stlplaceObviously most of them don’t know what they are talking about, accoring to Free Money Finance.
This is actually confirmed by Karen Blumenthal, the author of Grande Expectation: a year in the life of Starbucks stock. She said (before wrote the book), she has been financial journalist for more than 20 years, but she did not know what is stock split, what is earning, what is shareholder meeting etc.
I read half of the book, and I’ve learned quite a bit from Karen’s learning experience 🙂
I wrote about the bubble of PetroChina during its Shanghai IPO last Nov. I understand lots of people in China (San Hu 散户) are under water on this one. Obviously they bought into this “the most profitable company in Asia” slogan touted by some institutions that wanted to dump their shares during IPO.
Here I list some of the A share and H share price, and their bubble factor.
PetroChina: 601857.SS: CNY 26.39; 0857.HK HKD 12.27 (still lot of bubble !)
On other hand, insurance companies and banks are more rationally valued.
US Tax Rebate
The US congress and president are on the same page for one thing: help every American buy an iPod (a.k.a. the tax rebate thing). For me while I am glad to get some of my tax dollor back (rather than been blew away in Iraq, or paying a Carribean trip for some congress members…). I think the mantra of quick fix is so prevelant in this country. Sometimes yours truely also fall into this. For instance:
*Got a headache? Take an Tylenol.
*Need some stimulus for work? Got a coffee. I did this every morning.
I started pay attention to the mobile phone and service providers lately. In fact I bought some China Mobile (CHL) shares about 2 weeks ago (bought it a bit early again 🙂
Nokia: the balance
Nokia is the No. 1 brand in China as shown in baidu Shouji (cell phone) report. One thing I noticed during my last visit to Shanghai is Nokia set up a service center near Zhongshan park. Being in Midwest USA, I have not seen things like that and was a bit surprised. Why Nokia pay the extra attention to the customer services, now that they are already No. 1? One reason, I can think of, is they want to make sure their customers can get better services from authorized places, rather than going to those blackmarket and get their phones fixed.
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
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…”
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
Why the stock is so cheap now, I mean compared to high flying couple months ago (last Oct.)?