Author: stlplace

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401k and Personal Finance Business

My view on Credit Cards: from both sides

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(Update 23Apr09) It seems Obama administration is going to make credit card more consumer friendly (marketWatch). So are they going to socialize the credit card: I mean, you and me (i.e., honest guys) pay the credit cards on time each month, will bail out the deadbeats, after we bailed out the Wall Street ??? We know the credit card companies (the wall street) are not charities. This thing looks more like dumber and dumber.

(Original) Yesterday I mentioned credit card when talking about recurring revenue. Credit card is the live blood of our consumer society. Like commerical paper for business, we (consumers) use (more precisely borrow from) credit card for our daily purchases. At the end of each billing period, we either pay off the whole balance or pay the minimum payment (not recommended from personal finance perspective, but so many people do this nowadays. The customers who carry balance (and pay >10% interest) also contribute the profit of credit card companies. But it appears now credit card companies started to upset their best customrers, amid the credit crisis.

Business
American Express (NYSE: AXP) and Citibank (NYSE: C) pay customer to go away

JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) charged monthly fee to customers, then gave refund under pressure from NY AG Cuomo (CNN Money story).

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Investing

Google Finance stock screener

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(Update 02-03-2025) Google finance stock screener has been gone for a while. Robinhood App has a screener one may be able to use. I haven’t used their desktop version yet though (it’s called Robinhood Legend, I think).

(Update 20Apr09) Found this trick in google finance (chart), hold on mouse “up” or “down”, the time frame of stock chart extends or contracts.

Stock Screener
Here is an example: market cap $5 b to 25 b; PE ratio 10 to 20; dividend yield 2% to 5%; return on equity 15% to 25% (last 5 years). You can also sort the results by “52 week price change” etc (in ascending or descending order).

Customization: you can add other criteria such as “Return on equity (ave. last 5 years)”. The reason I like return on equity is that it means real return for shareholders. Ideally I am more intereted in the free cash flow yield (definition at investopedia).

Range: Google provides default. You can see the price change for all the stocks: -99.86% to 5,094% (52 weeks). Interesting. I left it here so I can see the range (in other words, I am not filtering out any stocks using this criteria).

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Business

Renewable engery, recurring revenue

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Chinese solar stocks are on the fire these days, mostly due to the Chinese goverment subsidy news (like this one). For me, this solar thing is ONS, not for long term investments at this time. The most worrisome thing for solar, is not the over-supply (competition), is not the volatility of raw material cost (as I understand, the supply polysilicon is way too much down the road), not even the cost of eletricity generated by solar compared to cost of other traditional energy (fossil, and nuclear).

solar panel pic

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Investing

Pfizer Wyeth arbitrage game

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Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) agreed to buy Wyeth (NYSE: WYE) on Jan 26 2009 (forbes). Quote Forbes:

According to the terms of the deal, each outstanding share of Wyeth will be converted into $33.00 in cash and 0.985 of a share of Pfizer stock, valued at$15.57 per share, based on Pfizer’s current price.

Last I checked: $33.00 + $13.60 * 0.985 = $ 46.40 vs. Wyeth current price $42.53.

Hmm, 9% return in how long (one source says the deal could close in Q4 2009).

Potential risk:
0) Pfizer stock drops, because WYE stock is now tied to PFE stock (0.985 correlation);

1) The close could not close by Q4 due to financing or anti-trust issue;

2) Another bidder emerges (whch is a good thing);

Reference: arbitrage explained in Wiki.

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video

Jim Rogers

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Jim Rogers is a fun guy, not the ordinary fun guy, but a millionare investor who used to work with George Soros (made a fortune). These days he is very bullish on China, although I don’t agree with him on a lot of his investment ideas. I liked his light-heartness and his passion for travel. Here is video he took at China Jia Yu Guan (last fortress west side of China Great Wall).

And Zhong Shan Lin (the memorial of Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of modern China). Since this is the memorial day in China, it’s also a fitting moment. The memorial is located in eastern China city of Nanjing (a sister city of St. Louis).

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Travel

From Shanghai Pudong PVG to Hongqiao SHA airport

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Right now the best way is take a shuttle bus (Line No. 1) or a taxi. Allocate at least 1.5 hours. Refer to ShanghaiAirport for updated info.

Route: Airport bus Line No.1 Tel: 8621-68346612

From Pudong PVG Airport To Hongqiao SHA Airport (vice versa)

Operating Hours
PVG
Terminal 1:7:00~23:00 (flight over)
Terminal 2:7:05~23:05(flight over)

SHA
6:00~21:30

Interval (Mins.) 15-25
Fare (RMB) 30
Stops none

In the future (after May1st 2010, according to Wang Jianshuo) there is the Metro 2, which will link those two airports.

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Saint Louis video

Ameren responds to anti-Ameren TV Ads

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I was a bit surprised to see the anti-Ameren (local ulitily company) TV ads (link here), which shows an old person, feeling stressed by the potential 40% rate hike of electricity by Ameren. This thing reminds me of the political Ads during campaign season.

Interestingly enough, Ameren is fighting back with its own Ads.

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Fun

I like ONS, but I don’t like AIDs

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(Update Apr 2). April Fool’s day was yesterday but Financial Fool’s day continues. FASB just lifted the strict mark to marke rule (business week; market watch).

(Original) This is NOT what I am saying, but this is essentially the bankers and their friends in congress are saying these days. Tomorrow FASB will vote on fasb 157 E. Note the (in)famous House Financial Service Committee (headed by Mr. Barney Frank, the same committee grilled Mr. Liddy on AIG bonus) had a hearing on “Mark to Market” accounting rule a few weeks ago. In the hearing some lawmakers pushed for changes.

The fat cats in Wall Street has enjoyed the upside of the “Mark to Market” (M2M) rule in past few years, collecting billions of dollars when the time was good. Now they are saying this M2M rule is unfairly reflecting the value of bad loans, hurting the capital of banks, and thus hurting the economy. Why did not we hear all these arguments when they were collecting all the money? Essentially they are saying they like the excitement of ONS, but they don’t like (getting) AIDs? Why don’t they stay away from ONS at the first place?

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401k and Personal Finance

Q1 2009 Results: 401k and Rollover IRA

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They are all in stock funds.

Old 401k (Hewitt): down 11.8%
Rollover IRA (Vanguard): down 11.78%
New 401k (Vanguard): up 133.97% (this is due to new contribution, I started new 401k in Nov 08, so there is an easy comparison here)

Noticed my portfolio balance in Vanguard is about even compared to the end of 2007, when I started the Rollover IRA. Consider this is after I made signigicant new 401k contribution since Nov 2008. So much for long term investing concept. I need to rethink how to better managing my retirement account.

S&P is down about 11.7% in this quarter.

Categories
Investing

This “Wang Yang Bu Lao thing” on credit rating

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(Update) Big bro started to act now.

(Original) We all know the stock rating game: I mean those “buy”, “hold” and “sell” rating usually issued by sell side (brokeage) analysts. They are mostly not objective, because at the end of the day the dealers want to sell you more stocks, regardless they are good or bad. At the height of this analyst game is Goldman “conviction buy”, my question for them is why there are no “conviction sell”? Presumably, one can use a sell list to short stocks?

Oh well, Michael Lewis, the former Soloman bond salesman, described the analysts in his “Liar’ Poker” very well. So I won’t keep beat on them. My focus on this little article is on the credit rating (bond rating) game. We all know the credit rating agencies (agencies may have mislead some to think they are independent organization, they are really for-profit companies) have been under attack for the debale of housing/mortgage markets because they had been slept in the same bed with the issuers of MBS (mortgage backed securities).

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