There are many activies to celebrate this special occassions. Here is the logo at google.cn.
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Beijing Olympics is one year away
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Author: stlplace
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Heelys went off track
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Heelys reported a decent second quarter, at the same time it warned its second half will be more challenging. “Challenging” is a polite word, “go off track” is more proper in my mind. So I guess I will take my loss tonight when the market opens.
With Heelys report, all my 6 stocks reported earning. Two winners are CROX and MR; two losers are GSIT and HLYS; SBUX and SNCI did ok. I normally don’t bet on earnings these days; the reason I bet on HLYS was I thought the expectation is already low, and “back to school” seems did well. But…the wheels came off.
So, the lesson for me is, don’t bet on earnings. Especially demaged stocks like HLYS and NINE.
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Faked iPod Nano
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I found this knock off iPod Nano at Taobao, Mr. Ma Yun’s company. Note his big baby Alibaba is preparing for the IPO in Hongkong later this year.
It appears to me this “grey market iPod” looks very much like the real one; and it has its own market, because fashion-chasing teenagers in China want the iPod feeling without breaking their wallet. The asking price is 460 Yuan, note the real iPod nano is about 1,800 Yuan.
I know some of you (Apple shareholders) will not feel happy. Now you can understand how I felt when I saw people buying or wearing knockoff Crocs, as I’m a CROX shareholder 🙂
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Who cares Mr. Market the most?
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1) Traders, including the grannies sitting in China stock brokage houses.
2) Hedging fund: people who have short positions, options…all these are closely related to the general market, and can have a wider swing than common stocks.
3) Mutual fund: because they have a large portifolio, they are exposed to the general market condition (weak, strong, swing etc.)
4) Economist and reporters: it’s economist job to predict the economy; and it’s reporters’ job to report the market.
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Mindray reports a solid Q2
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Here are the results. The important thing is they beat the est. and raised the guidance again. I also listened to its conference call, some interesting information:
1) The company plans to increase its international sales headcount to more than 200 people by the end of 2007 and to open offices in Amsterdam, Mexico City, Moscow, Sao Paulo and Toronto.
2) At the end of the second quarter 2007, the company had more than 850 R&D staff and is on track to increase R&D headcount to more than 1,000 employees by the end of 2007.
It appears the international growth is the main theme for the company. The domestic growth is also good, but not as fast as US market.
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The China stock market is breaking new high again, after the May 30 “man made” crash, and amid the “housing and financial crash” in the US. Yesterday I heard from a family member, who was fairly cautious about the stock market, now thinking about put the money back to the market. This is confirmed by the warming up of “new account” opening in Shanghai and Shenzhen. After the raise of stamp tax, the interest rate, and bank reserve rate, the fearless Chinese stock investors (especially institutions) pushed blue chips such as China Merchants Bank, Vanke to their new high.
The million dollar question is: can this rally be sustained? Well, I will let the analysts and experts to comment on this. My job is provide the facts. In the weekend I saw a new newspaper named “Li Cai Zhou Bao“, or “financial weekly”, interestingly it’s being translated to “Smart Money”. Curious about its content, I shelled out 6 Yuan and got a copy. This is a title of No. 1 article “The stock most likely will go up to 100 in no time“. Well, I remember couple weeks ago, Cramer did this “80 to 120” series on his mad money, we all know what happened after his show (hint: Dow crash).
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Shanghai Snapshot
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The pictures are hosted at Yupoo (China), please be patient if you are in the US as I am supporting our domestic brand.
Babi bun, the breakfast place just raise the price because of rising pork cost.
Residential Inn, it looks like the Marriot residential inns in the US, I have not stayed there so I will leave others to comment.
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View from Boeing 777
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Some pictures taken on the airplane. The AA289 (from ORD to PVG) flies through Canada, Arctic ocean, Siberia, Mogolia and China.
Queen island in Canada
Wing
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Shanghai is an expensive city. I’m not talking about the red hot housing market, we all know the housing is getting very expensive here. I was talking about the relative income vs. spending.
Income
Yesterday evening an old friend of mine, who works for a investment research firm, told me a fresh graduate is paid CNY 3,000. This is actully fairly high pay for new college graduate, cosidering financial is a hot area, and the fresh graduate is from Tsinghua/Bei Da (think that as MIT, or Harvard of China), with very good spoken English.
Experienced people are paid more. I learned from anothetr friend who is a HR executive, about 10% of people makes more than CNY 10,000 per month. Note this is also the threshold of income tax.
In the IT arena, I know some senior developer positions at MSFT pays more than 20,000 Yuan per month. I believe other multinational companies should have equivalent pay.
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Starbucks Q2 earing report
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I read its earning report this morning (Shanghai is 12 hrs ahead of US EDT). They reported an inline quarter. In the past that could send the stock tank. Not this time, because the stock has been down 27% since Jan 1. The expectation is already very low. With a PE about 33, and revenue growth of 20%, and a superior brand, I believe its future in the long term.
Let me talk things beyond the earnings. In the Cloud 9 (shopping mall and office building, where I work these days) there are 2 Starbucks stores. Around Zhongshan park I’m aware of 4 stores total.
According to “Shanghai Metro” newspaper yesterday, Coca cola is the No. 1 brand in the world, it brand is est. valued at $65 b (I believe its market cap is more than $100 b). Starbucks is not on the top 10, but could it fetch $ 6.5 b? Note SBUX has a market cap of about $20 b lately.