Category: Fun

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Fun

Week in review 07-15 to 07-21

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1) StrengthTrader listed the greatest investors of all time (in Chinese). Among them I am familar with Buffett, Fisher and Lynch. I think Bill Miller is the Peter Lynch in current Mutual Fund world.

2) Alibaba is hiring, they are adding 2,000 people by the end of 2007. Meanwhile, Ali’s little bro Ninetowns is shrinking, they are laying off people after recent acquisition.

3) Save $10 off Crocs through CrocFans.com.

4) Investor Trip Starbucks experience. My comment: it’s about experience, not just about coffee (i.e., coffee buyers at McDonald and Dunkin Donuts are different groups).

5) Sun’s Financial Diary’s “Pay ourselves first”. I remember seeing one of the guest on CNBC “Millionare Inside” said similar things. Well, Sun has made significant progress on this aspect too. Very good job.

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Fun Stocks

IS Dow 14000 relevant?

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Yesterday Dow Industrial closed above 14,000 the first time in history. Many people, bulls, bears, analysts, CEOs, ordinary workers,…all get excited about this. Many US workers have 401k plan, and I bet some of that is invested stocks (indirectly through Mutual Fund).

But Dow Industrial is NOT a good indicator of the overall stock market. I read it first in Ken Fisher’s latest book “The Only Three questions that count“, this was also confirmed by Mark Faber (CNBC) and trader Mike. Here are the reasons:

1) The 30 stocks of Dow Industrial made up a tiny fraction of overall US stock market. It does contain stocks from different industries, but it’s not as diversified as S&P 500.

Continue reading “IS Dow 14000 relevant?”
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Fun Stocks

Some interesting numbers

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Heelys sold 5.1 million pairs of its walk/skate shoes in the US during 2006. Note in the US there are about 36 million kids between age of 6 to 14, Heelys’ core customer. In other words, every one out of 7 kids in the US got a pair of Heelys, which sells from $49.99. The question for Heelys is: how far can this go? Can they sell to the other 6 kids? Or can they make the existing customers come back?

As of last quarter, Home Inns (China) has 145 hotels in operation, with average 120 rooms per hotel (total about 18,000 rooms). Home Inns got about 268,000 members, which account for more than 40% of its sales (hotel stay). To make it simple, about 7,200 (= 18,000 * 40%) is reserved for the members. A quarter has 90 days, so there is 7,200 * 90 = 648,000 room nights. So on average each member stayed 2.5 (= 648,000/268,000) nights in Home Inns last quarter.

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China Fun Stocks

I want to be a translator

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Pacific Epoch is a boutique investment research firm based in Hongkong (and Shanghai?). I read its China financial news from time to time, and liked its content.

It also provide services and reports to institutional investors. This is the price tag for translating a Chinese article, $5000 (to see a bigger pic, click below).

pEpoch

Man, I want to be that lucky translator 🙂

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Fun

Heelys: get ready for school season

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It appears Heelys is well prepared to the new school season. The other day I saw FinishLine has put the Heelys by the front entrance. Today I saw Sports Authority, and Dick’s Sporting Goods have new Heelys on display.

Heelys has two seasons: the X’mas (winter) and “back to school” (summer). It will be interesting to see how strong its Q2 will be. Because those shoes in the stores now are supplied by Heelys between May to June, I think.

I don’t have any postions on Heelys, as I am looking to buy more CROX on the dip. But it will be fun to watch Heelys Q2 conference call.

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Fun Stocks

Sonic Innovations SNCI

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Bought a little SNCI today. It’s a company makes hearing aids. I read it from Kiplinger’s Personal Finance August Issue in the weekend. Did a little research including reading its annual report. This is my speculative play, I put my bet on it because I think some of the positives include:

ion hearing aid pic

1) The company sold its unprofitable unit (Tympany) recently. Meanwhile, it’s trying to expand distribution and retail channel.

2) US baby boomers (people born from 1946 to 1964) are near retiring age. As we know, older people are big customers of hearing aids.

3) There are lots of consolidations in this industry lately.

I don’t take this is a China play, although on my flight from PVG to ORD in the May, I met an engineer who works for an OEM supplier for hearing aids (in Suzhou). It seems hearing aids market is at infancy stage in China.

I also sold the NINE (Ninetowns) today: took my second loss this year, the first is XFML.

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Fun Stocks

Week in Review 07-01 to 07-07

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1) PTC woes: last week Goldman Sachs, the No. 1 broker in the US (and world), upgraded PTC (a PLM software vendor) to “buy”, and raised its target from $22 to $24. On July 5, PTC says it’s going to miss the 3rd revenue estimates. I guess the GS analyst would be pretty upset by PTC now.

2) Samsonite being sold again: you may have seen its bags (laptop bag, luggage bag for air flight) in many palces. According to bloomberg, Samsonite found its 5th owner in 21 years. If you look at its 10 year chart, the stock lost 96.57% of its value in 10 years. For comparison, Coach (COH) was up 1853% in last 7 years. One thing I am aware: Coach’s bag is usually more expensive than Samsonite’s.

samsonite bags

3) eLong no longer offer “vacation package”: according to PcPop, eLong (Nasdaq: LONG) pulled out of this market amid competition from Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP). I checked out eLong tours page, it appears they still have it for now.

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Fun

Crocs 2.0

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The following is a promotional video for Crocs @ YouTube (the video is family and office friendly).

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Fun

Bad experience, Good experience

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I don’t remember where I read this, but it says “losing 10% in a stock will make one feel 3 times worse than making 10% in a stock”.

I think same thing can be said for the recent iPhone activation fiasco (story 1, story 2). I am sure there are a lot more happy iPhone users than a few unlucky (and unhappy) users. Because at the end of the day, bad news spread much faster than good ones.

Interestingly, the software company Synchronoss Technologies (SNCR), who supplied the software and technology for iPhone order processing and activation, did very well in terms of stock. It has a PE (ttm) of 80, and $1 b market map with $78.1 M sales (ttm). Are we talking about another Baidu in the making 🙂

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Fun

iPhone first impression

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I tried the real iPhone this afternoon at West County Apple Store. Obviously the store is more crowded because of all the iPhone craziness. I played the “photo”, and “phone” functions, the Youtube and iPod seemed not working very well.

To use the phone to call somebody, I need to hit the only “home” button, touch the “phone” icon, then get the keypad on touch screen. Yes, I dialed my own cell phone. It worked. Interestingly, I found that demo phone’s area code is 408, the area code of San Jose 🙂

Keso had a good comment about Steve’s “iPhone stategy”, he said amid all the competitions (other cell phone makers add MP3 player to phones), the best defense is offense. I think Steve at least won the “most hype” award for this product launch 🙂