Author: stlplace

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Investing

CIT group

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(Update 24Apr09 afternoon) Sold my position. Moody just downgraded its debt rating: reminds me of the WaMu debt rating downgrade shortly before its fall.

(Original) Warning: this is a very speculative play. Also don’t confuse this with CitiGroup (NYSE: C). The ticker of CIT group at NYSE is CIT.

CIT group at NYSE pic

(Source: NYSE)

4 Analysts downgraded this stock this morning (source: theflyonwallstreet, also Yahoo Finance).

Wiki entry for CIT group, noticed it was a part of Tyco (a smaller GE if you will) at one time. Chinese news on CIT (about one year old). The company recently coverted to a bank holding company so that it could get fund access to TARP, FDIC, and more importantly bank deposits.

Q1 2009 earning release. Conference call.

Categories
earning

This silly earning thing

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First Quarter earning reports for the stocks I own (as of this writing, it could change without notice). This is mostly for my own benefit, I want to collect them in one place rather than go to different IR web sites. Listening to conference call is a mixed experience, sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s boring. The most interesting part is the Q&A session, where the analysts and management goes back and forth: and I get the most out of things there (most of time).

US Bancorp USB beat slightly
Conference call (audio and slides)

McDonald MCD (barely according to CNBC)
Conferece call (for some reason it’s not working for me).

CNBC report (link).

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Categories
Windows

War against spyware: I

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My old laptop was hosed. Couple weeks ago I noticed something strange going on, particularly sometimes it will pop up IE windows when I have not clicked on anything. The situation got worse, when I tried to do a system restore on XP, reboot, and a “Spyware Protect 2009” program automaticlaly started up. This user interface very much like a Microsoft anti-virus program. Then it says my laptop was infected with all kinds of programs: such as LdPinch key logger blah blah blah.

Hmm, being a software engineer, I know something fishy is going on there. So I stopped the process and googled “Spyware Protect 2009”, and here is some information (one and 411-Spyware.com). Looking through task manager, I found sysguard.exe. Killed the process. Delete the sysguard.exe.

I don’t know how my laptop got infected with sysguard. Restoring XP appears to be the direct cause, but I think another reason could be I was using uusee (a Chinese online TV program), so I went ahead and un-install it too (sorry no bias against my home country, but there are too many spyware/adware going on in some Chinese web sites).

Mission not complete yet

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Technology

A legend is a legend

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(Update) Many people (such as DBANotes) think IBM is the ultimate loser in the Sun/Oracle deal. I think the deal is not necessarily bad news for IBM. Here is my rationale. IBM did not win because:

1) Anti-trust concern. Sun and IBM together will have a very high share of both UNIX server and storage tape markets.

2) Oralce CEO Larry and Sun CEO McNealy are very good friends (source: WSJ).

Negatives for Oracle:

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Categories
401k and Personal Finance video

Is 401k a scam?

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As millions of American workers saw their 401k became 201k since last year, this 401k thing suddenly becomes a hot topic. CBS 60 minutes did an excellent report on this topic.

Watch CBS Videos Online

My thoughts

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Investing

Predictably Irrational author Dan Ariely talk at VA book fair

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Dan Ariely (bio) is an expert in behavioral economics, and his recent book Predictably Irrational is well received. It is also quite relevant amid this financial market (and institutions) meltdown.

10 min audio (with slide show)

Full talk (c-span, about 38 minutes including Q&A)

Book at Amazon

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video

McDonald continues to serve

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CNBC interviewed McDonald CEO Jim Skinner. My wife and I visited McDonald near my home (Creve Coeur, MO), and was very impressed by the setting of the new store (I remember about a year ago I visited it and here are some pictures).

Disclosure:

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IPO

Rosetta Stone, learning foreign language

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First saw Rosetta Stone at the mall couple years ago (the kiosk). More recently saw its Ads on the TV. Today comes a monumental day for the company (bloomberg news, IPOHome, Yahoo Finance), the IPO (as old Warren says IPO stands for its probably overpriced).

Fun and emotion aside, I think this language thing may stick. Before Rosetta Stone, the other public company does language training I know of is New Oriental (NYSE: EDU). New Oriental has harnessed the Chinese market in a very unique way, and it’s now the un-disputed leader in English test training in China. The main reason? Basically without the training from New Oriental, normal Chinese students can not score high in the TOEFL and GRE (notice I said normal, certainly I understand there are some exceptional Chinese students, and I happened to meet a few back in college). At the time I took TOEFL and GRE, New Oriental school has not existed in my city, so I took training from the best alternative: Qianjing college. Anyway, they serve similar purposes.

I have not used Rosetta Stone service yet. Nor do I plan to learn another foreign language (English is hard enough for me). But I know there is huge demand in this area. Chinese (mandarin) and Spanish are two popular ones. As matter of fact, my wife has been teaching madarin to some college students and little kids, and she has been enthusiatically studying Spanish and Cantonese these days. I joked with her why not learn Cantonese while at Hongkong (she studied there for one year).

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Investing

Stock lessons: sold the goose too early

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This is typically what happens, shortly after I sold a stock, it becomes golden goose. This can be best exampified by the US Bank stock (NYSE: USB). I bought some yesterday afternoon shortly before close. But I kind got a buyer remorse, thought my $16.50 price is a bit high. More importantly, I don’t know how financial stocks will go up and down as the earnings started roll out (WFC, GS), and the stock offering of Goldman. I am also unsettled by the charts: by looking at USB/WFC/JPM etc. at stockcharts.com, it appears to me the bank stocks are topping (higher price, lower volume). So I became nervous and sold it this morning, at $16.78. Shortly after that, USB took off, it closed at $17.89. In other words, I missed the potential gain, again 🙁


(Video from Yahoo Tech-ticker)

Traders’ market

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Categories
Master Series

Buffett NRG Energy average cost

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From gurufocus, we can see investor gurus like Buffett’s buy and sell actions, usually 45 after the close of a quarter. NRG Energy is an interesting one, because it’s going to build the first nuclear power plant in the US for 30 years, and the offer Exelon put up last Oct. (0.485 share of Exelon for each share of NRG). More interestingly, Buffett’s Berkshire started buying NRG since last year. Here is the transactions: http://www.gurufocus.com/StockBuy.php?action=buy&GuruName=Warren+Buffett

2Q 08: $42.40 * 3,280,100 = 139,076,240
3Q 08: $35.50 * (5,000,000 – 3,280,100) = 61,056,450
4Q 08: $21.50 * 2,200,000 = 47,300,000

By my calculation average cost Buffett paid for NRG is 247,432,690/7,200,000 = $34.3657

Buying a stock Buffett was buying gives one some comfort because Buffett usually did his homework, and adhere to his rules (business; moat; management; price etc). Buying a stock at discount of the price Buffett paid offers some margin of safety. BTW, NRG closed at $18.33 today, about 50% of the Buffett price 🙂

Downside
The main downside of NRG is more than 50% of shareholders already accepted the tend offer from Exelon (they surrendered). Exelon extends tend offer till June 26. So hold on the stocks, just like the Oralce of Omaha does.