stlplaceLast Updated on April 19, 2007 by stlplace
I remember in the old days (15 years ago) it took 8 hours to travel from Shanghai to Ningbo. Now it took less than 4 hours. They are raising the speed again this year, according to the news. The D series train is expected to travel at 200 Km per hour, much faster than 40 Km per hour in my college years. This is just another sign China has been through in last 15 years, on the economy.
Last Updated on April 13, 2007 by stlplace
Hit new high today, it closed above 3500 today (3531 to be exact).
I heard from the news on April 9, there were 180,000 new stock trading accounts being opened. As you may know the new accounts and trading volume of 1st quarter already exceeded last year’s No. Feel the power of Chinese stock investors (or speculators)? Someone did a simple calculation, let’s assume on average day 100,000 people opened the acct, and average account has 50,000 Yuan, that’s about 5 billion Yuan new money every day. If we assume 20 trading days for a month, that’s 100 billion Yuan a month. That’s on the demand (demand for stocks) side.
Last Updated on April 16, 2007 by stlplace
(Updated April 16) I placed my bid through WR Hambrecht today.
I mentioned this a while ago. Today I received email from WR Hambrecht. The bid starts on April 16.
Last Nov I opened the acct at WR Hambrecht in order to get the IBKR open IPO. But I was not disiplined enough, end up picking up other IPO stocks: HLYS, XFML and GSIT. I already sold XFML before getting GSIT. Now I need to sell more to make fund available to IBKR bidding. Interactive Broker is the leading options trader and market maker in the US. The most famous company did open IPO is Google, followed by MorningStar.
Last Updated on April 13, 2007 by stlplace
I started using online banking a few months ago because I want to check out the balance in my account (at the time I was in the US, there are no ATMs I can go check my balance). This is reletively simple at cmbchina, after you install an ActiveX control from the bank. Some open source guys are pretty upset about this but this is reality in China: Microsoft product is the de-facto standard.
Last Updated on April 13, 2007 by stlplace
Enough praises for Shanghai, let’s look at the other side of the coin.
Traffic, very few cars will stop and wait for pedestrains to pass, from time to time a bike would zip through (in front of) you;
Cigarette smoking is prevalent in restaurants, sometimes I think about smoking myself because I heard it’s safer than second hand smoke;
Wait in line at banks, I only waited at China Merchant Bank, one of the top banks in China, but still…
Last Updated on April 9, 2007 by stlplace
These days this stock index future is a hot topic in Chinese market. You can read lots of discussion on the web. The concensus is the index will need some sort of adjustment before the debut of index futures. Because most people feel the Shanghai Composite Index is too high (almost 3400 as of today), and “drop before debut of index future” is a trend proved in Hongkong, etc. Don’t ask me what I think of all this. All I can tell you is the stock market here is crazy here: I hear people talking about stocks from parks to work places. Here is just another sign I saw: an advertisement @ the metro people square station, the Chinese words translated “welcome index futures, and invest wisely”.
Last Updated on April 9, 2007 by stlplace
Sogou, the new search engine from Sohu, has a ranking for every web site. I went to their web site, and checked out the following web sites:baidu (type in link:www.baidu.com in the blank and hit “search”, do similar for the other sites), netease, sina, sohu and stlplace. Here are their scores:
baidu: 90, sohu: 81, sina: 72, netease: 64, stlplace: 37.
Last Updated on April 5, 2007 by stlplace
I noticed this “English First Co.”, which is 2008 Beijing Olympics language training partner, because of their ubiquious ads (outside and inside) Cloud 9 building. I understand there are at least 2 levels of Olympics partners. Lenovo, Haier and Coke Cola, etc are exclusive sponsors (in its product category). In other words, they gave more money to Olympics committe and they got more exposure in return. MengNiu (diary product), “English First” and others are product providers. As the name implies, they gave products to Beijing Olympics. But still, I was puzzled why New Oriental did not go for it? I can think of two reasons:
Last Updated on April 5, 2007 by stlplace
Fuwei Film (FFHL) stock got a 22% jump today after it announced a very good earning report. Interestingly, I was thinking about this little known company lately. Why? Because I noticed a few days ago it got upgrade from Maxim analyst. The stock went up about 10% and dropped back to 10 in a few days. More importantly, I liked its products: plastic films used both in cosumer products packaging, and industrial packaging. Here is a link of their products (with pictures). Notice anything familar? From juice and milk bottles, to cigratte, liquor (alcohol), to laundary powder,…things we consume (eat, drink, use) daily.
Last Updated on April 5, 2007 by stlplace
The first quarter is behind us. Just like a public company reporting quarterly results and holding conference call, I am going to do a quick review of my little portfolio. This quarter is a quite rollercoaster for me, as it did for many investors. The Jan and Feb started fairly strong and at one time I had more than 10% gain (I used google finance to track my investments). This is until Feb 27. In one day I lost all my 10% gain because of the loss of my Chinese ADRs (HMIN and MR each lost more than 10%).