stlplaceLast Updated on December 27, 2006 by stlplace
I found out the Sun’s Financial Diary when I was doing Google search on LFC. The author is a China born Engineer currently working in the States. I liked this blog because it has lots of good stuff about personal finance, the author even put up the real number for his income, tax and investment, such as this one and this one, fascinating, although I won’t do it myself.
The most important “take away” I got is “patience” and “planning ahead”.
Last Updated on December 27, 2006 by stlplace
It’s priced at RMB 18.88 per share, and it will go out of gate on Jan 9, 2007 in Shanghai.
Today its US ADR LFC closed at $138.42. Note each ADR represents 40 shares of A share (in Shanghai). Consider today’s USD CNY conversion rate, 1 USD = 7.825 CNY.
138.42*7.825/40 = CNY 27.08
Assume this 138 price holds, from 18.88 to 27.08, it will have 50% jump on Jan 9, 2007. And its PE ratio will be in 90s. I feel this will very much like the New York Mercantile (NMX) recent IPO, i.e., it will jump to the target price as soon as it started trading. Ordinary investors won’t have much chances to make money on this one.
Yahoo finance has an interesting aritcle on LFC (in Chinese).
Last Updated on December 21, 2006 by stlplace
I did not realized the China Life Insurance (LFC) is going IPO in Shanghai Stock Exchange (A shares) until a few days ago. I did a little research on the web and found out there are quite a few big cap Chinese ADRs are going this route: Guangshen Railway (GSH) and Aluminum China (ACH) are another two. Here is an article I found on the web: besides those US ADRs, we have a few Hongkong listed companies such as Bank of China, China Industrial and Commercial Bank, PingAn Insurance, Air China, DaTang, etc.
So far the best performing stock is LFC; GSH also got a jump in past few days. Should have done research on this earlier: stock market is not like pursuing girl friends, besides being focused one should also be vigilant on new things.
Who is going to be the next one on the “back to China IPO”? I don’t know. But I believe the trend will continue, and one of the safe way to bet on this is investing through ETFs such as FXI. Sun’s Financial Diary has a very good analysis on this.
Last Updated on December 21, 2006 by stlplace
Went to the BB’s Jazz, Blues and Soup at 700 South Broadway, which is quite a blast. This is my first time to a Jazz bar, although I have listened to the Jazz on NPR in the Sunday evenings for a long time. I thought about going to New Orleans, which is the birth place of the Jazz, but never made the trip. I heard St. Louis has the Jazz and Blues traditions especially in the 50s, the scene I saw at BB’s confirmed this. There are quite a good turn out at the bar. Although I may not be the best person to comment on the music, I enjoy it very much. Life is more than work, computer, stock and other cold hard stuffs. Music and friends should be a big part of it, especially in the holiday season.
Last Updated on December 28, 2006 by stlplace
I went to the SA store at Brentwood, and I saw they emptied half of the shelf which was originally for Heelys (they put on some Under Armour socks instead). Is that a sign they are sold out? I don’t know. But one thing I do know SA usually have all the available shoes on the shelf, in other words, a customer can try the shoes without asking help from the associates. This is opposite to specialty stores such as Journeys: in Journeys a customer would tell the size he/she wants, and the associates will go back to the warehouse and bring up the shoes. I guess that’s one reason Journeys’ shoes are fully priced.
There are some negative comments on Heelys, both the shoes and the stock. Barron had this article on the weekend paper. It mentioned two things: Heelys is not only faddish but aimed at a notoriously fickle customer (kids); there is also product-liability risk (kids got hurt when skating on Heelys). While these are both legitimate concerns, here is a parent’s comment I saw from fatwallet “Kids crack their heads riding bikes, skateboards, and scooters. Kids crack their heads on the playground. Heelys get your kids to turn off the TV and be active and there are health benefits to that.”
While the stock could take a hit from the Barron article, I believe ultimately it’s the sales and profit number that will matter. Interestingly, when I was about to leave the SA store, I saw a guy bought not one, but two Heelys shoes for his kids. Maybe they are really sold out?
Last Updated on December 28, 2006 by stlplace
eBay’s China effort took a big hit today, or use eBay’s own term, they are adopting a “new strategy” in the China C2C market: they are going to team up with Tom Online on the online auction site. Whatever the term they use, the real story is they were losing market share ever since they acquired the eachnet, and put it under eBay China umbrella. There are many external factors to their failure:
Last Updated on December 19, 2006 by stlplace
“Over-worry” is probablly not a good word to describe the Americans because if you go to malls these days, you know why: people are shopping like everything is free. Just kidding. I do think the consumer spending of developed nations especially the US is a big driver for the economy growth in developing countries such as China. Holiday shopping in the US means millions jobs in China: from engineers to migrant workers; from Fedex to UPS; from iPod to Shoes…America is an optimistic nation and American consumers will put everything on credit card. This is good, except everything should have a limit.
But I am talking about the other extreme today: the over worry or over reaction to some new unknown phenomena. I remember before year 2000, we were all so worried about the “Y2K bug” in computers and put billions of dollars into information technology, software upgrade(a lot of Indian IT firms grew out of this Y2K scare). When Jan 1 2000 finally arrives, the planes still fly as usual, and eBay still works,…but no one questioned whether the money spent on Y2K is worth or not.
A few years ago, year 2002/3, the US economy was in recession while the real estate was flying high, people started to get nervous: housing bubble! Sell your house now! Well, the bubble last at least until 2005/6, and the real estate bubble is only seen in over heated area such as CA, NY, Boston, Vegas and Phoenix.
Back to my favorite topic, the stocks. This Feburary, Crocs, the funky footwear (for summer) company, did IPO and some “experts” started saying “stay away from the stock CROX, it’s a fad won’t last”. Well, the stock almost doubled in Nov. When I went to malls these days, I saw people buying this thing like crazy.
This remind me the word at the tower of UT-Austin: you shall seek the truth and the truth will make you free. To be honest I worried about my stocks after I bought it from time to time, the only thing I am doing now is learn more about the financials, business of the companies.
Last Updated on December 17, 2006 by stlplace
I got my Heelys on Friday. Have not tried to “heel” yet because I don’t want to hurt myself before Christmas. But I did some store visits for Heelys and found the buzz is still there. I also did some check on eBay, which I think is a better indicator than the local store numbers. Here are my findings on eBay:
Date #heelys #faked
12Dec06 1628 178
13Dec06 1300 128
14Dec06 1294 119
15Dec06 1270 81
16Dec06 1250 100
I visited Sport Authority, Journeys (those two counts the 11% and 11.6% of Heelys domestic sales for the first 9 months of 2006), Nordstrom, Dick’s Sporting Good, FinishLine, and Kids Footlocker.
1) Jouneys: every mall in St. Louis has this store. It seems selling well. I saw two instances people are looking or buying the Heelys. On a separate note, I was really impressed by Journeys’ efficiency in such a small space, their sales revenue per square footage should be very good. In a way I think kids like to “learn the fashion” from each other, in other words, the kids are helping Jounneys marketing the shoes, for free. Also, I found the associates in Jounneys are interesting young people, by “interesting” I mean they ususally have tatoos, strange hair style (young guys), and wear jeans with holes.
2) Sport Authority: while Journeys is a specialty store (it does not do discount very often); SA is a super market for sports goods (it gives discount for more stuff). I found the SA in Manchester Rd. is taking $10 off for all the kids’ Heelys. I am not particularly concerned on one instance. But if they continue to mark down the price (and in other stores), I will be concerned.
3) Other stores: Nordstrom is still the premier store (full price); FinishLine is a sports shoes store and it seems is not selling too many Heelys.
4) Knockoffs: I saw the knockoffs kiosk in the South County Mall yesterday. They are exactly same as the ones I saw on eBay. It starts from $49.99 after “30% off”. Again I questions the Parents/Grandparents’ mentality on buying knockoffs: I think they are just dumb, will you give your kids faked cars to drive?!
Last Updated on December 15, 2006 by stlplace
The malls are packed with people these days, and finding a parking spot is not easy. While online shopping is becoming a norm in this web 2.0 era, it seems to me the joy of windows shopping can not be replaced by the mouse click. OK, here are the list of things I considered to be cool in this holiday season. Note I am not affiated with any of the following companies, i.e., I won’t get paid if you click on the link. These are just from my objective view. With that in mind…
1) Gadget: iPod nano (AAPL, the stock ticker), yes, they are not new (generation two now), but with the Nike Shoe kit, you can record your jogging data with nano and upload it to your PC/Mac, isn’t that cool?
2) Shoes: Crocs (CROX) for summer and Heelys (HLYS) for other seasons.
3) Sports Apparel: Under Armour (UARM), although they don’t have endorsments from Lebron, Dywane, Tracy, Kevin, Tim or Yao, they are much cool than Nike, Addidas and Reebock.
Of course, there is something money can not buy, for anything else, there is MasterCard (MA) or Google (GOOG) Checkout.
Last Updated on December 12, 2006 by stlplace
Did more “Heelys” search on eBay since now I am Heelys stock holder. (12Dec06) There are 1628 results using keyword “Heelys”. They include the shoes, safety gears (helmet, wrist, elbow, knee pads), and accessories (caps, T-shirt). There are both new and old items (for the shoes). It seems used ones are also sold well if they are in good condition.
Here is my concern, the knockoff or copycats. I found out they ususally have “heelys style” in their title. But some authetic Heelys also have those words. So I did search on this “heelys style -authentic”, which means exclude “authetic” in the titles. I noticed some sellers put “authetic” in the title to make sure buyers know those are real ones. While this is not 100% accurate, this gives 178 results. In other words, about 10% of Heelys items on eBay are knockoff or faked ones. I looked at some of the knockoff shoes. There are not too much discount if you consider the shipping cost. Say, an authetic Heelys costs $60, a knockoff on eBay sells for $30 plus $15 for shipping, the total would be $45. Besides the small price difference, there are other reasons why there won’t be a big market for knockoffs.
1) Parents want the peace of mind from the authetic Heelys because in some way they kids well beings depend on the quality of shoes. What if the wheels fall off during skating?
2) Kids also have their self-esteem. Won’t a knockoff Heelys embarass the kid when he/she compare it with friends’ real ones in school? It’s probally better off not wearing the fake ones at all.
From investor point of view, I think a little bit knockoff activities are probablly a good thing. It means the product is popular and it’s generating a lot of buzz in the consumers. Now the key question is will Heelys’ buzz last for long. Or in other words, will it stay or will it just be a fad? That’s a million dollar question.
Last but not least, here is a positive report from hitwise, yes, finally something positive.