Author: stlplace

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Stocks

E-File Tax for Free

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From Yahoo, this is the link, by Dory Devlin:

My take on this: if your tax situation is straightford, go ahead and use the free software. But on the other hand, if you buy and sell stocks, have a home business, changed jobs or moved last year,…you will be better off use the paid version. Another catch is the AGI (adjust gross income) requirement (less than $52,000).

(Update 22Feb07) I got my state tax refund today (filed by mail about about 10 days ago). I used Turbo Tax for federal (got 15% off through ADP) and it took about the same time to get refund. Prepare your tax early, even if you need to send in check (you can always hold it by mid April).

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Fun Stocks

Crocs Earning Call

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I listened to Crocs earning call this evening. The numbers look good, it beats the Street expecation as I expected. They also raised Q1 2007 and 2007 full year guidance. Some of the interesting developments:

1) Nascar cross licensing (cross sell). Since they started Disney relationship in summer 2006, they expanded to NFL, NCAA football, NHL (looking for Canada market).

2) International: UK did very well, european is the main growth driver now; build up in Brazil now, expect good growth there (products match Brazilian life style well); China and India (may be significant in 2008). Disney relationship expanded from US to many international markets.

3) New shoes and aquisitions. Less dependent on the Beach and Cayman shoes.

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Fun Stocks

It’s OK to Leave Some Money On the Table

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I am not talking about the tips in the restaurants; I am talking about the stocks going up after we sell them, doesn’t that happen all the time? Just like it goes down after we bought it? My most recent example is New Oriental (EDU, it seems to me the traders did not take too much time off for the Lunar New Year). And it happened to my friends in China too. The friend was very upset when he told me the story. It seems to us sometimes “not making all the money” feels worse than “losing money”. For instance, if a stock falls after we bought it and we sold it because it never went back the level is was, i.e., we were “under water” the whole time, we may not feel that bad. But on the other hand, if it went up big and we missed the potential big profit, we will feel mad at us 🙂

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Categories
Travel

Reserve a Room in Home Inns

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There are two ways to reserve a room in Home Inns (Rujia) Or other China Economy Hotels: by phone (400 820 3333 or 800 820 3333) or use the web (or ask your friend as a 3rd way). For Home Inns, my experience is reserve 2 weeks in advance for some of the “hot” locations such as Xu Jia Hui or Century Park in Shanghai. Unfortunately the reservation page is only in Chinese, but I think they have English speaking representatives on the phone. Alternatively you can use Ctrip and search for Home Inns. I used to get RMB 10 off this way.

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Stocks

Crocs Knockoffs

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There are lots of Crocs Knockoffs on the market these days. I found some on Payless and Target. The price is about half as the real ones. Don’t know the quality and the customer wearing experience though.

Also, I found this CrocFan blog. I added the link under “Blogroll” at the right. And this article on seekingalpha is very bullish for the long term.

Crocs (CROX) is going to report Q4 and full year 2006 results tomorrow. The stock already  moved up last Friday, in anticipation of a blow out quarter and a positive 2007 guidance.

Disclosure: I am long on CROX.    

Categories
Stocks

Sell Used Books on Half and Amazon

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I used to sell used books, mostly textbooks on Half.com, an eBay subsidirary. Half does a decent job for me and their commission is reasonable (about 10%?). But I have not enjoyed much success selling books there lately. It could be one of the two reasons: My books are unpopular; Half.com is not popular anymore.

I started to use Amazon Markplace instead. Its commisson is much higher, theSunsFinancialDiary says its commisson for book is as high as 18%. But I am OK with it as long as it sells. My rationale behind this is: book does not increase value as time goes, as matter of fact a textbook loses most of its value when new edition come out; if I don’t read the book for a year, I probablly won’t read it at all, so why not convert that into cash? Same thing can be said for some unused household items.  

On business side, Amazon increasingly looks like a mall (like eBay), instead of a store (like Wal-Mart). Smart move I think.

Categories
China

Happy New Year

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The Chinese version, the year of Pig (roar, whatever you want to call it). I am using Keso’s new year card because I can not create a card as good as his 🙂

happy new year pic

Image created by Keso.

Categories
Windows

Vista Got a Reality Check

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When Steve (Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft) speaks, Wall Streets listens. Yesterday in the MicroSoft analyst day Steve tried to put a more realistic picture on the Vista sales. Basically he says that the Vista sales won’t be as good as analysts thought. With his words the stock MSFT lost 2.4% today.

When did Steve start soft spoken? I remember years ago, I attended a Microsoft technical presentation by Steve. I can see the energy and passion from his talk. He even put up his email address steve at microsoft dot com for the audience who are not satisfied with Microsoft’s customer serivce. We all know the mail probablly won’t get to his desk. But Steve is the Sales person and provides energy for the Microsoft, just like Bill Gates is the heart and soul of Mr. Softee. I also remember when I visited Microsoft campus in Redmond, only Bill and Steve got designated parking spots (side by side).

Now with Bill announced the retirement in two years, and Steve started soft spoken, the software world has really become soft.   

Categories
Stocks

Be Open Minded

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I think one of the most important take away from Ken Fisher’s book is “be open minded”. This is easily said than done. Because our brain is not trained that way. For instance, we usually felt pretty bad when we have to cut a loss after buying a stock, even if the company’s fundamental is deteriorating. Because we think if we don’t sell, it’s not an actual loss. On the other hand, we usually feel equally bad about ourselves when we saw the stock went up after we sold it, even if we already make profit from the sale. It seems to me we just can not tolerate “we lose money”, “we leave some money on the table”, “somebody else make more money than us”.

This is very similar to things in life, suppose you bought a Toyota Camry at a dealer for 20,000, and your buddy Joe bought the exact same car at exact same dealer for 19,500. Are you happy or not? Don’t tell me your are happy. How about I tell you I bought it the same car for 20,500 last month? Do you feel better?  

Sometimes, we should adjust our mindset to “making money together”, or “as long as we make/save money, we are happy”.