stlplaceLast Updated on October 8, 2007 by stlplace
From Sina:
Q1: Do you like (agree with) the new policy which raised down-payment for 2nd or 3rd home? (My answer: Yes).
Q2: Do you think this policy can combat the speculation and contain the home price? (My answer: No).
Q3: Will this policy affect your home buying plan? (My answer: No).
Last Updated on September 27, 2007 by stlplace
I have thinking about this for a while. But I was not convinced to buy, until this week our new landlord wanted us to move out sooner than we would like to. Here comes the inconevience of renting. Another reason (make me consider buying) is the rapid rise of home prices lately. You know we all like to buy stuff when it goes up, not when it goes down 🙂
I did a little homework: mostly pay attention to the listings outside broker’s office; talking to brokers or developer sales people. Now I have an idea about the apartments around Zhongshan park. Those are two apartment complex in the walking distance (2 or 3 mins) of Zhongshan park metro station. Not surprisingly the ave. price is more than 20,000 Yuan per square meter. There are not many small units (I mean one bedroom apartment) in those two. A two bedroom apartment usually takes 100 sqr meters, or more than 2 m Yuan. It’s no small amount considering annual salary of 120 k (or 10 k per month) is considered high for white collars here.
Zhongshan Apartment
Last Updated on September 27, 2007 by stlplace
It’s not the last ditch, but the goverment (China bank regulation commision, or CBRC) is raising the down payment for 2nd or 3rd time home buyers. They will need to put down 40% or higher (compared to 30% in the past). Obvioulsy we can understand the good intention of the goverment policy: contain the speculation in the housing martket. More importantly, I believe this move is to help the banks control the risks in the home loans. After all, most banks in China are owned by the goverment; and housing loans made up a large percent of bank lending and bottom line (profit). Nobody wants to see a “US subprime style” crisis in China. But can the housing market really be regulated? Or can this new policy be implemented to all the stake holders’ satisfication?
(The following is some home listings at a broker near Zhongshan Park. Full size pic can be seen here).
Last Updated on September 27, 2007 by stlplace
From the bbs at world famous mit. Thanks to Author: capcase (gotmail). I’m putting my comments at the end.
Here is the original article in Chinese, the original title is “china IPO stocks”. For English, cnanalyst.com has a nice table which tracks Chinese ADRs YTD performance. So check out from there.
下面是一个简单的表格，列出了2006年12月20日至今在美国上市的中国企业的名单和大致情况。更详细的情况无法在这里列出，有兴趣的读者可以查询Bloomberg, Yahoo! Finance和China Analyst,即可得到比较详细的英文资料。
橡果国际(ATV), NYSE上市，融资1.19亿美元，IPO总回报9.5%，主承销商为美林、德意志银行；
Last Updated on October 6, 2007 by stlplace
The Crocs (CROX) stock is on a roll lately, as it’s closing 3rd quarter and holding two investor conference (link to webcast) in NYC and London. I added some more CROX last week when the escalator accidents is on the news. Another reason is I sold WX. I think both CROX and WX are good long term but I want to bet on “more sure” things.
Mindray (MR) has also done well lately. Incidently it’s also holding a conference in the US. At this time the fastest growth will from the US market. Chinese domestic market will also have some growth but the goverment still yet to roll out reforms in the health care (hospital) industry. Notheless I think (for the good or bad) Chinese patients still got to see doctors, so I’m not worried about MR’s prospect in China.
Last Updated on September 25, 2007 by stlplace
Copied from Zhuping’s blog:
一次，诺贝尔经济学获奖者数学家约翰·纳什参加一个数学年会，会间休息的时候，有人就给他出了一道数学题。有甲、乙两人分别从两个地点出发往中间走，这两个地点相距 20公里，甲、乙两人的速度都是每小时10公里。甲还带了一条狗，这条狗的速度是每小时30公里，它先是和甲一起出发向乙走，遇到乙后就折返向甲走，遇到甲后再折返向乙走，如此反复直到甲、乙在中间会合。现在问当甲、乙在中间会和时，狗走了多远。
Two people (guy A and guy B), who are 20 km away from each other, are walking toward each other, at 10 km per hour. There is a dog, which goes at 30 km per hour. She (the dog) started with the guy A first. Because she goes faster than A, so she will meet B on the way. When she meet the B, she will turn around to run toward A, and so on,…until A and B meet. The question is: how much distance did the dog take before A meet B?
Last Updated on September 25, 2007 by stlplace
It’s that season again. I saw people carrying around Moon cake bags, presumtably many got it from Danwei. That’s one good thing working in China, you got a lot freebies during holidays, that’s different from west. Can not imagine that companies in the US will give away Turkey coupon during Thanksgiving.
Anyway I like the holiday logos created by Google, and followed by Baidu. Here they are.
Happy Mid Autumn Festival/Zhong Qiu Kuai Le 🙂
Last Updated on September 24, 2007 by stlplace
Accoring to Seattle PI: “Up to 1.5 million daily giveaways will begin Oct. 2 and run through Nov. 7 at more than 10,000 company-owned and licensed U.S. stores, Starbucks said. When the promotion ends, Starbucks expects to have given away more than 50 million songs.”
During the promotion, Starbucks will pick an artist each day and provide its customers with a complimentary download card that can be redeemed through the end of the year at the iTunes store. Some of the other artists are Joss Stone, Dave Matthews, Bebel Gilberto, Annie Lennox and Keith Urban.
Lombard declined to say how many cards would be available at each Starbucks store, but he said the company would “make sure every store has more than enough cards to provide to customers.”
Last Updated on September 25, 2007 by stlplace
Last Saturday when I was reading the Shanghai Business Review magazine in a Starbucks (Hongqiao Parkson), I was a little surprised to learn there are 570,000 foreign expatraites living or working in Shanghai. Hangzhou, the scenic city near Shanghai, has 8,000.
I remember in year 2003 or so, the ShanghaiExpat web site just got started by a guy. The site was very simple. Four years later, the site has grown up and last weekend there was an “Expat Exhibit” in the Shanghai Exhibit Center (I didn’t go there). Similarly, I was fascinated to read how Craig started NingboGuide.com:
Last Updated on September 22, 2007 by stlplace
Week in review 09/16 to 09/22
0) Sept 22 is “no car day” in many Chinese cities. Individual car owners are encouraged to take public transportation. I saw some volunteers on Zhongshan park metro station.
1) According to China Capital week, 中文难倒高盛, Goldman Sachs senior executive, Malysian Chinese Richard Ong, failed the Chinese test administrated by CSRC. Because of that Mr. Ong can not take the top postion of Goldman China.
2) US federal reserve hikes interest rate by 50 points. Higher than many people expected. The more important question investor should ask: is Mr. Bernanke trying to rescue the market, or the economy?
3) You got the RMB, we got the IPOs. To contain the excessive liquidity in China, the CSRC recently approved the Haigui IPO of 3 big state owned companies: China construction bank, Sheng Hua Coal, and Petro China.
The reason people called it Haigui is, those stocks have been listed in Hongkong Stock Exchange for a while. Now they are returning to the Shanghai A share market, at a much higher price compared to the price listed in HK a few years ago.
