Category: Stocks

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Fun Stocks

How Many Houses To See before Buying

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My roommate, an American guy in his mid 20s, has been looking for a house (condo, duplex) for a while. By “a while” I meant he probablly have done this for about 9 months. I understand he has many reasons for this long process: first he was new to St. Louis when he relocated from another state to here, i.e., he need some time to get familar with the area; then comes the stagnant real estate market, in the down market everyone is waiting, as a buyer he certainlly don’t want to see the price drop after he buy the house; and most important of all, I believe he looked too many houses. I don’t know how many places he actually saw, but when he showed me the web listings from time to time, talked about the pros and cons of this house vs. that house, I know he looked too many.

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China Stocks

LFC China Life Insurance Debut Tomorrow in Shanghai

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The party is finally here. The ticker symbol is 601628 (not available at Yahoo Finance yet), it was priced at 18.88 (lots of 8 here). And it could go to 30s (note I usually make wrong guess, so take it for what it worth…)

The ticker symbol in Hongkong is 2628.HK (from Yahoo Finance). And LFC is the ticker symbol at NYSE.

Disclosure: I don’t have any postions on this.

Follow up (08Jan07, 7:48PM Central time): it opened 37.00 Yuan, up 96% from 18.88.

china life insurance LFC

Categories
Business Stocks

Heelys and Crocs Report Week Ending 06Jan07

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Well, Heelys (HLYS) the stock did not do much lately. But I am still doing my reality check, in the stores and on eBay. This week I am adding Crocs (CROX) because I bought some shares last December and plan to hold it for a while.

It appears my local Sports Authority(s) have sold most of Heelys, two (out of three stores) don’t have many in the shelf. On the other hand, those two stores moved Heelys back to the original “skate department”, vs. the main aisle. The other store still put it in main aisle (side by side with a knockoff product). The eBay sales are OK. Another interesting point is a “Heelys” search on flickr yields 102 results; it seems people are opening Xmas gifts now 🙂

Crocs are red hot this holiday season, despite it’s winter. I guess part of the reason is we got a relatively mild winter; and more importantly the company made a few smart decisions, such as co-branding with colleges, and opening the Kiosk in the malls (without any discount), etc. I think this is a safe bet compared to Heelys. Here are the numbers on eBay. This is mostly for fun, don’t take this too seriously.

            Heelys Crocs

01Jan07 1059  2121
02Jan07 1050  1856
03Jan07 1092  1803
04Jan07  971  1423
05Jan07  964  1415
06Jan07  961  1398 

(Update 09Jan): saw this post on Yahoo Message Board, it talked about the sales in Asia. Very postive.

Categories
Life Stocks

Affordable Luxury in the United States

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I first heard about this “affordable luxury” term when I bought my Nissan Altima GLE, with sun roof and leather seat, about 6 years ago. The Nissan salesman told me Altima is an “affordable luxury” car. By that he meant the car has the features I mentioned above, plus alloy wheel (looking good), and the price is affordable (MSRP $22015, I got it for $18789 after $1400 rebate).

In recent years I feel this affordable luxury concept has penetrated the consumer markets very well. Here are just a list of things I think can be applied this flag (I may update this list from time to time).

Youth Apparel: Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters, Aéropostale, and Urban Outfitters. To be honest, I can not tell too much difference among the “A” stores, but Urban is more for college kids because I felt back to fraternity once I visited store.

IMG_4203

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Categories
Saint Louis Stocks

Bought A Little Panera Bread PNRA

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I bought a little Panera Bread PNRA shares today. I have watched the stock for more than 6 months. This noon I went to the store at St. Charles Rock road as usual, and I saw the biggest crowd. After I ordered food, I can see and hear the associate calling the customer name (when food is ready) about every 20 to 30 seconds. It took me about 15 minutes to get my food, probablly a record for me. But I am not complaining here; I always see a large crowd during lunch hour there and today’s wait helped me make the decision to buy some stocks. I noticed this place is more popular than my old favorite lunch place  Fazoli’s and there is reasons behind that: better food; people always want to be in the “crowded restaurant”, whether in China or the United States.   

Here is a good introduction of Panera Bread.

Panera Bread Co. St. Louis

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Categories
China Stocks

Symbols of US Chinese ADRs Traded in HKSE

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The following is an incomplete list of the Chinese blue chip (or red chips) companies traded both in NYSE and HKSE (Hongkong Stock Exchange). Some thinly traded stocks such as China Eastern Airlines (CEA) are not included.  

NYSE HK         Full Name 

ACH  2600.HK  Aluminum China

CEO  0883.HK  China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC)

CHA  0728.HK  China Telecom

CHL  0941.HK  China Mobile

CHU  0762.HK  China Unicom

LFC  2628.HK   China Life Insurance

PTR  0857.HK   China Petro

SMI  0981.HK    Semiconductor Manufacturing Intl

SNP  0386.HK   China Petro and Chemical

For more infomation, check out Yahoo Finance HK. Also I did not listed the number of HK shares each US ADR worth, it would be nice if someone compile a list of that 🙂

Categories
Stocks

Something Hard to Predict

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It’s the beginning of the year again. As usual people like to predict the markets, the economy etc. I don’t know how accurate will that be. But I know probablly half of them will turn out to be right 🙂 Predicting the general market and economy is not an easy job. But I think as individual investor we are not powerless either, at least we can do a few things:

1) Invest regularly (don’t buy all at once);

2) Do the homework, if we don’t have the luxury of visiting the company, at least we can read the 10Qs (quarterly report), 10Ks (annual report), pay attention to the product or services we used in our daily lives and work place;

3) From time to time, we can all summerize what went right, what went wrong;

4) Last but not least, be patient.

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Categories
Stocks

My Current Holdings

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I have the following stocks in my Scottrade account as of today Jan 3, 2007. I remember the beginning of last year I only have 200 shares of Symantec (SYMC)

Crocs (CROX): 46 shares, it seems people can not get enough of those funky shoes.

Heelys (HLYS): 62 shares, it seems everyone is skeptical of this except me 🙂

Home Inns (HMIN):  68 shares, +100% YoY growth, Chinese version of La Quita Inn (as I read the Peter Lynch book lately)

Mindray (MR): 111 shares, China’s No. 1 medical device maker, about 50% YoY growth, is opening a new facility in Nanjing, looking for expansion in the Yangtze delta region which is the economy center of China nowadays. Good move.

Categories
China Stocks

Is Home Inns HMIN too Expensive?

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Home Inns’ (HMIN) stock traded above $40 for the first time  today Jan 3, 2007. Since its debut on Oct 26, 2006, the stock almost doubled from its first day close price (about $22.50). From traditional valuation point of view, this is a bit insane. As a stock holder I am also nervous about such a fast run. So…why don’t we do a little PE price earning ratio analysis on this one. Let’s assume it closes at $40 today. The company earned $0.12 in the first half of year 2006, 0.10 in 3rd quarter (non GAPP, exclude one time share based compensation), and let’s say it will make $0.12 for the 4th quarter, which is quite reasonable. 40 divided by (0.12+0.10+0.12), and it’s equal to 117. This is high compared to Google, or Apple. But note the company is growing at more than 100% year over year and we can expect that trend to continue for a few years.

Note: as rule of thumb (or finger), the PE ratio should not exceed the growth rate too much. Say, for a PE 15 company, we expect it grow 15% year over year.

home inns rujia shanghai century park

Categories
Fun Stocks

Heelys Report Week Ending 29Dec06

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It seems Heelys had a very good Christmas season. From my store visit to Journeys and Sports Authority, each account for 11.6% and 11% domestic sales in the fist 9 months in year 2006, the sales are doing well. I did notice one week before Xmas, SA offered some discount, and Journeys started discount after Xmas, both of which are normal business practice to clear out some inventories. The eBay sales number is here:

          Heelys Faked
20Dec06 877 68
21Dec06 796 52
  
26Dec06 529 21
27Dec06 602 22
28Dec06 815 27
29Dec06 719 27

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