Month: May 2007

New US China Flights

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Last Updated on May 23, 2007 by stlplace

This is a part of the deals reached during Ms. Wu Yi and Mr. Paulson’s talk today. Here is an excerpt from MSN.

“Under the agreement announced Wednesday, starting this year, U.S. carriers will be able to operate 13 new daily flights to China within five years. One new flight will be awarded this year and one in 2008, four new flights will be awarded in 2009, three more in 2010, and two each in 2011 and 2012.”

Ms. Wu Yi

I also found the following very interesting, from Financial Times.

Tags paulson-and-Wu, US-China-trade-deal

Stocks

Postal Services Not Always the Cheapest

Post author By stlplace
Post date May 23, 2007
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Last Updated on May 23, 2007 by stlplace

I believe most people would think that Postal Services is usually cheaper compared to UPS or Fedex, this is not always. Today I was about to send a parcel at US Postal Service (USPS), but there were 13 people ahead of me. Don’t want to wait for another 20 minutes, and also want to check out the Fedex Ground, I decided to leave. I went to their web site first. The rate was $16.95, which is lower than the quote I got from USPS web site.

After the comparison shopping, I sent the item via Fedex Ground at local Kinko (Fedex) store. One caveat in Fedex is the packaging material is more expensive than USPS. I packed the stuff using my own box so this is not an issue.

Tags Fedex-Ground, USPS-Parcel-Post

Fun

Who Knows Chinese Stock Market Better?

Post author By stlplace
Post date May 23, 2007
2 Comments on Who Knows Chinese Stock Market Better?

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Last Updated on May 23, 2007 by stlplace

Mr. Greenspan (former US Fed chief), Jim Rogers (legendary investor), or Shang Fu Lin (Chairman, China Securities Regulation Committee)?

For me this is an easy pick (the latter two). But it seems people in the west believe in Mr. Greenspan better. Now after making comments in Feb (which partially caused the Feb. 27 crash), the old man speaks again. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot respect for Mr. Greenspan regarding economy indicators, monetary policy, all the good stuffs, but not on the Chinese stock market.

Tags Chinese-stock-market, Greenspan

China Fun

Top Blogger in China Went Offline

Post author By stlplace
Post date May 23, 2007
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Last Updated on May 23, 2007 by stlplace

His name is “Dai Tou Da Ge”, here is his blog at Netease (163.com). According to many sources, his blog was more popular than Ms. Xu Jinglei’s blog at Sina, although he only blogged for three months. Not surprisingly his topic is Stock Market. I read his first page, interestingly everyday he started first sentence with “the market did exactly as I expected,…”. I did not verify his claims but it seems many people believed it.

Anyway, I think the music in his blog is pretty good. Oh, that “Si Le Dou Yao Ai” is very popular in Shanghai these days 🙂

Fun Stocks

When to Fill up Gas?

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Last Updated on May 22, 2007 by stlplace

So $3 gas is back. Last time it was Katrina, this time I heard it was because some of the refineries were taken offline for maintainence. For us average consumers, since we can not trade in current (regular) car for hybrid, nor can we buy cheaper gas and store it somewhere. We have to fill up when the gas price is cheap (relatively). I found a good sign of gas price going up. There are two gas stations near my house: Shell and Exxon. Usually they don’t raise the price at the same time. So…when I saw one gas station already changed the price (up), I would go to the other one and fill up.

Tags gas-saving-tips

Business China

Home Inns Q1 Results

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Last Updated on May 22, 2007 by stlplace

Here are the results. I listened to Home Inns Q1 conference call (see the scripts here).

Some of the positives:

1) Revenue growth 65% Year over Year. Profit did not follow because of foreign change loss, tax expense and share based compensation. Note the foreign exchange loss won’t be one time as they continue moving the IPO money (in USD) to China (RMB), and you know these days the USD depreciates (wrt RMB) non-stop.

Tags HMIN, home-inns

Fun Stocks

Stock Reading at Mall

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Last Updated on June 3, 2007 by stlplace

I went to West County mall in the weekend, my first trip after coming back. Among all the St. Louis malls, I like West County the best because it has some of my favorite products (or stores): Apple store; Journeys, the shoe store has Crocs and Heelys; Dick’s Sporting Good has Crocs and Under Armour. Here is my impression on them.

Tags APPL, CROX, HLYS, UA

China Stocks

Xinhua Finance Media XFML Update

Post author By stlplace
Post date May 20, 2007
No Comments on Xinhua Finance Media XFML Update

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Last Updated on May 20, 2007 by stlplace

I really don’t want to talk this stock any more. But thought I may shed some light on this company’ new controversy, here is an article from market watch. To put long words short, Xinhua Finance Media Limited, failed to mention its CFO was under SEC investigation in its IPO prospectus. I don’t know legal side of the things, it seems they failed at least the investors. Similar things can be said for its underwriters?

Separately, I received their paper prospectus in the mail a while ago. This thing is about 400 pages, about 2 inches thick. I don’t know why they send this in the paper (investors can always read it online). Maybe they could boost their printing division’s revenue a bit by doing this.

Tags XFML, Xinhua-Finance

China

Some China Job Search Sites

Post author By stlplace
Post date May 20, 2007
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Last Updated on May 20, 2007 by stlplace

Since I am on this topic, let me put up some sites may be helpful to Haigui or expatriates. Note I still think for ordinary person like me, doing a software engineer job in the US is usually easier than doing similar things in China, unless you are in Silicon Valley. But one can argue China has more opportunites (career/business). Also for most of us we have family and friends back home, both are important. Life is not only about work and money, right?

1) Monster HK: biggest job search site in the world, that’s the Asia site.

2) amCham Shanghai: America Chamber of Commerce job site, it has some expat jobs.

Tags china-jobs