Month: July 2009

Categories
earning

One caution note on dividend paying ADR stocks

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Last Updated on July 20, 2009 by stlplace

Was listening to WealthTrack podcasting in the weekend, and Westwood Holdings CIO Susan Byrne mentioned some European dividend paying stocks (Nestle, Danone, Novartis etc), which reminded me one thing. Not all dividends are equal. As I recall, I bought Sygenta (NYSE: SYN), the Swiss agriculture stock last year, and my broker withhold some of the dividend. Although I did claimed deduction from income in the tax return, I was not happy I did not receive the dividend at first place.

Barron’s had an article on some large European companies earlier this year, and here is the dividend table. Looks quite enticing:

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Categories
gadgets

FStream is very good

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Last Updated on July 24, 2009 by stlplace

I was looking for an iPhone radio stream (particularly wma format because it seems middle kingdom likes this Microsoft audio format), and I found this FStream at iTune store to be good. After I set up the following:

北京人民广播电台首都生活 (Beijing Radio)
mms://alive.bjradio.com.cn/AM603
format: wma
rate: 64 k/sec

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Categories
Investing video

WealthTrack

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Last Updated on July 15, 2009 by stlplace

I found this program when doing research for Huntsman (NYSE:HUN). I found value investor Jean Marie Eveillard has a little of Huntsman stocks at gurufocus. Noticed there are some video clips for Jean Eveillard in this gurufocus web page, including one from YouTube.

So I looked around and found this program.

WealthTrack Podcast
Here is the web site: www.wealthtrack.com

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Categories
Economy

Should CIT Group be saved?

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Last Updated on July 14, 2009 by stlplace

By the time of this writing, CIT Group (NYSE: CIT) fate is still unknown. A while ago (Apr 24 2009) I wrote about CIT Group because I traded it on that day. I felt the situation looked more an more like WaMu as that afternoon the rating agency downgraded the rating of CIT bond to “junk” or “default” (I can not remember exactly).

CIT Group NYSE pic

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Categories
Fun Video

Skating baby ad video

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Last Updated on July 22, 2009 by stlplace

First saw it via Yahoo (actually saw it on TV first). The TV program will mentioned other baby ads: E-Trade and Quizno’s (not in good taste). The following is a complete version of Evian’s skating baby Ad from Youtube.

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Categories
Investing

NRG Energy: a better way to play Buffett?

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Last Updated on July 22, 2009 by stlplace

When I say “play Buffett” I meant people who follows Buffett investing strategy, more specifically people who buy and hold his company Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B) stock. This is not easy as Buffett’s strategy is not clear cut, and his company stock is mostly overpriced in recent years (because of his fame), not to mention doing homework on Berkshire is almost mission impossible (at least I felt I cannot understand his corner stone business: insurance). So here is a better way:

Buying the stocks Buffett bought

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Categories
Technology

Two Logitech mouse: V200 and VX nano

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Last Updated on July 11, 2009 by stlplace

My logitech V200 mouse is more than 3 years old. Recently it acts a bit strange, basically the clicking does not work very well: for instance, when I intended clicking once, it will click twice, vice versa. So I was looking for a replacement for some time. I found the VX Nano is a good one.

IMG_7016
(Left: the new VX Nano; right: the old V200

Price and Review
Bought both from Amazon.

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Categories
Saint Louis

MUNY: Meet Me in St. Louis

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Last Updated on July 12, 2009 by stlplace

We went to MUNY last night, Meeting Me in St. Louis is on.

Meet me in St. Louis pic

It’s 4th season I went to MUNY, I still remember in year 2001/2, I did not even know what MUNY is when a colleague wanted to give away MUNY tickets. Long words short, MUNY is the largest outdoor musical in the US. It’s being shown every summer in the outdoor MUNY theater at beautiful forrest park (history of MUNY). You don’t have to pay to see the show, the last 7 rows of seats are available on “first come, first serve” basis.

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Categories
Technology

The dark side of the technology

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Last Updated on July 9, 2009 by stlplace

A while ago I wrote about Internet Safety.

Last year
MySpace/Facebook, Barack Obama (this is probably the bright side, if you believe Barack is a good guy)

This year
Twitter revolution, Iran;

SMS (text message) + online BBS, Urumqi incident (what I call a terrorist attack/organized killing against innocent civilians);

Cyber attacks, notice the recent news South Korea and US gov web sites got attacked, not to mention the endless email from Nigeria says I will receive $10 million dollars if I can him my bank acct;

and there is this great thing many people love (but don’t want to admit), this porn thing (see WSJ video about software to help a guy get rid of bad habbit).

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Categories
Life

Is western media biased?

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Last Updated on July 19, 2009 by stlplace

Well, yes or no. As with many things in life, there are honest (at least try to be honest) western media outlets, such as NPR and PBS; and there are some biased ones, mostly for profit media, such as CNN, and even WSJ which is a business newspaper. Why is that? The simple reason is the media has to please its audience (in the case of CNN, it’s US and western audience), to get viewership and the advertising dollar (which is not an easy thing esp. in this economy).

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