Month: November 2007

Categories
China Stocks

Currency wars

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on November 15, 2007 by stlplace

Early August 2007, when I was in Shanghai, the US stock market underwent a crisis from the sub-prime mortgage. At that time the focus was on BearStern and its two hedge funds. In China, and in overseas Chinese financial community, the book named Currency Wars authored by Mr. Song Hongbing was very popular. So I bought one in Shanghai. The heart of this book is (in my own words): we are inceasingly live in a world that controlled by international bankers. In a way, ordinary people (like you and me) are very much like their (bankers) slaves.

Currency wars logo (picture from Amazon China)

As I am reading the book about Fed history (Wiki: US Fed reserve), and listening to Ben Berneke (the Fed chairman) speech this morning, I think this is very interesting: is Ben Berneke, an Econ professor from Princeton, look like the representative of the bad guys (a.k.a., the bankers)?

Here are some comments about the book at douban.

Categories
China Stocks

Is the Chinese bull market over?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on November 17, 2007 by stlplace

(Update Nov. 17) Shuipi of ChinaTimes(水皮华夏时报) wrote this interesting piece on his newspaper.

(Original) It looks like it, from the highs at 6,200 in early Oct to 5,200 now. But wait a minute, recently the US stock market suffered big loss because of the sub-prime meltdown, and weakening of the dollar. How could the mess in the US drag down the Chinese stock market?

Well, one can say we are in a global economy now, the ripple effect of US sub-prime meltdown means the US business and consumer will watch their wallet more carefully, which is bad for Chinese exporters. We all know the Chinese economy depends a lot on exporting to the US.

China Mobile logo

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Categories
Stocks

What if brokage firms go bankrupt?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on November 13, 2007 by stlplace

The drama in wall street did not end on last Friday. Today E-Trade, the few dot com survivor, came into news about is exposure to Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS). In these days, MBS are pretty much like useless paper, because of the sub-prime crisis. Accoring to analyst, the chance of E-Trade go bankrupt is still remote, or 15%. But this will make the E-Trade investors and customers nervous, and its competitors happy. So, what if E-Trader eventually do go bankrupt? What does that mean to its investors and customers?

For E-Trader investors (stock holders of ETFC), it is simple: that means total loss.

e-trade logo

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Categories
China Stocks

China Merchants Bank opened NY branch

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on November 17, 2007 by stlplace

Week in review 11/04 to 11/10

1) Shanghai Univ of Finance and Economics, or SUFE, is celebrating its 90 years annaversary. SUFE also launched Shanghai consumer/investor confidence index, similar to Univ of Michigan consumer confidence index.

SUFE logo

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Categories
Stocks

Subcribed Captial Week through Zinio

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on November 10, 2007 by stlplace

Zinio is an electronic magazine reader. It offers a wide array of Chinese magazines such as Capital Week, the best Chinese financial magazine in my mind. I subscribed it last weekend, and paid RMB 274 through China NetBank. The Zinio reader (and Capital Week) is OK except its text is not dark enough when zoomed out.

Personally I like paper back version of things better, hopefully as the Chinese stock market grows, maybe one day we can get it here just like one can get WSJ around the world.

zinio_Capital_week

Categories
Stocks

Product, company and stock: I

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on November 10, 2007 by stlplace

Good product => good company => good stock?

I have been thinking about it for a while, and I believe in lots of cases this formula is not necessarily true. I understand this is a difficult topic to discuss because the subjective nature of the “good product”, “good company” and “good stock”.

For example, Marlboro (thus Altria, the company) is good for smokers because it provides stimulate to them; but it’s bad for people who lost loved ones because of cigaretee related disease. By the way, Altria (NYSE:MO) is the No. 1 in terms of investment return among S&P500 companies in last 40 years, according to Wharton professor Jeremy Siegal.

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Categories
Career

Mindray recruiting new grads in Canada Germany

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on June 10, 2009 by stlplace

Here is the link (see the left scrolling screen, in Chinese):

Many years ago, when I was a graduate student, I attended those information sessions in school (and ate many free pizzas). At that time all the companies are US companies, such as Emerson, GE, and Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) etc. Now a Chinese company are coming to Canada and Germany. One can argue that Mindray (NYSE:MR) can not pay as high salary as Microsoft, but Mindray would give stock options (see below) for significant contributors. Very much like MSFT did in 1990s.

Forget the big drop of Chinese stocks lately (including Mindray); think how much Chinese companies have done in past 10 years…

Stock options: my friend in Shanghai sent me this Chinese article about the stock options incentive for Mindray employee. Mindray CFO Joyce Hsu also said in Q3 conference call that Mindray may have the highest rate (among Chinese companies), in terms of awarding options to its employees.

Categories
Stocks

CROX, retailer report and credit market

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on November 8, 2007 by stlplace

Morgan Stanley Logo

CROX is halved from its pre-earning high of $75.00, and now it sells at around $37.00, about the same price as Mindray (NYSE:MR). I know I am comparing apple to orange.

On the news, sub-prime mess among big banks, $100 a barrel oil and today weak retailer report did not help. But more importantly, it appears to me the short sellers of CROX, are taking this oppertunity to make a killing.

But all these are short term issues. For instance, the sub-prime loan loss for big banks. Morgan Stanley said it’s going to lose $3.7 billion from this. Although the number could be bigger later on, I would think Morgan Stanley would recover from this, and continue doing their IB business? Similar things can be said for Citibank? I’m not saying go buy those financial stocks now, as I am no expert on financials. But I would think the financial institutions, as the foundation of US and global economy, will not all go bankrupt?

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Categories
Stocks

Scary times

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on November 8, 2007 by stlplace

The wall street had another big down day today. The Dow lost 360 points, or 2.64%. If Dow is not a reliable indicator of market, S&P 500 lost 44.65, or 2.94%. This is after last Thursday big sell off. The obvious reason, is the continuing deteriating of the US credit market (mortgage banks, commerical banks, investor banks); and the weakening of dolloar.

Chinese IPOs such as Agria (NYSE:GRO) can not come to US at worse time, following last week’s Giant Interactive (NYSE:GA). Long term, this may presents oppertunities, if we can differentiate good companies from pretenders. As I recall, when Shanda Interactive (SNDA) came to Nasdaq in Spring 2004, the market was also not doing well. Later on when market recovered, and more importantly, Shanda delivered a few good quarters, its stock price sky rocketed. Similar things can be said for Google (GOOG) and MasterCard (MA) IPO in August 2004, and May 2006, respectively.

In a day like this, it’s better to turn off the monitor. But if we have to work before computer (as most of us do for a living), I found Wang Shi’s blog to be fun. Nice pictures…

Categories
Stocks

Mindray investor day

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on November 9, 2007 by stlplace

No I did not fly to Shenzhen, although I would love to be there. From the news, and the presentation, the developments are very encouraging. Too bad my account ran out of money yesterday, otherwise I was going to add my MR positions amid the across board sale of Chinese stocks.

Some highlights (I think) worth noting:

Mindary product pic

1) Change of products division names
In other words, this means broadening/expansion of products. Change Patient Monitoring Devices to Patient Monitoring & Life Support Devices; Diagnostic Laboratory Instruments to In-Vitro Diagnostic Business; Ultrasound Imaging Systems to Diagnostic Imaging Systems.

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