Author: stlplace

Categories
Investing IPO

Forgot to buy VMW puts

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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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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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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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Fun

Meg Whitman and eBay

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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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Stocks

Apple earning

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Not so good. iPod growth slowed (finanlly). iPhone can not make up the hole left by iPod. As I read from MarketWatch, while Mac is exploding, but it has one problem: with economy slowing, people won’t blow extra 1000 bucks for Mac (why not just buy a Dell).

I think Steve should do everything to bring iPhone to China Mobile, but he is so stubborn about his 20% to 30% cut…

Interestingly, I thought about it buying Apple puts last Tuesday (see my post China ADR crashed, scroll to short ideas). No, I have not actually done that because I decided not to bet on earnings. I view that as more risker than shorting a stock when the trend is clear (EDU).

MacBook Air

Categories
China Stocks

William Ding Lei

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William Ding Lei is the founder, and Chairman of NetEase. He talked a little on the bubble in the stock markets during an interview lately (link here).

I shared Ding Lei’s insights because he has been through the full cycle of the stock market: right after NetEase (NTES) came to Nasdaq in 2000, the dot com crashed and his company’s stock traded under $1.00 for a few years, during that time he worked hard on the online gaming projects. Eventually the stock bounced back, went up as high as $100 (before split) because he made his company profitable.

股市本来虚高 暴跌回归本位

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Categories
Stocks

Who caused the 911 of Wall Street?

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I waked up at 5:30 this morning, and turned on CNBC. I knew all the markets are down last night, but I am still curious what the US market will look. One of the reporter in Tokyo says all the eyes are on the US Fed (hint a 75 base point cut). I went back to sleep afterwards.

I waked up again at 8:00 AM, I kind felt Mr. Bernanke and the Co. had the emergency meeting and will cut 75 pts.

Yes, it did. But there is one problem, the Dow and Nasdaq futures are still down a lot…

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Categories
Chinese articles

Shui Pi predicted the China drop

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Shui Pi, the editor-in-chief of ChinaTimes, predicted this China drop (or crash) in his paper. Here is the link to his article. Quoted some here:

水皮杂谈：第二次“5·30”的概率有多大

2007年的最后一期水皮杂谈，题目是“何时才能满仓等待暴跌？”，文章缘起和讯的编辑对水皮的采访，其时上证指数在4700点附近，水皮的结论是对于大多数的股票而言，已经错失满仓等待暴跌的机会了。因为绝大多数的股票在11月中旬上证指数单针探底5000点时已经探明了底部，在此后一个月上证指数的反复下探过程中，大多数的股票不但没有随风飘零，反而走上了自己的上升通道。也就是说，“八二”现象其实已经悄悄地在我们身边生成了，最近的统计数据则更能说明问题，沪深两地的上市公司中有60%的股价已经接近6000点时的价位，而深成指和深综指均已接近前期历史高位，中小板指数早就创出新高。

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Categories
China Stocks

Is sky falling in stock markets?

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It looks like it. On Monday Jan 21 we have the biggest drop of global stock markets in recent years (see the quoted news below).

I want to talk a little about the Chinese market in specific. It appears to me two pieces of news helped driving the market down. The huge secondary offering of $22 billion from Ping An Insurance (SHA:601318); the talk of starting stock index future market and a Nasdaq-like Market in China after March 2008, by Mr. Cheng Si Wei, Chairman of Finance Committe of National People Congress. 成思危：创业板和股指期货准备工作基本就绪.

But as individual investors I think we should remain calm even in this crazy market. It may be a good idea to get rid of some bubble-priced stocks because we are not going to see that price for a while. Note bubble is relative the intrinsic value of a company, not compared to the previous high price (e.g, VMW, AAPL, N,…are all risky to me).

Quoted news
AP news: stock markets plunge worldwide.

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Categories
Stocks

What if we are in a bear market: I

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Read this from trader818. While I don’t agree everything here, I think the principle applies. I also want to add one thing: if average down too many times (and never make money), something (the market or the stock) must be wrong. I learned the hard lesson from Longbottom (LFT).

最近有不少朋友问我大势这么差，是不是该逃跑，或者买点put hedge上。

我的观点是，从长期投资角度讲，现在已经出现很多值得关注的股票，该做的不是逃跑 , 而是参与。

熊市里面很难赚钱，特别要防范风险，选股票时候需要注意几个问题

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