework

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Last Updated on November 15, 2007 by stlplace

I resumed my homework on stocks today. By homework I mean the research I did on stocks, basically I copied the financial numbers, such as revenue, earning, company own forecast to a Google spreadsheet, and do some simple calculation such as growth rate, price sales ratio (market cap divide by the revenue). This is very rudimentary but notheless it does give me a feeling whether the stock is expensive or not. On reflecting the mistakes on CROX, I think one reason is I did not keep the speadsheet up to date 🙁

Actually on my spreadsheet for CROX (last updated on July 26), I had a few lines like: “sell some before Q1 earning”, “sell some before Q2 earning”? I did sell some on early May (before Q1 earning), but I did not cash out any before Nov. 1 melt down. I am not saying “had I did the homework, things would be different”. In stock market there are no “had I”, or “would be”. But one thing I can make sure is sit tight, and do the home work.

Now back to the homework for Mindray (NYSE:MR) and Longtop (NYSE:LFT).