stlplace

Category: Life

  • Travel, weather and stocks

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    Stocks
    Vanke (00002.SZ) expects a 100% to 150% profit growth in 2007 (vs. 2006). That translated to a 67% to 100% increase of earning per share. Chairman Wang Shi is saying the China real estate industry is still fragmented: Vanke has 1.25% of market share.

    Longtop Financial (LFT), the new IPO, is under pressure today. Bought some more at $27.87. As one would expect, the stock went lower after I bought.

    Weather
    St. Louis is colder and drier than I thought. Not a warm welcome to my wife Ruixian, either ๐Ÿ™‚

    Afraid of all the fall leaves being gone soon, we toured the scenic Missisipi drive from Alton to Graftion yesterday afternoon. There are plenty of people at “loading docks” etc. Back to American way of leisure…

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  • Sweet osmanthus in the air

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    I don’t know if you notice this is ๆก‚่Šฑ sweet osmanthus season again. On my way to work, I can smell it. Such as this one (on Changning Rd. near China Merchants Bank). I liked ๆก‚่Šฑ because in my primary school, we used to have one or two trees, and we can smell it during the fall season. Of course the dried ๆก‚่Šฑ is an important ingredient to make “Jiu Niang Yuan Zi” too.

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  • Xiao Ke and Kiki

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    Xiao Ke is a German guy. His wife Kiki is my wife’s elder sister. They came back home to see the family, friends, and do some sight seeing. I think Xiao Ke is the first German guy I ever talked to. He has very good understanding of Chinese and Germany culture/philosophies.

    I’m curious to learn how he think about the China, the economy development etc. Our conversation started when we saw the Starbucks at the mall. I said China is changing from a tea drinking nation to coffee drinking nation quickly. My point is China is taking (learning) everything from the west, good or bad. Xiao Ke did not agree with me fully. He said he was surprised to see how China blends western things into its own culture or systems. He talked it more from history point of view: after so many years, confucius, traditional holidays such as dragon boat and mid-autumn festival are still here. On the other hand, he thinks German are more “black” or “white”, they either take something or reject it fully. I think it’s a good thing to be precise on engineering: we want to make sure our cars, buildings and airplanes are safe, do we?

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  • Step back

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    The market is full of news these days, and it looks like the drama will be on for a while. But will “tape reading all the time” be helpful for investing? Interestingly I read an abstract of an article on this topic (written by a finance professor at Wash. U.), his conclusion is no. In other words, step back from the market may work out better. But the human nature of “making quick money” can be felt everywhere, especially in China these days. Do we really want to miss the next big thing?

    As I was also reading Buffett’s essays (annual letter to his shareholders), I felt I need to learn systematically about finance. I also wanted to learn more about “how to valuate a business”, which is the key to long term investing.

    Amid all these, I decided to scale back my blogging frequency a bit, from two posts a day to one post every 3, 4 or 7 days. This hopefull will also help relieve the stress of my hand. I wanted to save key strokes and mouse clicking, so that I can continue to work as programmer for the foreseeble future.

    As a side benifit, I may be able to write better quality articles now that I’m scaling back…

  • Be careful won’t be wrong

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    This morning on my way to work, I passed by an ICBC branch, seeing many people on the line, I turned around to take a picture. Then…I got hit by a bicycle. It’s nothing serious, but one won’t feel good about it. My point here is be careful about traffic when in China, the rule here is quite different from the west. It’s my bad that I forgot people ride bikes on the side walk. The other day I saw a bus ignored the red light. I’m not saying the traffic back in St. Louis is perfect, either. I still remember my car got hit by a woman who ignored the red light.

    Another thing we need to pay attention is the escalator: those in the malls or metro stations. Especially with the kids wearing the Crocs. While the crocs are comfortable, it also has the anti-slip feature. It tends to stick on the surface. I remember tripped up myself couple times because of this, while walking in the malls. This could be dangerous for the kids while riding escalator, because the escalator itself is a dangerous thing already. I read some injury reports on this Manila newspaper. I personally think Crocs is not to blame, but parents please be careful with your “crocling kids”.

  • A new beginning

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    Last Friday (August 10) we got married at Shanghai Xuhui District marriage license office.

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    The place we received the certificate and pledge (swear?) our oath.

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  • Whole Food, Wild Oats and Trader Joe’s

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    John Mackey, the founder and CEO of Whole Food Markets (WFMI), allegedly used pen name “RahoDeb” (his wife name is Deborah) publishing his opinion on the stock at Yahoo Message Board. Here is the link to the mesages.

    Of course, the thing really hits news is his comments about competitors, such as Wild Oats and Trader Joe’s. These are now being used by FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to block the attempt take over of Wild Oats. One reason FTC given is this take over will reduce the competition and increase grocery prices for consumers.

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  • My investing journey I: 2002 to 2003

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    I bought my first stock back in 1994 when I worked for a manufacturing company in Shanghai, and I got to buy 250 shares when the company went public. After that between 1996 and 1997 I did some trade in stocks because at that time the Chinese stock market was very hot, if not as hot as the Chinese market a few months ago. But these are mostly speculations, I know the PE ratios, but that’s about all the financial analysis I did (I think many retail investors in China these days are still at that level, to them stock is not too different from a lottery ticket).

    Fast forward to year 2002, I got a little money after I joined the work force. The US stock market was not good. But I did learned more about personal finance, mostly through reading Kiplinger, do my own tax, etc. Kiplinger mentioned this Sharebuilder, a discount broker through which one can buy factional stocks (e.g, 10.5 shares of GE), the idea was a person put a fixed amount of money to buy stocks each month, after a while that amount will grow to some meaningful amount (say, buy a car or something).

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  • Launch Passion Equity

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    Since today is a good day (7-7-07), I want to do something special. I have planned this thing for a while: create an investment partnership or the sorts. Right now I’m the only partner in this venture. But I’m open to new investors with similar investment philosophy.

    Why do I create this Equity partnership?
    Well, investing in stocks is where my passion is. This is very important. Passion is the No. 1 thing to be successful in accomplishing something, in addition to discipline, intelligence, good judgement, hard work, and luck.

    I don’t need to take outside money, because I’m running my own portfolio happily at this time. It’s a big responsibility for me to manage other people’s money. But I like to take the challenge.

    I won’t make all the investment decisions but I would like to be one of the two(?) managing partners. All others are general partners, and they will contribute in two ways: money and advice. All partners will share the profit (or the loss) regardless of being “managing partner” or not, according to the money being pooled in.

    Why do I believe I can do better than the market (e.g. S&P 500), or the mutual fund?
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  • 777 and SOS

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    Tomorrow, July 7, 2007, is a “triple seven” day, the winning number of slot machine. More importantly, some people claims this occurs once a century.

    There will be a lot of people get married this day. Unfortunately the stock market will be closed. I guess you can always go to the gas station to get a lottery ticket.

    Seriously, tomorrow is also “Live Earth” launch day. What is Live Earth? It is an organization to promote the environment protection and awareness of the climate change. There will be live concert on 7 continents: from New York to Shanghai (pearl tower). For those people like me can not go to live concert, we can watch it on TV, online or go to a house party.