Month: July 2007

Categories
China Stocks

Letter from CEO of Xinhua Finance

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on July 9, 2007 by stlplace

Today, Fredy Bush, the CEO of Xinhua Finance and Xinhua Finance Media Limited (XFML), released a letter to counter the recent media coverage of “the mystery of Xinhua Finance”. Quote the letter:

— Over the years the media has criticized Xinhua Finance as being too
close to the Xinhua News Agency and the government of China; now they
are criticizing us for not being close enough. The fact is, we have a
20 plus 10 year exclusive agreement signed in 2000 with the China
Economic Information Service of the Xinhua News Agency and that has not
changed. This has been publicly disclosed on numerous occasions.

Continue reading “Letter from CEO of Xinhua Finance”
Categories
Fun Stocks

Week in Review 07-01 to 07-07

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 8, 2007 by stlplace

1) PTC woes: last week Goldman Sachs, the No. 1 broker in the US (and world), upgraded PTC (a PLM software vendor) to “buy”, and raised its target from $22 to $24. On July 5, PTC says it’s going to miss the 3rd revenue estimates. I guess the GS analyst would be pretty upset by PTC now.

2) Samsonite being sold again: you may have seen its bags (laptop bag, luggage bag for air flight) in many palces. According to bloomberg, Samsonite found its 5th owner in 21 years. If you look at its 10 year chart, the stock lost 96.57% of its value in 10 years. For comparison, Coach (COH) was up 1853% in last 7 years. One thing I am aware: Coach’s bag is usually more expensive than Samsonite’s.

samsonite bags

3) eLong no longer offer “vacation package”: according to PcPop, eLong (Nasdaq: LONG) pulled out of this market amid competition from Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP). I checked out eLong tours page, it appears they still have it for now.

Categories
Life

Launch Passion Equity

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on July 7, 2007 by stlplace

Since today is a good day (7-7-07), I want to do something special. I have planned this thing for a while: create an investment partnership or the sorts. Right now I’m the only partner in this venture. But I’m open to new investors with similar investment philosophy.

Why do I create this Equity partnership?
Well, investing in stocks is where my passion is. This is very important. Passion is the No. 1 thing to be successful in accomplishing something, in addition to discipline, intelligence, good judgement, hard work, and luck.

I don’t need to take outside money, because I’m running my own portfolio happily at this time. It’s a big responsibility for me to manage other people’s money. But I like to take the challenge.

I won’t make all the investment decisions but I would like to be one of the two(?) managing partners. All others are general partners, and they will contribute in two ways: money and advice. All partners will share the profit (or the loss) regardless of being “managing partner” or not, according to the money being pooled in.

Why do I believe I can do better than the market (e.g. S&P 500), or the mutual fund?

Continue reading “Launch Passion Equity”
Categories
Saint Louis Stocks

Heelys is NOT going away

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 6, 2007 by stlplace

Just went back from Chesterfield Mall, saw Heelys at predominant locations at “Finish Line” (the discount sporting shoes store), and TradeHome, a boutique shoes store which also sells Crocs, Keen, Merrel and Teva. The Journeys also kept the Heelys, also I saw they cut the price on one model.

Yes, Heelys (HLYS) is a broken story in terms of stock, because its lower than expected estimated growth and its mis-steps in its secondary offering. Its management expects the growth to be 20% (vs. past year’s couple hundreds). But, it’s not a broken company at least in the near term. I saw kids skating on Heelys from time to time.

Separately, I saw Dillard’s has some Cayman (Beach, the original) Crocs on sales, note the size is not complete. I bought a pair for $13.99.

Categories
Life

777 and SOS

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 6, 2007 by stlplace

Tomorrow, July 7, 2007, is a “triple seven” day, the winning number of slot machine. More importantly, some people claims this occurs once a century.

There will be a lot of people get married this day. Unfortunately the stock market will be closed. I guess you can always go to the gas station to get a lottery ticket.

Seriously, tomorrow is also “Live Earth” launch day. What is Live Earth? It is an organization to promote the environment protection and awareness of the climate change. There will be live concert on 7 continents: from New York to Shanghai (pearl tower). For those people like me can not go to live concert, we can watch it on TV, online or go to a house party.

Categories
China Stocks

China market cooled a bit

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 5, 2007 by stlplace

The Shanghai composites went down 5% today (to about 3600), the biggest drop since May 30 when goverment increased the “stamp tax”. I heard one reason for today’s big drop is incoming new issues such as the IPOs from Bank of Nanjing, Bank of Ningbo.

Hello?! How many new shares are B. of Nanjing and B. of Ningbo’s issuing? Can they issue more shares than the Citic Bank, and Bank of Comm in late April, early May? Why the stock continued going up then? Excuse, lame excuse,…

It’s interesting to watch as the China market cools, we are seeing fewer posts about FXI and China market bubble at seekingalpha.

Separately, I swapped some Home Inns (Nasdaq: HMIN) stocks with Mindray (NYSE: MR) today. I sold HMIN at 34.50 and bought MR at 31.67.

Categories
Stocks

Discover Financial Services DFS

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on July 5, 2007 by stlplace

(Update July 4) Did not see any filings at SEC web site but got Q2 2007 earning at Discover’s own web site. Quote below.

“Riverwoods, IL, June 20, 2007 – Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFSWI) today reported net income of $209 million for the quarter ended May 31, 2007, compared with record net income of $343 million for the second quarter of 2006. The second quarter of 2007 included approximately $20 million of pretax costs related to the spin-off from Morgan Stanley that will take place on June 30, 2007. The second quarter of 2006 benefited from low bankruptcy filings in the United States following the bankruptcy legislation that became effective in October 2005. Return on managed receivables for the second quarter of 2007 was 1.65%, down from 2.90% in the second quarter of 2006.

Managed credit card receivables were $51.4 billion as of May 31, 2007 reflecting growth of 6% over last year. Sales volume of $25.4 billion was up 6% from the second quarter of 2006. Total transactions processed on the Discover® and PULSE® networks grew 14% over the same period last year.

Credit quality remained strong with the managed over 30 day delinquency rate of 3.12% at an all time low reflecting record low U.S. delinquencies partially offset by higher delinquencies in the United Kingdom. The managed net charge-off rate for the quarter was 4.23%, up 93 basis points from the same period last year.”

I also read its outlook, I think we can wait it go down a little more (24?) to pull the trigger.

Continue reading “Discover Financial Services DFS”
Categories
Fun

Crocs 2.0

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 3, 2007 by stlplace

The following is a promotional video for Crocs @ YouTube (the video is family and office friendly).

Categories
Fun

Bad experience, Good experience

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 3, 2007 by stlplace

I don’t remember where I read this, but it says “losing 10% in a stock will make one feel 3 times worse than making 10% in a stock”.

I think same thing can be said for the recent iPhone activation fiasco (story 1, story 2). I am sure there are a lot more happy iPhone users than a few unlucky (and unhappy) users. Because at the end of the day, bad news spread much faster than good ones.

Interestingly, the software company Synchronoss Technologies (SNCR), who supplied the software and technology for iPhone order processing and activation, did very well in terms of stock. It has a PE (ttm) of 80, and $1 b market map with $78.1 M sales (ttm). Are we talking about another Baidu in the making 🙂

Categories
Stocks

My half year preliminary report

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on July 3, 2007 by stlplace

I was very pleased with my portfolio’s first 6 months’ performance this year, while I don’t have exact number here (waiting for Scottrade to create June 2007 statement), my return is about 30%. My biggest winner is Crocs (CROX), which went up more than 100%, Mindray (MR) also helped a lot (went from $23 to $31). Some of the losers include: NINE, GSIT, SBUX (hate to say that because I think it’s a good company). And I made a mistake to let EDU go too early (sold at 37 and 40, it’s more than 50 now). So the No. 1 lesson is: keep the winners, sell the losers, not the other way around.

Continue reading “My half year preliminary report”