Month: April 2008

Categories
China

Boycott French products?

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Last Updated on April 22, 2008 by stlplace

There are lots of discussions (e.g., wang jianshuo) about boycotting French companies lately, after the Paris Olympics torch relay incident, and some France politicians unfriendly move. Now the France supermarket giant Carrefour, which has a large presence in China, will be boycotted on May 1, because (arguably) its main shareholder supports free Tibet organization. Baidu dedicated a full page to Carrefour boycott (Chinese).

My 2 cents on France and boycotting:

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Categories
Business

McCafe takes on Starbucks

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Last Updated on April 15, 2008 by stlplace

Last week I had the opportunity to try the latte at a new McDonald restaurant near my home, it was good. The middle size iced carmel latte cost $2.79 ($2.99 after tax), slightly cheaper than Starbucks. One caveats (as I understand), not many McDonald stores offer those espresso at this time, the new ones offering those are called McCafe.

The war on espresso is on.

Categories
IPO

The warning signs of Crocs

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Last Updated on April 15, 2008 by stlplace

Crocs (CROX) lowered its Q1 number yesterday. I sold all my CROX shares a while back after its Q4 earning announcement, because I thought the fundamental is still bad, not to mention the potential cash flow problem I talked earlier.

Since I am talking about the financial media lately, I think one really does not need to know accounting or finance to figure out CROX will fail. Just look at the following two things from media recently.

1) Crocs per capita (a fancy name for the average dollar spending per person), this is shown in its Jan. ICR Xchange conference. My initial thought was it is quote innovative for them to come up with such a cool name. But looking back, isn’t it a typical wall street trick to get people excited? We have heard the Home Inns said “China top 10 hotels has 6% of market share, US top 10 hotels has 60% of market share” back in Oct. 2006. We know what happened to HMIN now.

crocs_per_capita

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Categories
Shanghai Composite

Financial Media: I

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Last Updated on April 14, 2008 by stlplace

With the growth of web and blogging, there are more and more financial resouces we can turn to: we are not limited to the good old newspaper for stock prices, volume anymore. Don’t laugh at me, ten years ago I did precisely that in Shanghai. But the conveniece of data access does not come at no cost. One thing I noticed from my own behavior change is “overflow of mis-information”. Let me explain.

I remember a well known overseas Chinese web site started out with attention getting (not tasteful) news title and porn, things one would not like his/her kids to see. The motivations: attention, advertisment dollar and profit. In this “post newspaper and Yahoo”, “google and youtube are the kings” era, people are living a fast pace society, attention of pentential customers are more and more scare. The news editors/reporters are fighting for this, financial news is no exception.

Moral Responsibilty of news producer
As you may know, Chinese domestic stock market crashed lately. Shanghai composite index went from last Oct. highs of 6,000 to today’s 3,300. I think the media, the so called “experts” (from Jim Rogers to Yang Bai Wan) are also responsible for the bubble and bust in Chinese market, along with the regulatory, the mutual funds, and the naive Shan Hu (individual investors), etc.

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Categories
Shanghai Composite

ICBC released year 2007 results

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Last Updated on May 9, 2008 by stlplace

ICBC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the largest bank in China (and arguably in the world), announced its year 2007 results recently. Here is the webcast (good stuff). And quote the Reuters news: ICBC earned 81.52 billion yuan ($11.56 billion) in net profit in 2007, compared with 49.3 billion yuan in 2006, a 64.9% increase.

Notes from webcast Q&A
1) Money management (fees) will not decrease as A share market goes down. There is potential in corporate customers; new products.

2) Subprime exposure was not significant. ICBC invested much more foreign currencies in US treasuries.

3) Credit risk, non-performing loan. Property dev loan 7%, personal mortgage 15%.

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Categories
Saint Louis

Olympics torch relay at Saint Louis in 2004

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Last Updated on April 14, 2008 by stlplace

Four years ago, I had the opportunity to witness the Olympics torch relay here in St. Louis. The city was chosen because it hosted the year 1904 Olympics here, the first Olympics in the US.

Olympics torch relay Saint Louis 2004
(The torch bearer was an old Olympian)

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Categories
Beijing Olympics

Disturbed by Paris torch incident

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Last Updated on April 20, 2008 by stlplace

  • >(Youtube) How did the Free Tibet protesters assault a DISABLED GIRL.
  • >(Sohu via Youtube) The Girl who protected the Olympic Torch 金晶：捍卫火炬的中国女孩.

    • I was deeply disturbed by the torch incidents on Paris and London. I think the local authority should do a better job to protect the torch carriers.

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    Categories
    Life Stocks

    Bread rice price hike, Memphis tiger’s loss

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    Last Updated on April 8, 2008 by stlplace

    Wheat, Rice
    Couple weeks ago I noticed Panera raised its bagel price from 95 cents to $1.01, because of the sharp rise of wheat price. We all know bread flour is made from wheat. The wheat price has been up 50% in last 6 months, due to draught in key wheat producing country Australia. Interestingly Panera stock (PNRA) went up from last I look. I guess the ability to pass cost to customer is a signal of strength. We will continue to eat bagel for breakfast, and we can get the 6 cents from somewhere else 🙂

    I went to buy rice yesterday and found the price is also up. I heard about the Thailand new policy to control rice export and price hike, so this is not a surprise. I also watched CCTV news that Premier Wen is visting rice producing provinces, to encourage farmers planting more rice.

    Because I am long out of rice business, I have bought some Syngenta (SYT) to hedge the grain price (seriously, I hope to gain from the global ag boom).

    Memphis tiger’s stunning loss
    I was stunned to see Memphis lost the NCAA champaignship game last night. They were up about 10 points with 2 minutes left (story from CBSSports). Then they did something pretty stupid, something paper tiger would do: they pass on the balls to kill the time! One thing analysts liked to talk is “with 10 seonds left, Memphis let Kansas shot a 3 point and tied to overtime”.

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    Categories
    401k and Personal Finance

    Andrew Feinberg, Barron launches newsletter

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    Last Updated on April 6, 2008 by stlplace

    Kiplinger is a personal finance magazine I have since year 2001. In its May 08 issue, I found “Tune out the seers” (Promised Land column) by Andrew Feinberg, in which he is saying everyone (especially experts) likes to predict the market and economy, but we should just ignore them. Or in the case of famous guys like George Soros, we could pay a little attention. But we still need to understand the logic behinds his conclusion, and do not let others opinion change our plan without our own homework. Quote John Kenneth Galbraith: there are two kinds of forecasters. Those who don’t know and those who don’t know that they don’t know. The article is not online yet, but I found Andrew’s another article Let Your Winners Run entertaining. Hope you have not listened him blindly if you bought AAPL shares last year 🙂

    Barrons launches daily stock alert
    I started to subscribe Barrons since this year, and enjoyed it so far. I always think Barrons (along with WSJ), probally is the best business (finance) newspaper in this country. But one thing I also notice is the business of newspaper is deteriating in the US very rapidly, WSJ and Barrons is no exception. Thus the buyout of Dow Jones (parent company of WSJ aand Barrons) by Murdoch last year.

    As a part of rescuce effort, now Barrons is launching Daily Stock Alert. I have not signed up for it, because I think all stock picks newsletters make money by the newsletter subscriptions, not by their own portfolio performance. If a guy (or a lady) is really that good at picking stocks, why not buying those stocks in their portfolio, and make the money from it (which is Mr. Buffett did so successfully in last 50 years).

    Oh, BTW, Mr. Buffett picks stocks by himself, not from Barrons or other newsletters 🙂

    Barrons stock alert pic

    Categories
    401k and Personal Finance

    Proud to be a Berkshire Shareholder

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    Last Updated on May 28, 2009 by stlplace

    My wife used to joked with me: you always tout some stocks when you buy, then after it crashed, you will say it’s a crap (XFML, Heelys, LFT, Crocs).

    I think I won’t say that for Mindray, and hopefully no hard feelings for BRK, either.

    Sold Mindray MR
    I sold my remaining Mindray (MR) shares just now, here are the reasons:

    Mindray was doing OK up to this point. But I think it may have overpaid for the DataScope patient monitoring business. It paid 202 million, while the business has revenue of 162 m last year. The unit was not profitable according to one analyst, which I believe because I also did a little research myself. The cost structure of DataScope is higher than Mindray; the US medical device market is tough and will be tougher in the credit crisis. Note the hospitals usually need to borrow from banks to finance the new medical devices.

    On other hand, at $31.88, the stock is not cheap (PE ttm of about 45). The company expects to grow revenue and earning by 40% this year.

    Bought Berkshire BRK.B
    I bought one share of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) at $4349.89. This is Buffett’s company. If you have read my blog for a while, you know I have great respect for the Oracle of Omaha. Its main business (insurance) will be tough in the near term, but Warren has did some smart acquisitions lately (the Israel company, and a domestic diversified company, I could not remember the names but believe it or not, sometimes those unknown companies made a lot more real money than Crocs)…Although he scaled down the equity investing (relative to the big purchase mentioned above), he has continued to make money in stock market, notably the $3 billion profit from PetroChina last year.

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