Category: Stocks

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Stocks

Ken Fisher’s New Book

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I ordered Ken’s new book The Only Three Questions That Count: Investing by Knowing What Others Don’t from Amazon last week, after reading the review from Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. The three questions are:

What do you think you know that you don’t know? What can you know that others can’t know? And, in a bow to the relatively new field of behavioral finance, what is your brain doing to trip you up?

I am at question 2 now. Interesting reading so far, though I would argue some of the thoughts are not new. As I read Phil Fisher, Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett’s. One take away is we should “Think outside of the box”. I think this is not limited to investing.  

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China Stocks

Motel 168 IPO

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From Reuters:

“China’s Motel168, one of the country’s three biggest budget hotel chains, plans to raise about $100 million through an initial public offering on Nasdaq, sources familiar with the plan said on Wednesday.

Motel168, controlled by privately run Shanghai hotel and restaurant manager Merrylin Holdings Ltd., has hired Wall Street investment bank Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile , Research) to advise it on the IPO, planned for the third quarter of this year, the sources said.

Morgan Stanley is also a major shareholder in Motel168 after an investment arm of the bank paid $20 million for a 20 percent stake in late 2005, the sources said.

“Motel168 is hungry for capital now as it has to compete with Home Inns, Jinjiang Inn and other rivals for aggressive land purchases to build more hotels,” said one Shanghai-based source close to Motel168.

“If you don’t speed up, then you lose market share and soon you will be completely out of the race,” said the source, who declined to be identified before an official announcement.”

Wang Jianshuo has a good review about motel 168 in his blog.

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Business Stocks

Stocks for the V-Day

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Blue Nile, a leading diamond ring online retailer. I vaguely remember one of my friends bought the wedding ring from them a while ago (before the company went public in 2004). The company has an interesting story: the founder went to a tradtional jewery store to buy the ring for his financee, he felt he was not treated well by the associates. So he did some research and started his own venture.

The Knot, I heard this name from Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC’s “Mad Money”. One of the founders by a Chinese American (husband). He started the business with his wife. The reason they started is when they were gettting married, they found the whole thing is just too overwelming. So they started this web site to help people “to be married”.

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China Stocks

Olympics Effect on Chinese Companies

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I listened to the conference call of Sohu and Ctrip lately. Not surprisingly, both companies mentioned the positive effect of 2008 Beijing Olympics. Sohu is the Internet content service sponsor, and Ctrip should enjoy the booming of China travel industry before Olympics. But I think this Olympics effect is already priced in the stocks, and to make things worrysome, the effect may not turn out as big as people thought. The SOHU and CTRP stocks got punished partly because of this “irrational exuberance”.

On the other hand, Chinese economy is still in fast growth mode and I am bullish on some of the companies whose growth does not solely depend on Olympics. Or at least their PR person does not mention Olympics all the time 🙂 

2008 olympics pic

Categories
Stocks

Gateway Computer

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(Update 14Feb07) SeekingAlpha has a consumer survey on Dell, HP and Gateway.  

Gateway computer? What’s that? We all know Dell, HP, IBM or Lenovo thinkpad, but not Gateway. Well, I remember Gateway computer because around 1997 and 1998, the PCs in my school are all Gateway branded. Gateway is a PC maker started in Iowa farms in 1985 and got big in 90s. Its consumer PC and laptop are sold in Best Buy and Circuity City nowadays. The company did not do well in recent years because of its own mistakes and the intense competition of PC industry. Now with the release of Windows Vista, it get a chance to turn around. I am summerizing some of the plus for Gateway:

1) It has more products for consumers (than business). The expectation is consumer will adopt Vista faster than the Business.

2) In last Friday’s Q4 result it announced additional cost cutting measures (bad for employees), saving additional $25 m. Good for investors.

3) Last but not least, it did pretty bad lately. I am not sure if it hit bottom yet but its 06 Revenue only slightly exceeded 05. And its Q4 06 revenue is light compared to same Q 05. At this moment, any positive will be good news.

Categories
China Stocks

The Trend of World Assets

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This is an interesting statistics of the world assets by geography, courtesy of My Money Blog. I remember from Jeremy Siegal’s recent book “The Future for Investors”, one trend is the emerging middle class in developing countries (Brazil, China, India etc.) are going to buy assets from the “baby boomers” in the developed economies. In other words, maybe 20 years from now, 5% of Microsoft will be owned by Chinese and Indians. This also reminded me one more number, the saving rate in China is 50%, and the US saving rate last year is -2%. Note the interest rate in China is quite low, and investment options are not plenty. The Chinese domestic stock market is taking off lately, but I think many people will buy foreign equities if the Yuan (RMB) become a hard currency.

This is even more interesting considering many foreign funds are buying Chinese stocks lately.

Categories
Business Stocks

Dancing with Wall Street

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There are many benifits for a company to go public, otherwise why so many Chinese companies came to the Wall Street in recent years. But on the other hand, if a company came to public just for the sake of “listed in NYSE or Nasdaq”, there may be something wrong here. There are many rising stars and fallen heros among Chinese Internet companies in past few years, after Sina, Sohu and Netease came in the dot com era. Some of the notable ones include JOBS, SNDA, and BIDU. In all these cases the CEO of the company seemed worked too hard for Wall Street, and then made big mis-step.

I think for the long term, companies will be better served if CEOs can step back from the impatient Wall Street for a while. Just like in the dance, they should be the leaders, rather than let the Wall Street lead them. That is of course assume they know what they are doing.  

Categories
China Stocks

New Oriental EDU Seconday Offering

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The following is from Reuters. I have not seen the final prospectus from SEC web site yet. 

“HONG KONG, Feb 9 (Reuters) – Investors and New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (EDU.N: Quote, Profile , Research), China’s largest education group, and its investors have raised US$334 million after pricing 8.05 million American Depositary Shares at a 1.78 percent discount to its last closing price.

Investors including Tiger Global and the founder of New Oriental sold the shares at US$41.5 apiece.

The shares sold comprised 92 percent of existing shares and 8 percent of new shares, the source said.”

(Update 09Feb07) The prospectus is here. If you look carefully at the “selling shareholders” section, you will find “Tigerstep Developments Limited, a company incorporated in British Virgin Islands, is wholly owned by Bamei Li, mother of Michael Minhong Yu”. Yu’s mom is probablly the richest grandma in China 🙂 

Categories
China Stocks

Second Look at Huiyuan Juice IPO

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I noticed this juice thing is getting popular in China, just like the coffee did in recent years. In summer 2004, when I attended a bunch of formal dinners in Ningbo, juice is an option, as is the wine. Juice is also offered in the airplane. One thing I noticed that the orange juice in China is mostly “from concentrated”, probablly due to cost and taste reasons. So the demand and the growth is there. The problem with the company, from I read from FinanceAsia:

“Among the potential concerns, observers say, is the cost of buying juice concentrates and fruit puree, which increased by more than 50% in the first nine months last year. The company buys about 56% of this raw material from abroad, making it vulnerable to swings in international prices, particularly for oranges.”

Continue reading “Second Look at Huiyuan Juice IPO”
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Stocks

Cashback Credit Card is Sweet

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But not all of them are equal. I am using the Citibank Dividend and the Discover Cashback card. The Citi card used to give 5% (now 2%) cash back for gas, grocery and 1% for everything else, with an annual limit of $300.

The Discover card is more complicated. It has a “ladder” rate and does 5% promotion every three months. Each year (start from the day card being activated), it gives 0.25% for first $1000, 0.5% for the second $2000, 1% for anything afterwards. Every three months or so, e.g., Jan 1 to March 31, it gives 5% cashback for airlines, trains and buses; and the 5% category could change to restaurant from April to June. Also Discover has more redeem options, in addition to cash, it can be converted to gift cards from various vendors.