Author: stlplace

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Business

Don’t Take Experts Too Seriously

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Because I found those so-called experts are not real “experts”, I am talking about many “experts” appeared on CNBC, the business cable channel. Actually one of my friend who studied in Finance had a worse comment on CNBC (he heard it from his professor). But lately I started to appreciate what he meant. For instance, the wild popular “Mad Money” show done by Jim Cramer, a statistics shows if you act according to his recommending, basically you are stand still because 50% of his recommends turn out to be true. Considering there are people actually act after watching his show, his actual performance is not even 49%. But I do like his straight talk style and some of his analysis though.

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Business

Cingular Back to AT&T

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I don’t know the rationale behind this, but Cingular wireless is going to change back to AT&T name. I am not brand expert, nor marketing major, but this is a dumb move. A little background: when Southwest Bell (SBC) and Bellsouth created this wireless joint venture, they created this cool name “Cingular”, I remember my first wireless carrier was SBC Wireless, which is the ancester of Cingular. For a while I was puzzuled when my cell phone screen changed from “SBC wireless” to “Cingular”, wondering whether my phone is being hacked.

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Fun Stocks

Don’t Laugh at My Heelys

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I mean not just my Heelys shoes, but also the HLYS stocks I bought at the its IPO. I borrowed this title from Rick Munarriz at fool.com, here is his article. In summary, here are what he said:

1) Heelys is going to have a blow out fourth quarter.

2) They may guide a little higher for Q1 2007, and beat it eventually. From my observation some Sports Authority stores are low on inventory. Note Q1 is usually the slowest season for Heelys.

3) Expand into other products, helmet, T-shirts, caps, etc.

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Stocks

Ninth Annual ICR XChange

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I listened to some sessions the Ninth Annual Integrated Corporate Relations (ICR) yesterday and today. This is a series of company presentations to the investing community usually attended by financial analysts. I listened the web cast through this link (they put achive there too). I noticed this event from Yahoo Finance (CROX).

Besides learning more brands (apparel, footwear and restaurant), I also learned more about how business grows.  Most participating companies are young, growing companies. By the way, those kind of investor conference call and company quarterly earning calls are excellent oppertunities to learn what’s going with a company. We can not do “store checking” for every company like I did with Heelys and Crocs 🙂   

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Business

Cool Teen Brands

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(Update 11-29-2024 Black Friday) A few months ago, my 14 year old told me the 4 brands and her feel (sports) about them.

Lululemon – tennis 🎾 || Personally I like its growth (stock: $LULU).
Nike – running 🏃
Aerie – pilates (note Aerie is a spin off brand from the American Eagle brand below)
Atheleta- yoga (note Atheleta is a spin off brand from Gap)

Also, recent shoe (sneakers) brands that teen likes: HOKA and On Cloud. To be precise, I saw older people are increasingly wearing those two brands too: in addition to the traditional brands – Adidas, Ascis, Brooks Running, New Balance, Nike and Saucony. I guess similar can be said about sports apparel in general, e.g., I saw a gentleman who is a bit older than me was wearing this brand provizsports yesterday at the Olivette Turkey Trot.

I am also aware of two luxury brands Alo and Vuori and they have stores in the Plaza Frontenac.

(04/04/2023 | 10:00:00 AM) Piper Sandler Completes 45th Semi-Annual Generation Z Survey of 5,690 U.S. Teens

(Original 2007) Got it from American Eagle ICR Xchange Investors conference call. Note Nike is the No. 1 brand in American teenagers, which made me recall the comment of salesman at Dick’s Sporting Goods “Nike, the best marketing company in the world.”

cool teen brands

Categories
Business

Can We See $2 Gas Coming?

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It looks like it. The unusually warm Winter in the US. The continuing cut of OPEC’s crude production. The change of hands in US congress (oil companies’ friends are no longer in charge). The emerging of alternative energy: solar is reality now, just by looking at the solar Panel manufacturers’ IPOs on the Nasdaq lately. Not surprisingly, some of those are from China.

I am not going to speculating on the oil price for the near term or long term. That’s not my specialty. But on a related issue, I am going to predict consumers are continuing to spend, whether in US or China. They will continue to buy cars, dresses, electronics, music, shoes, and going out for movies, latte and dinners. My problem is trying to figure out which company will get sustainable growth/profit out of this 🙂

Categories
Fun

The iPod Phone Drama Goes On

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Well, just a day after Steve unveiled the iPod phone (so called iPhone by many people, don’t know whether Steve actually used that name). Cisco obviously did not appreciate that its very own iPhone name being used…they filed a lawsuit. As we know, those kinds of lawsuits are about money, I bet there are some happy lawyers in Sillicon Valley today. Another picture from engadget.  

 

Categories
Stocks

Almost Angel

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I heard about the “angel investor” term a while ago, but I have not thought seriously about their profiles, their networth, etc. This is until recently I thought about doing this myself, I mean providing seed money for some Internet startup in China.

I think in general angel investors are rich people 🙂 As a minimum they should come up with 10,000 to 100,000 (USD? CNY?) to get a company started. My favorite “angel investor” story is when the two Google guys got started, one Sunday morning they went to the home of Sun Microsystems cofounder. The Sun guy listened to their pitch for a few minutes, liked the idea, but he needed to go to church. So he gave them a $200,000 check. We all know the rest is the history.

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China Stocks

A Stock A Day

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I was on shopping spree on stocks lately. Since I bought the Panera Bread (PNRA) last Friday, this Monday I bought some Telestone (TSTC), a Chinese wireless equipment maker; on Tuesday I bought some Ninetowns (NINE), a China based software company not new to me because I lost money on it in the past 🙁

These are two speculative plays. Telestone recently moved from Amex to Nasdaq, and it is posed to benifit from the 3G services adoption and Olympics in China. Ninetowns’ software business is stablizing after one year and half’s transition period; it also is building up B2B services through tootoo.com and globalmarkets aquisition.

I only took a small position on these two as they are a bit speculative right now. As you may see from their stock prices (about $9 for TSTC, and about $5 for NINE). I am going to hold them for longer time. I was reading Philip Fisher’s “Uncommon Profits in Common Stocks”, one thing amazed me is Phil will hold a stock as long as its fundamentals are good. I guess great investors like Buffett and Fisher all have great patience 🙂 

Categories
Technology

Apple Raising the Bar

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It’s not the first time Apple jumped into the mobile phone party, they teamed up with Motorola and came up with this RAZR. Obviously Steve Jobs is not satisfied with that, and today at MacWorld show he unveiled the iPod Phone (or iPhone as people call it, although legally Cisco owned that name). If you are really curious, here are some pictures at engadget. It will be interesting to see how this will affect the Palm and Blackberry’s sale.

iPod phone picture