stlplaceFour years ago, I had the opportunity to witness the Olympics torch relay here in St. Louis. The city was chosen because it hosted the year 1904 Olympics here, the first Olympics in the US.
(The torch bearer was an old Olympian)
Let’s take a break from the bad economy and stock market news, from China to US. Today is MLB opening day, St. Louis Cardinals will face Colorado Rockies at Busch Stadium.
After living in St. Louis for more than 7 years (and in the show me state for more than 10), I started to appreciate the joy, the saddness,…Cardinals brings to the town. I believe St. Louis would not be as good without Cardinals: talking about the sports and the spirit of a city.
Go Cards, Pujos, Carpenter, Wainwright and La Russa…and best wishes to Edmonds, Rolen and Eckstein in the new home!
Stars on Ice
We saw Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo yesterday, very nice. Both the show and the couple. By the way, a little advertisement, my wife had a nice write up for the event.
Like and don’t like about snow/ice storm
Don’t like
1) Clean up my car (I don’t have garage);
2) The normal 15 min commute takes one hour;
3) Almost fall while walking, have to take baby steps sometime;
Tech for Silicon valley and agriculture for St. Louis.
Silicon Valley Stocks
We went to Sillicon valley for the holidays and obviously, stock is one common topic in family reunion and friends gathering. Note stock options makes up a significant portion of employee’s compensations for some of the technology companies there.
I happened to read the San Jose Mercury News Jan 1, in which it has a nice summary of how Silicon valley stocks did in last year. In summary, the big tech (GOOG, AAPL) and IPOs (VMW, NetSuite) lead the Silicon valley stocks to a fairly good performance. Here are two articles I read: tech titan’s year; Valley’s big year for Wall St. debuts.
St. Louis stocks
I tried to look up St. Louis stocks 2007 performance at stltoday, the web site of St. Louis Post Dispatch, but could not find any. So I just list St. Louis companies I know.
I believe Monsanto (MON), one of the largest agriculture company in the world, is the No. 1 performer last year. MON is enjoying the global farm booming, and in a way the oil boom too. By the way, I live right across the street from the company. ADM and Bunge, another two agri play, also did well.
St. Charles based solar play MEMS (WFR) also faired well very amid the all the solar boom. Note WFR is a leader in this area.
Just went back from Chesterfield Mall, saw Heelys at predominant locations at “Finish Line” (the discount sporting shoes store), and TradeHome, a boutique shoes store which also sells Crocs, Keen, Merrel and Teva. The Journeys also kept the Heelys, also I saw they cut the price on one model.
Yes, Heelys (HLYS) is a broken story in terms of stock, because its lower than expected estimated growth and its mis-steps in its secondary offering. Its management expects the growth to be 20% (vs. past year’s couple hundreds). But, it’s not a broken company at least in the near term. I saw kids skating on Heelys from time to time.
Separately, I saw Dillard’s has some Cayman (Beach, the original) Crocs on sales, note the size is not complete. I bought a pair for $13.99.
Last summer I wrote about this. This year’s show starts tonight, June 18 at Forest Park. Hope I can catch more shows this year.
Nice things about the MUNY:
Went to St. Louis Jazz and Heritage Festival 2007 at Shaw Park at Clayton yesterday. The weather did not cooporate, but the music was good. Note St. Louis has a very strong heritage in Jazz and Blues.
People often asked me where in the world is St. Louis, I told them the Missisipi River, Budweiser beer, the McDonald Douglas (no longer a standalone company), etc.
I think A G Edwards could be counted as a St. Louis icon too. But I did not realized it’s more than 100 years old until today it’s being acquired by Wachovia. The rationale for the buy is Wachovia is looking for opportunities in the baby boomers’ wealth management. After this acquisition the combined company, Wachovia Securities, will manage $1.15 trillion, operate 3,350 offices and employ 31,000 people. It will be the No. 2 US retail broker firm. Merril Lynch is still the No. 1.
These days you need some faith to hold those relatively new Chinese IPOs. I only have Mindray (MR) at this time, but I have traded HMIN and EDU before. All three stocks dropped a lot from it highs in a week. I just want to summerize my observation after spending 2 days in Shanghai, this is in no ways a comprehensive study.
Home Inns: it faces more competition. I went to Jinjiang Inn on Sunday with a friend, we need to book a room for another friend. It’s fairly easy. Maybe this is not a busy season. But I remember one or two years ago it’s not easy to book a room one day in advance. Also Marriot (the American hotel giant) bought a Chinese economy hotel chain “Xingyu Star” and renamed it as “Wan Jia Wan Hao”. It plans to open 300 hotels in a few years.
It’s not on the web. But I found some deals at the local stores (Brentwood). Obviously it’s not just the online stores such as Zappos (or Amazon Endless) gives discount for shoes.
For instance this one ASICS GEL Kayano® XII Stability Running Shoe is $89.99 at SA. Amazon asks for $99.99 and Zappos asks for $138.95.