stlplaceSome interesting numbers in 1997 and 2007:
Unlead Gas per gallon: 1997: $0.80 (Rolla, MO), 2007: $2.76 (St. Louis, as of today June 21), about 250% increase.
International call to China per minute: 1997: $0.76(LCI), 2007: $0.08 (AT&T Advantage, quote from ipevo), $0.02 (Skype or phone cards). Or you can use VoIP from iTalkBB $24.99 plan which offers unlimited calls to China and a few other countries. Anyway it’s about 90% drop of price.
Mittal is the largest steel maker in the world. I happened to watch the CNBC interview of its CEO this morning. I checked the chart (Google Finance) of Arcelor Mittal (MT), it went up 2129% in 5 years. I also happened to see the Nokia (NOK), a stock I traded in 2004, it went up 132% in 5 years.
So when I paid attention to all these latest fashion, trends, gadgets and cell phones, the old boring steel stock brought great return for its investors. I need to rethink my investing strategy now 🙂
(Update June 25) Fuwei has a news release regarding this today.
(Update June 19) The stock (FFHL) got a big lift (18%) today. Major’s rule No. 2: stock moves when Major mentions it at stlplace, e.g., EDU (mentioned in June 9) and FFHL. Some speculative Chinese stocks got big move too, e.g. EFUT is up 30% today.
Seriously I am not saying Fuwei is a bad company. Its previous owner got big problems though. Do your own research before jumping in.
(Original June 18) I’ve paid attention to Fuwei Film Holding Limited (FFHL) since its IPO, as you may notice I’ve mentioned it couple times in my blog. Obviously things have take a turn lately, if you checked its stock price. I did not follow all the details until read this Chinese news. Let me summarize it because the aricle is in Chinese and it’s a bit long. In simple words: the owners and founders of Fuwei are suspected in “transfer state owned assets to personal pockets” through a bunch of “financial engineering activities”; they are under “Shuang Gui” (arrest in a better name) right now.
This sounds a little strange: a smaller fish swallowed up a bigger one. Here is some details (Houston Chronicle):
“Finish Line operates 694 Finish Line stores in 47 states, 93 Man Alive stores in 19 states and 15 Paiva stores in 10 states.
Nashville-based Genesco sells shoes, hats and accessories in more than 2,000 retail stores in the United States and Canada under several store names, including Journeys, Johnston & Murphy, Underground Station, Hatworld and Lids.”
I created my aStore and added some books there. You can go there by clicking the “aStore” link at my home page. Those are the books I have read over last few years, and I will recommend to others who have interest in business, management and finance. A little comments on those books (listed in the order of easiness of reading, from easier to more difficult):
One up on wall street(*): Peter Lynch was a legendary fund manager, and his book was both full of humor and wisdom, it’s both fun and easy to read. The book got Chinese version but I don’t know the transaltion quality. As matter of fact, I felt many things just can not be translated. So I strongly recommend reading his English version.
Finding the next Starbucks: Michael Moe is the founder of Think Equity, and he was the analyst who found Starbucks in its hyper growth days (1990s). Michael is good trend reader. But we should learn his thinking instead of just taking his results, e.g., he said Crocs is a fad.
Yesterday they did a presentation at Goldman Sachs 28th Annual conference (no web cast). Today they announced two new products getting FDA approval. The following picture is BC-3200, a hematology analyzer.
Yesterday after I bought air ticket, and refurbished iPod nano, I received an unexpected call from Discover card. It’s from “fraud prevention” department. Very good. This is a kind of customer service phone call that I like to hear. Because credit card threft (and identity threft) is not uncommon these days.
I like discover card also because of its various bonus (5%) cash rebate program. It’s a bit complicated, but essentially they gave out 5% cash back for different things every three months. For instance, when I bought my last air ticket in the Jan., I got 5% cash back (about $50 for a $1090 ticket).
1) Don’t jump into an IPO on its first day. Do some research if you really want to jump.
2) A controlling shareholder is also the CEO: usually not good for small shareholders.
3) One customer (Chinese goverment), one product (custome declaring software), be very worried.
Here is the Yahoo Finance experts’ blogs. Among them I like Ben Stein the best, because of his wit and humor, Laura Rowley and Jeremy Siegel are also my favorites. Laura talked about “happiness and money”, as you may know there is a balance between those two. Her background in theology makes her talk more interesting too. Jeremy is a professor in Finance at Wharton, I read his recent book “The Future for the Investors” 2 years ago. His analysis is good, but I don’t like his conclusion: basically he is saying individual investors have no way to beat the market, so go buy the index fund and settle for the market return (about 10% annually). While I think what he said has some merits, I do believe there are chances for individual investor, if one has the time, disicipline and average IQ.
The split day is June 14, Thursday. It has a nice run since last week. I will wait it calm down a bit before adding my postions. Obviously, I missed the buying opportunity about two weeks ago when there were some insiders sellings. It pulled back to 76~78 at that time. Oh well, no rear mirror view for stocks.
A bit reality check, Crocs 2006 Revenue is 354.7 m; 2007 est. Revenue 675 m, a 90% growth, note the company says sustainable growth rate over next few years is 45%. The market cap as of today is 3.64 b (stock closed at $90.97), so the P/S ratio is roughly 5.39. PE (ttm, trailing twelve month, according to Yahoo Finance) is about 44.77, I think it’s fairly valued at this time.
Also as you may know, President Bush was wearing Crocs. You can see a picture of him wearing Crocs (courtesy of CrocFans).