Month: October 2009

Categories
401k and Personal Finance

A little busy lately

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Last Updated on October 31, 2009 by stlplace

I was a little busy recently, due to many reasons. Thus I did not paid much attention to stock market in the past week, and the big drop in last 6 trading days did not concern me as much (due to distance), another reason is I sold some stocks before and during those days, so I think I am OK.

Why I am selling stocks
Obviously not trying to timing the market. I was the worst market timer, as I ran out of cash in early March (all in stocks at the time, stocks like Berkshire). The main reason I sold stocks is I want to have some liquidity, not that I did not need it in the past, but now liquidity becomes more important as we are expecting our first baby early next year (see my wife’s blog).

How I think about stock market and economy in general
Obviously my opinion does not count much, we already got so many knowledgable people, from President to economist, trying to predict what’s next. Here is my simple take, for what it worth.

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Categories
Stocks

FFO, LaSalle Hotel Properties LHO

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Last Updated on November 13, 2009 by stlplace

(Aug. 06, 2009) Strategic Hotels misses estimates, sees local revenue fall, quote:

A closely watched measure of REIT financial performance, FFO is net income excluding gains or losses from property sales, plus depreciation and amortization.

(May 1, 2004) Table Is Set for New Round of Hotel IPOs, quote:

Historically, stocks in the sector traded at price/FFO multiples between 4 and 11, with the average being 7, says David Bulger, CFO of Innkeepers USA Trust. Now, many stocks are trading at 12 times FFO.

LaSalle Hotel Properties (NYSE:LHO) audio archives (webcast at its investor relations page)

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Categories
Technology

nook vs. Kindle

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Last Updated on October 22, 2009 by stlplace

From Fox Business News (via Youtube). The journalist also talked about Google and Android OS used in nook.

Categories
Stocks

John Mack on CNBC

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Last Updated on November 17, 2009 by stlplace

He talked about job market, compensation, and the events around crisis a year ago.

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Categories
Master Series

Peter Peterson on Blackstone, China, deficit and healthcare etc.

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Last Updated on November 11, 2009 by stlplace

Mr. Peterson has background both in government and private sector: he has been commerce secretary and is co-founder and senior chairman of Blackstone (the private equity group). Very wise guy in my mind.

Charlie Rose interview July 3, 2009 (link)

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Categories
IPO

Stock lessons: IPOs

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Last Updated on November 11, 2009 by stlplace

First let’s mark Oct 14 2009: Dow 10,000 2.0 (Yahoo Tech-ticker video below)


(did you notice the Yahoo ~~~ in the end, Yahoo became more goofy under Carol)

My topic today is IPO. I have not got much luck from IPO investing (to be more precise, speculating). My lessons are the following:

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Categories
Stocks

Blockbuster dying

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Last Updated on November 13, 2009 by stlplace

(Update 13Nov09) BBI released not so good earning report (Reuters). One interesting point is they are going to spend $10,000 to $20,000 to renovate the stores (about 1,700).

(Original) Note I am saying “dying”, not “death”. This also does not demonstrate all the hard work of men and women at Blockbuster, from corporate to stores, note I am merely talking about the trend of a business. Full disclosure: I do have a small long position on Blockbuster common stock (NYSE:BBI).

Two points:

First, stock and company are two things, Blockbuster dying does not equal to Blockbuster stock BBI goes to zero immediately. Example: The Motors Liquidation Company (formerly General Motors, MTLQQ.PK). Last I checked, their worthless stock is still trading at 65 cents.

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Categories
Stocks

Is this sucker’s rally ?

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Last Updated on October 14, 2009 by stlplace

From Yahoo Tech-ticker. I don’t necessarily agree his view (but it’s always good to listen to both sides of the arguments).

Categories
401k and Personal Finance

Portfolio management lessons: ESPP

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Last Updated on October 13, 2009 by stlplace

Two things I wanted to talk about ESPP: personal bias and taxation.

I remember I grew tired of my undergraduate college at the fourth year, due to various reasons. But after leaving my college for so many years, now I think that’s one of the best places I have been. Personal congnition bias also plays with work. There are always misgivings in the work place, this got intensified with the recession. Recent Economist has an article on this “unhappy work place” topic. But if we take a deeper breath, I think many work places are not as bad as we perceive. In fact, some maybe fabulous business if some reform initiatives being applied.

On the other side of the equation, we all know what happened to Enron and WorldCOM employees and retirees when they put signigicant amount of personal wealth on company stocks. They believed in the pep talk of their CEOs.

Taxation is a complicated matter. Some explaination from Yahoo (Turbo Tax).

Appendix: my ESPP history

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Categories
IPO

Mistras IPO looks interesting

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Last Updated on October 22, 2009 by stlplace

(Update 22Oct09) SEC filing 424B4.

(Original) I talked about Mistras (NYSE:MG) IPO briefly the other day. Today I read this “MatlinPatterson Global Sells $3M Worth of Huntsman“. And in this news I saw some insiders of Mistras bought some shares in IPO:

Mistras Group (MG) Stamatakis Manuel N DIR 6,000 $75,000
Mistras Group (MG) Peterik Paul CFO 2,000 $25,000

They paid about $12.50 per share (IPO price). Very interesting. For most IPO shares “It’s Probably Overpriced”. But this one seems quite reasonable. After IPO, its market cap is about $300 m, with revenue of about $200 m. The income and earning per share number is eschewed because the company paid quite some preferred share dividend recently. I need to read whether those preferred shares will be converted.

Risks

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