Author: stlplace

Andrew Feinberg, Barron launches newsletter

Post author By stlplace
Post date April 6, 2008
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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

Tags Buffett, Kiplinger, stock-pick-newsletter

401k and Personal Finance

Proud to be a Berkshire Shareholder

Post author By stlplace
Post date April 3, 2008
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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.

Tags berkshire-hathaway, BRK.B, Mindray, MR, Scottrade

gadgets

Why China Mobile CHL is a buy: IV

Post author By stlplace
Post date April 2, 2008
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Two important news about China wireless arena yesterday.

1) China Mobile finally started the long awaited trial of TD-SCDMA 3G network (read Chinese news story 1 , and 2 from XinhuaNet). Some features of 3G include the video conference/phone, TV program, etc.

2) The new (lower) roaming fees takes effect.

I think 2) may have slightly negative effect on CHL’s earning, while 1) is insignificant and we will not know the success of 3G/TD until 2009/10.

China Mobile 3G TD-SCDMA trial
(Picture from XinhuaNet: people are lining up for 3G phones)

Valuation

Tags 3G-trial, China-mobile, China-Mobile-Limited, CHL, TD-SCDMA

401k and Personal Finance

My Q1 2008 grades

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(Update Apr 2) Another news to make myself feel better, Chinese A share mutual funds declined 22% on average (read this Chinese news from Money-Courier). For comparison, Shanghai Composite index dropped about 34%, from 5261.56 to 3472.71 in the period. Note that index is not a good benchmark index because it’s skewed by some big cap stocks such as PetroChina (601857.SS).

(Original Apr 1) I was a decent student in elementary school, but from time to time I did get bad grade in an exam. The tough part for me was getting the report to my mom 🙁

The most miserable quarter
I’m sure lots of money managers will share my “most miserable” comments. My little portfolio shrinked about 25.23% from Dec 31, 2007 to March 31, 2008. Thanks to my bone headed bets on LFT and CROX stocks. For comparison: “In the first quarter of 2008, the Dow fell 7.55% and the S&P 500 index lost 9.92%. The Nasdaq was by far the worst performer among major U.S. equity benchmarks in the first three months of the year, dropping 14.07%.” (source: Business Week). To make myself feel slightly better, note GOOG and AAPL dropped about 33% and 25% in the same time period, respectively.

Lesson learned
1) In early Jan. I told my wife I need to unload LFT and CROX, so that I can sleep well in the night. I finanally was able to pull the trigger on them (LFT in Jan and CROX in Feb). A bit too late (CROX went from 75 to 19 in 3 months). But I’m glad I fufilled my words to my wife on this one (see below what if).

2) Trading cost: 7*45 = 315, not significant, but still sizable. Looked at other discount brokers such as TradeKing, IB but have not decided to switch. I will reduce trading times and increase the size of trading (make more sure bets), to reduce the trading cost.

Good things
Finally I was able to get back to In value I trust. I also got back to more solid stocks such as CHL, RIMM, SYT. And I was able to take some profits when I saw opportunity (don’t want be a pig).

Tags AAPL, CROX, first-quarter-2008, GOOG, LFT, stock-performance

Saint Louis

Cardinals opening day

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Let’s take a break from the bad economy and stock market news, from China to US. Today is MLB opening day, St. Louis Cardinals will face Colorado Rockies at Busch Stadium.

After living in St. Louis for more than 7 years (and in the show me state for more than 10), I started to appreciate the joy, the saddness,…Cardinals brings to the town. I believe St. Louis would not be as good without Cardinals: talking about the sports and the spirit of a city.

Go Cards, Pujos, Carpenter, Wainwright and La Russa…and best wishes to Edmonds, Rolen and Eckstein in the new home!

Tags Cardinals, saint-louis

401k and Personal Finance Life Tips

Gas saving tips

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Finally St. Louis gas price is exceeding $3 a gallon. Today marks the first day my gas bill exceeded $40 ($3.179 * 13.105 gallons = $41.66).

I am not complaining, as I know people around the world are paying a much higher price for gas, or paying a higher percentage of their disposal income for gas. But I still want to do something to contain the gas cost, before sending my pay check directly to the Exxon-Mobile and the likes.

1) In the past, I tried to fill up gas at the proper time: there are two gas stations near my home, whenever I saw one gas station raised the price (the other has not), I will rush to the other one (usually it’s the Shell).

2) Also, I used the gas rebate credit cards, they are Citi Dividend (5% rebate in the past, this has been changed lately); Chase Freedom (3% rebate); and AAA MBNA card (5% rebate subject to the up limit of 2% of the monthly balance).

3) Last week, I tried another approach. I paid pretty dollars for car maitenance: engine tune up (replace spark plug and wires); fuel injection cleaning; replace engine gasket. Hopefully my investment will pay off over time (from saving in gas).

Tags gas-price, gas-saving-tips

China

Hangzhou Bay bridge to open

Post author By stlplace
Post date March 28, 2008
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It’s official, the Hangzhou Bay bridge, which connects Ningbo (my hometown) and Shanghai (to be more precise, connects Ci Xi to Jiang Xing 南起浙江宁波慈溪市，北至浙江嘉兴海盐县), will open on this May, according to Ningbo goverment offical. Chinese news from Xinhuanet here.

Hangzhou bay bridge Ningbo Shanghai
(source: sohu)

At this time this is the longest sea crossing bridge in the world (36 km, or 22.5 miles). A new Hangzhou Bay railway bridge is also under planning (Chinese).

Dream come true

Tags hangzhou-bay-bridge, Ningbo, shanghai

Shanghai Composite

Turning point or new beginning: why the drop?

Post author By stlplace
Post date March 27, 2008
1 Comment on Turning point or new beginning: why the drop?

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The Shanghai composites index hit a new YTD low last night (US time), with the help from PetroChina (PTR, 601857.SS) nearly 9% loss. Note PTR has 20% weight on the Shanghai index. Fundamentally, the Chinese public companies will have tough comparison this year. Last year with the effect of new accounting method (does this sounds familar, hint, Enron) last year, and a bull market, the companies were able to book record profit (unrealized investment gains). This year, with the recent stock market drop, if companies have not ring the register on the stocks, the unrealized investment gain will be unrealzied loss.

Back to Zhu Ping’s 拐点还是新起点. Why the drop?

Tags momentum-investor, shanghai-composite-index, value-investor

gadgets

Why China Mobile CHL is a buy: III

Post author By stlplace
Post date March 26, 2008
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There were some big news in the US wireless arena last week. Verizon and AT&T won the auction of some new wireless spectrum, Google did not win the spectrum (see the details at NYTimes). Do you know how much Verizon paid for the new spectrum? $9.6 billion. Imagine a similar scenario in China, how much does the 3G license cost in China? As far as China Mobile (and China Unicom and Telecom) is concerned, it’s null, zero, no cost.

What? You must think this is crazy. How come the goverment gives away the license for free? Well, the No. 1 reason is the goverment is the biggest shareholder of all those big wireless/telecom companies. If they charge a big fee, essentially they are putting money from left pocket to right pocket. So why bother.

Moat analysis
What does CHL got?

Wang Jian Zhou pic
(CEO Wang Jian Zhou at annual report, from iphonebuzz.com)

1) A top 10 Chinese global brand, which consists of 3 sub brands: GoTone/quan qiu tong (white collars), shen zhou xing (everyone) and dong gan di dai (mobile internet), quote in Chinese:

Tags China-mobile, China-Mobile-Limited, CHL