stlplaceWent to a newly opened Starbucks at Olive and Price yesterday. This is a very nice place, compared to the one at Olive and Craig (much older). The traffic there was OK consider this was Sunday morning.
A lot things are against Starbucks business lately, according to a guest at CNBC this morning.
(Update June 10) Today when I visited Galleria Mall, I saw Walk ‘N Roll, a knockoff of Heelys. Unlike Crocs, I think knockoff will take a toll at Heelys’ sale.
(Original June 8 ) Here is the S1 prospectus from SEC web site. It appears the selling shareholders (mostly venture capital) filed on June 7 to unload 8 m shares. My suggestion is don’t touch this skating shoes maker because I don’t like its growth prospect. I already sold all shares which I bought during its IPO debut last Dec.
I expect the secondary will be sold very soon, maybe next week?
(Update June 7) As you would have expected, the stock dropped again (about 2.66%) after I bought it yesterday. Call it Major’s rule: stock usually drops after Major buys it.
(Original) I got a little more Starbucks (SBUX) this morning. After I bought it I realized the stock got cheaper today probablly because Panera (PNRA) issued a warning on its Q2. PNRA was down as much as 13%, partially because of the rising price of grains.
On Dec 15, 2006 I bought 46 shares of CROX at $42.40. I bought and sold (traded) more CROX afterwards, but I kept those 46 shares all the time. This morning it reached as high as $85.10.
All right, ever since the Chinese regulators found the silver bullet and pulled the trigger, the Shanghai composite index lost more than 500 points and a lot of people lost money or gave back the gains they already made, some of them are “crying foul” for the goverment action. Well, in stock market, just like in NBA, complaining to the referee usually won’t help. We should focus on what we can do to “stop the bleeding”, or “protect the gains”.
Hit new low in May. Here are the number of IPOs the first half of this year:
Jan: 9
Feb: 11
Mar: 5
Jan to Mar subtotal CNY 67.5 b
We often heard story like that someone made $5,000 in stocks in one month. Cool. But that does not tell the whole story. Why?
There are a few questions I like to ask:
1) How much did he/she make the month before and after (that particular month)? Did he/she make more money (less money) or lose money in other months. We are looking for consistency here. Also in investing we typically measure performance in longer terms, e.g., by year, at least by quarter or 6 months.
2) More importantly, how much money did he/she started with? Is it $5,000 or $100,000. The return will be 100% or 5%, respectively. Big difference.
But I don’t regret it. I noticed J. Crew (JCG) IPO last summer, and started pay attention to its stock. I have been their customer since my friend’s recommendation in early 2006, bought some shirts and pants at discount, been happy with them. But, I did not buy their stock at discount last year (it has been at 25 for a while). Why I didn’t pull the trigger? There were two reasons:
1) I found the ladies’ products made up majority of the sales at J. Crew. I don’t know about ladies’ trend.
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.
First heard this “equity shortage” term from Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC “Mad Money”. I watched his show mostly for entertainment purpose, but I think this term desribes the “supply and demand” of global stock market well. Yesterday the S&P index in the US hit a new high at 1530. Last record was set in dot com era on March 24, 2000. To put it in perspective, on March 20 same year, I got my job offer from my current employer.