Month: March 2008

Categories
401k and Personal Finance Life

Vested in Amerca

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Last Updated on March 19, 2008 by stlplace

Yesterday was a quite amazing day for stock market. The US market (Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq) went up the most in 5 years, after the dear friend of Wall Street (Mr. Ben Bernanke) cut the interest rate by 0.75%. Here are details in the news (Dow 416 points gain, Fed rate cut sends market soaring). This means the interest rate lowered from 5.25% to 2.25% since last Sept. That’s 300 basis points in 6 months!. While I was happy to see my little portfolio went up 4.8% yesterday, I think the US dollar will worth less and less (vs. Yuan), considering the reckless US economy policy and the fundamental problems underlining the economy (high labor cost, addition to consumer spending, etc.).

Fed rate cut 031808
(Source: Kansas City Star)

Green Card
Incidently (remember March 17 is St. Patrick’s day, the green), yesterday I received an email from USCIS telling me that my permanent residency application has been approved (after almost 6 years). I don’t think too much of this green card thing, at least that’s what I felt when I went to work this morning (see I still got to work).

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Categories
gadgets

iPhone deal, iPhone flip rumor

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Last Updated on March 18, 2008 by stlplace

I found AT&T offers iPhone 8GB refurb for $249. Here is the link. As of now the regular iPhone 8GB is $399 at Apple or AT&T store. I think one has to sign up the AT&T data plan to use some of the web features of iPhone. I could be wrong.

Also, I found this iPhone flip version rumor interesting (source: Sina). I understand the US consumers have a special love for flip phones. I personally switched to the SamSung A437 flip phone lately.

iPhone flip rumor

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Categories
Economy

De-leveraging, moral hazard, friends and recession

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Last Updated on March 18, 2008 by stlplace

I heard a lot of buzz words in this Bear Stearns crisis, $100 oil, Spitzer scandal, global housing bust…world. Just list some new words I found interesting:

De-leveraging
This one is easy for me (because I don’t have much to leverage on). I was a little astonished by the leverage ratio of investment banks such as Goldman Sachs (see the GS balance sheet here) and Bear Stears. As of Nov 2007, Bear Stears has (in thousand dollars)

Total Liabilities 383,569,000
Total Stockholder Equity 11,793,000 (Net Tangible Assets $11,793,000)

Debt/Equity ratio is 32.5, in other words, they control $32.5 of asset while they have $1 to back it up. If they lose 3% in their assets (due to investment loss), all their equities are gone. Because Bear is heavily invested in mortgage back securities (MBS) and MBS pretty much went to trash can lately, I think a 3% loss is easy to achieve. (Therefore the bailout and fire sale of Bear in the weekend).

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Categories
Business

Swap Mindray for Syngenta

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Last Updated on March 17, 2008 by stlplace

I sold some Mindray stocks (MR) last Friday and today, and I bought some Syngenta (SYT), the European agriculture company. I think it is a more reasonably valued stock (compared to my across street neighbour Monsanto), in this ag (soft commodity) boom. The thing I want to make sure is it does not bust very soon.

Syngenta field logo

The reasons why I sold Mindray:

1) Before and after it announced the acquisition of DataScope patient monitor business, the stock price dropped quite a bit (note this is quite normal in acquisition);

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Categories
Stocks

Cramer was wrong on BSC last week

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Last Updated on March 17, 2008 by stlplace

As you may know, the Bear Sterns (BSC) was bought by JP Morgan for $2 a share as of this afternoon March 16 US time (Reuter News). And here was Cramer’s take on Bear Sterns on Mad Money just last Tuesday (March 11).

Dear Jim: Should I be worried about Bear Stearns in terms of liquidity and get my money out of there? –Peter

Cramer says: “No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble. If anything, they’re more likely to be taken over. Don’t move your money from Bear.”

Yeah, the Bear IS in trouble and they are taken over, but at $2 (it may go slightly higher if another buyer emerges), it is virtually go under as far as shareholder concerned.

The following is a list of Investment services companies:

Investment services companies pic
(Source:Google Finance, Mar 14, 2008, full size pic is here)

Bottom line: if you have BSC stocks and listened to Cramer’s advice and hold it through last week. I felt very sorry for you 🙁

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Categories
Economy

Sub-prime credit crisis unfold

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Last Updated on March 16, 2008 by stlplace

sub prime loan pic
(source: www.stride.co.uk)

Last Monday was one year anniversary of sub-prime (and subsequent credit crisis), here is an interesting time line I found at BBC. Quote:

8 March (2007)
Biggest US house builder DR Horton warns of huge losses from sub-prime fall-out.

12 March (2007)
Shares in New Century Financial, one of the biggest sub-prime lenders in the US, were suspended amid fears it might be heading for bankruptcy. See the New Century entry at Wiki here.
…
A year later (lots of bad things happened in the past year):
…

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Categories
Life Tips

Green Card DIY

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Last Updated on March 16, 2008 by stlplace

I don’t mean to steal immigration lawyers’ business 🙂

A few years ago my employer sponsored my GC app including attorney services. But that did not extend to the AP and EAD (optional for me). I heard from a friend that he paid $1,000 lawyer fee for the EAD renewal. So I filled the forms and filed for myself.

Last month (mid Feb) as soon as I saw the PD became current, I filed I-485, I-131 (AP) and I-765 (EAD) for my wife (H-4). And we received the all the receipts shortly.

I think for simple cases (like my wife), we can do it ourselves, as long as we know what we are doing. This maybe more effcient than using the company lawyers, because of the time wasted on “back and forth”. On the other hand, I am sure most Chinese immigration lawyers here are professional and effcient.

Categories
China Stocks

Bear, liquidity, soft commodity

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Last Updated on March 20, 2008 by stlplace

Bear Stern (NYSE:BSC) spoiled the market today. There was some confusion about Citic Securities recent agreement. As far as I know, according to Bloomberg, there was a small stock swap deal and potential JV. But lately they are under a talk to revise the deal. So nothing like the China Invest Co. Blackstone IPO fiasco.

Liquidity in my little portfolio
Interestingly, I found when market is in panic selling, big name stocks such as China Mobile (CHL), Research in Motion (RIMM) usually got down, and small name stock such as GSI Technology (GSIT) did not go down too much, sometimes it even went up. How come small stock got the power to fight against the market? Well, the answer lies in liquidity. When the big guys got panic, and decided to sell, they will usually sell the Microsoft, the Google, the Pizer,…because those stocks are traded millions of shares a day, and they could find buyer easily, without too much discount. This is not the case for GSIT, which trades about 50,000 shares a day. It takes a few buyer for my 500 shares.

Soft Commodity

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Categories
Stocks

My accounting homework on MON and SYT

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Last Updated on March 14, 2008 by stlplace

The following was done a while ago. Why I have not followed it in last two years, and missed this great agri boom? Because I followed all the hypes: Home Inns, Heelys and Crocs 🙁

==========
Dec. 14, 2005

Dear Mr. John,
Both Monsanto and Sygentia are leaders in the agriculture business. Their financial fundamentals are solid. Both are profitable and have an R&D expense of about 10% of their annual sales. Since we are long term investors, we will look at the following ratios for year 2004 at first.

PE ratio: Monsanto’s 36.4 is significantly higher than Sygentia’s 6.3, which means the investors are more optimistic about Monsanto’s earning growth. We need to examine the expected growth is organic or will be materialize.

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Categories
China IPO

The economy of China Economy Hotel

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Last Updated on March 14, 2008 by stlplace

In his annual letter to shareholders, Buffett said the “party is over”. He was referring to the insurance business, which is the cornerstone of Berkshire Hathaway.

It appears the party for the economy hotels in China is over too. You can read this Chinese article at Sina if you know Chinese. This is understandable because as the leader of this pack, Home Inns (Rujia, HMIN) got listed in the US in Nov. 2006, lots of money has been poured into this hot sector in China, notably the 7daysInn (fund by warburg pincus), Hanting (found by Home Inns founder Ji Qi, raised $85 million fund last year, about the same size of Home Inns’ IPO proceeds).

Now they are paying the price of over-investment and fierce competition thereafter. Let me quote the Chinese article:

锦江之星的这家店位于吴中路和桂林路口，这里并不是上海人气最高的地段。但在不足4公里长的吴中路周边，却挤下了莫泰、7天连锁酒店、上海优家旅店、上海东湖之旅虹锦酒店等超过8家经济型酒店，其中汉庭竟然在同一区段拥有两家店面！

English translation: JinJiang star hotel is located at intersection of WuZhong Rd. and GuiLin Rd., which is not a hot district in Shanghai. But along this less than 4km WuZhong Rd., there are more than 8 economy hotels including motel168, 7daysInn etc., and HanTing even has two hotels in this district!

Jinjiang Inn at ChangNing Rd.
(JinJiang Inn at Shanghai ChangNing Rd., March 2007, full size pic here.)

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