Month: July 2009

Categories
Fun

Stocks for kids

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 31, 2009 by stlplace

I remember once my Accounting instructor told his father bought him a Kansas ulility stock when he was a kid (maybe 10 years old or so). The interesting part is everyday he would read the stock section of newspaper and check the price of his stock. One reason he chose accounting as his profession. I also believe everyone remembers his/her first stock purchase clearly, for me that’s also my first employer (a large state owned manufacturer decided to go public in early 1990s). For my kid, I am think of the follow stocks for “buy and hold”. Note this is mostly for fun, not trying to making money for kid’s college fund. That being said, those companies have excellent fundamentals and will be in the business for a long time, I think.

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Categories
Shanghai Composite

China stimulus package and market

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on August 12, 2009 by stlplace

Shanghai housing price heated up again recently, according to famous Shanghai blogger Wang Jianshuo. It’s no secret the stock market (Shanghai composite index) rebounded from 1,700 in last Oct. to 3,400 in last couple days, an 100% increase.

CNN had an article How to say bubble in Mandarin. Video below.

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Categories
Master Series

WealthTrack Notes

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Last Updated on August 8, 2009 by stlplace

David Swensen (head of Yale endowment management)
Individual should be responsible to educate themselves if they actively manage their portfolio or just go passive: investing in index fund (this is echo to Buffett, Bogle). There is nothing in between (in other words, he thinks doing something in between can not bring good performance).

David is not a big fan of mutual fund because: 1) Only 15% of mutual fund outperform the market; 2) Survival-ship bias (10,000 out of 30,000 mutual funds fold in 20 years); 3) Even if individual investors luckily find the 15% good mutual fund, many buy “high” and sell “low” on the funds.

Another interesting point David made was we went from an ownership (everyone being shareholder) society to an agent(let someone else to manage asset) society, and now to fiduciary society. The following is an excerpt of his talk on Apr 23 at Youtube. Both his Apr. 23 and July 24 talk are available at wealthtrack web site.

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Categories
Economy

My thoughts on US healthcare reform: II

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Last Updated on July 4, 2023 by stlplace

When I first came to the US in fall 1997, I bought the university healthcare insurance plan, which is pretty basic, and pretty cheap. I don’t have a primary physician, and I never went to the university clinic (part of the reason was I don’t know how to say those medical terms in English, part of reason is I did not have major illness). I did take one of my fellow graduate student to the University hospital at Columbia, Missouri, and was very impressed by the facilities. Hey the hospital in the US looks much better than China: less crowded, clean, new facilities etc.

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Categories
Web

Order Domino’s pizza online

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on August 8, 2009 by stlplace

Through the years I have bought books, digital cameras, computers, mouse, shoes and many other things on the web, from Amazon, eBay, buy.com, Sears, Zappos and so on. In some stores I could pick up the merchadise at the store (Sears, for one). I did that at Circuit City before its bankrupcy.

But today is my first time to order Pizza online. In the past, what I usually do is call the store, tell them what I want (usually I have a coupon). Today I decided to do something different (I don’t have a coupon anyway). So I went to Domino’s at around 11:25 AM. The steps are pretty straight forward.

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Categories
Investing

Huntsman Corp

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Last Updated on July 24, 2009 by stlplace

Huntsman corp (NYSE:HUN) is a specialty chemical maker in the US, with operations all over the world. It was founded by Jon M. Huntsman in 1970.

Huntsman settles lawsuit with Apollo and banks
June 25 2009, SEC filing 8-K regarding settlement with banks.

Dec 15 2008, SEC filing 8-K regarding settlement with Apollo Group.

Matlin Paterson, who owns a big chunk of Huntsman stocks, sold his stake in 2007 (in hindsight, that’s a good price. Source: Yahoo Finance; Forbes). It seems he still has a significant stake though (source: MSN MoneyCentral, HMP Equity Trust).

Jon Huntsman (father, founder and chairman) and Peter Huntsman (son, CEO) on Fox Business News (link here)

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Categories
earning Fun Video

EBITDA explained to children

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Last Updated on December 3, 2023 by stlplace

courtesy of CNN UK (CNN video link no longer available, here is a text link on LinkedIn, LinkedIn registeration needed): translating financial jargon into plain English, CNN’s Jim Boulden tackles EBITDA and a classroom of children.

EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.

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Categories
Life Life Tips

A tragedy related to iPhone

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on July 24, 2009 by stlplace

(CNET) Chinese authorities probe iPhone worker’s death

(PCWorld) iPhone Suicide Case Spotlights Tech’s Dark Side

Apparently many foreign media can not understand why a guy will jump off the building just because the iPhone he was in charge went missing? Well, it appears to me there are two factors:

1) It’s very very hard to get a good job for new graduates in China these days. Thus they join Foxconn, the “sweater shop” if you will. Not much rights once you join that shop. I suggest my western friends go there once and get some real world experience on sweater shop before express their views.

2) He was tortured. Again remember Foxconn is a “sweater shop” happens making iPhone.

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Categories
Economy

My thoughts on US healthcare reform

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Last Updated on July 24, 2009 by stlplace

This topic is heating up in recent days. I think there are a lot of mis-understandings and mis-conception on this. One is a lot people think medicare is inefficient, I have not used medicare but it seems quite efficient in reality.

Obama healthcare reform pic
(Source: economist)

The bottom line is healthcare boils down to two issue:

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Categories
Web

Google finance new interface, dividend screener

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Last Updated on July 21, 2009 by stlplace

Google finance released the new interface last week. I did not feel comfortable with it at first sight, but after reading its explaination and spent some time on it, I am feeling more comfortable with it now. One quick thing, those who are interested in financial statements may complain where is the good old financial statement for a particular stock? Again check top left panel (a lot goodies there), click on “financials” you will see the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow. In other words, they did not take away anything, my guess is they try to add new things and present the information better. Another minor feature is: they finally added the opening price of a stock, in the past, they only have stock closing price. This is not revolutionary, but something nice to have. On a related matter, now you can see their monthly stock chart in real fashion. In the past they merely connect the closing price of each day, which is still the case with 3 month (or longer) stock chart.

Dividend stock screener
Since I am talking dividend recently, I am creating this stock screener. Criteria:

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