Year: 2008

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Business Stocks

My take on MSFT bid for YHOO

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Last Updated on February 5, 2008 by stlplace

Ballmer has been chasing Jerry Yang for a year, and today he ran out of patience. Interestingly enough, I learned it from CNBC first time (around 5:30 AM central time). Note, last time I watched early CNBC, it was Jan 22 global crash…so the lesson for me don’t get up too early 🙂

The desperation of Microsoft
After all these efforts, MSN search, MSN live space, blog, MSFT is still playing catch up with GOOG. Since it can not afford to buy GOOG, it is determined to get the No. 2 guy in web search, by paying more than 50% premium over yesterday’s YHOO closing price.

How Yahoo got here

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China Stocks

Yucheng Tech’s POS revenue

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Last Updated on February 1, 2008 by stlplace

I am always interested in recurring revenue business, debit/credit card transaction fee is one. Yucheng Tech (YTEC), the smaller rival of Longtop (LFT), is entering POS business this year. According to my friend Nawar Alsaadi’s analysis (quoted below):

“POS Revenue projections

The company mentioned in an investor presentation in February 2007 that the average business processed on a POS machine in China is 200,000 USD…Assuming an average transaction cost of 1.5% charged by the bank, the average revenue per machine will be $3000, and if we assume that Yucheng is awarded a 3rd of the transaction cost, this would net the company $1000 in transaction revenue per year. Thus, based on the company’s expected rate of merchant sign up, the company could generate as much as $50 million dollar in recurring transaction revenue by the end of 2009 as they sign up over 50000 merchants on their network…”

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Stocks

I am not a believer

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Last Updated on January 31, 2008 by stlplace

of this market. First is this Amazon bouncing back thing. Then is the whole market went up big, on the last day of the month. My initial sense is another windows dressing like it did on Dec 31. Note for mutual fund, hedge fund,…they all have monthly performance to meet. So take this last opportunity to pump up the stock, and make them look good.

For me, I started a kind of new strategy, I called it “swing”. I bought back some Mindray (MR) which I sold last week, because I had a limited GTC order of $32.98 in my account. This afternoon I sold some Crocs (CROX) when I saw it tried to break $35. And I set up a limited buy order of $32.50 following the sale.

By the way, Crocs just started the SoleUnited(tm) program, which will recycle used Crocs and donate new Crocs to the needy in Africa.

crocs pic

My point is to lower the cost of the stocks I hold. Because I don’t know which point is too high, which point is too low, why don’t take advantage of this market and swing it? I yet to do it for China Mobile, I’m under water on that one now.

Categories
China IPO

Earning quality of Chinese IPOs

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Last Updated on February 4, 2008 by stlplace

What is earning quality?
As a new investor, I used to look at earning of a company heavily. I think earning is also the driver of a stock price in the wall street. If a company issues earning report which beats the street, and offers upbeat outlook for next quarter (or next year), the street will bid up the stock, vice versa. But there is two problems when we solely focus on earnings. For one, growth company, especially IPOs like Google and Salesforce in 2004, and Baidu in 2005 may not be profitable. Or if they are profitable, they don’t make too much monney thus its PE ratio is usually high.

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Categories
Investing

I bought AMZN puts

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Last Updated on May 28, 2009 by stlplace

This is my very first option buy. After I “buy to open” on this $65 put, I don’t know how to realize the gain, if any. So I called the broker and asked for help online, both came back with answer “sell to close”. That made me more re-assured. The option terminology can make one head spin (I am sure my wife is in that camp), here is some introductions on investopedia.

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Categories
Shanghai Composite

Some Chinese stocks look cheap

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Last Updated on February 24, 2008 by stlplace

(Jan 31) Read this piece from Shui Pi, a reknown Chinese stock columnist. Quote a paragraph here:
统计表明，2007年中国资本市场融资再融资的规模近8000亿，而印花税为2005亿，两者相加近10000亿，相当于流动市值的十分之一。这笔钱是从市场中拿走的，基本上不可再生。如果2008年的主板融资规模维持不变，那么再加预期中的创业板的融资规模和大非解禁的资金数量，增量资金的需求量就是一个天文数字。2008年的股市有那么乐观吗？He is saying, the transaction cost plus the new IPO last year totaled RMB 1 trillion, which is about 10% of the total market float.

(Original) After recent brutal selling of Chinese domestic market, it appears some “blue chip” stocks are fairly cheap. For instance, 600030, Citic Securities (CS), the No.1 broker (and No. 2 investment banker) in China, traded at around CNY 67.00, considering its 2007 earning of CNY 4.00 (up 400% from last year CNY 0.80), the PE ratio is about 17, not that far compared to Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), which has a PE about 10.

Citic 600030 pic

Why the stock is so cheap now, I mean compared to high flying couple months ago (last Oct.)?

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Categories
Investing IPO

Forgot to buy VMW puts

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Last Updated on May 28, 2009 by stlplace

I thought about it early Jan. after reading from San Jose Mercury News that VMW is the No. 4 software company, in terms of market capital (about $30 b as of yesterday). But I put down the earning date (Jan 28) on my Google Calendar (not Yahoo), and it did not send out reminder email as Yahoo does. So I missed buying the puts before earning. Interestingly, here is today’s price change of the puts options for VMW (expires Feb):

$60: $0.85 => $7.30 (up $6.45, or 759%)
$65: $1.40 => $11.00 (up $9.60, or 686%)
$70: $2.65 => $15.80 (up $13.15, or 496%)
$75: $4.30 => $20.60 (up $16.30, or 379%)

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Categories
China

Snow, going home

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Last Updated on January 28, 2008 by stlplace

I heard about the snow storm in China, and it hurt the “going home crowd” in terms of traffic. The situtation seems much more severe than I thought, from read the blog post from DBANotes and Wang Jianshuo.

In recently days the Chinese stock market has dropped a lot too. Similar to the temporature. But I think this “going home for new year” is a much urgent and important, for Chinese people. So hopefully the weather can turn around in next few days.

Categories
Business China

Wang Shi spoke about housing price

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Last Updated on January 25, 2008 by stlplace

Q&A about housing price in China, by Vanke (000002.SZ) Chairman Wang Shi. He wrote those Q&A in his own blog.

I put it together here because it’s a bit hard to read 7 articles separately. I left out couple tables because it’s hard to paste.

I’m interested in the Chinese housing for two reasons:
1) My wife and I are thinking about work and live in China in the future.
2) Like the Chinese stock market, the China housing market is also very interesting. I think there is a lot to learn from the leader like Vanke (how they got here, which direction are they going), either from business or social point of the view.

Q7 问：高档住宅供应少，调整的可能性不高，不是吗？
答：就本次调整而言，金融环境的变化、市场信心的起伏具有统一性，对各个细分市场都会有影响。但各个城市的各个细分市场发展阶段和供求情况有所差异，不可一概而论。一般而言，普通住宅主要是满足中等收入家庭的自住需要，这部分住房需求比较稳固，基数也比较大，我们并不认为这个市场面临较大的价格下滑风险。高档住宅供应少，早已在大家的普遍预期之内，其绝对价格已经包含了这一因素。在高档住宅供应比例保持稳定的情况下，过快的价格涨幅同样会蕴含风险。

Q6 问：工厂化生产的住宅更贵，性价比并不高，您怎么看？

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Categories
Fun

Meg Whitman and eBay

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Last Updated on January 31, 2008 by stlplace

eBay headquarter Milpitas

(eBay headquater, Sillicon Vally, 2008, copyright@Shanzi)

Who is Meg Whittman? She is the CEO of eBay, and has been in that position for almost ten years, and she is leaving the job on March 31. I don’t personally know her (my friend Wang Jianshuo may have seen her). But from the CNBC show “eBay effect”, I got to know how Pierre Omidyar started eBay from a weekend project to a small online aution site; and Meg and her team transfered it into a global e-commerce power house.

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