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Life

Remembering Tim Russert

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Don’t know exactly when I learned about Tim, most likely the Bush-Gore 2000 election. But I do remember watching Tim at Meet the Press on Sunday mornings after that.

Tim Russert Meet the Press pic
(source: CNET)

The thing I like about Tim Russert is: he always asks intelligent questions, provide objective information for the audience to consume, not personal views; and at the same time I am impressed by his polite manner and smile, many ordinary people think he is “one of our own”. And indeed his uproots is working class: his book Big Russ and me talked about his father.

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Fun

European soccer championship 2008

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Yesterday I watched the Russia Netherland game. It was great. Russia has a young and energetic team, and they have lots of oppertunities. Guess who is Neatherland coach? My hero (20 years back) Dutch soccer star Van Basten!


(van Basten legendary goal in European Championship in 1988?).

TV schedule here. It is the first time ESPN broadcast the whole thing in the US.

Categories
IPO

Speculating on Spreadtrum Communications SPRD

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Let me put up the negatives (risk, downside) first. If it still stands after all the beatings, it may work out eventually. We all know semi-conductor is a tough business, and as you may know making cell phone is a cutting throat competitive business in China.

SpreadTrum chip pic

Negatives
SpreadTrum (Nasdaq:SPRD) supplies chips to domestic cell phone makers (Amoi, Lenovo, etc.). Recently the cheaper Shanzhaiji caused much trouble to the domestic brand makers, because Shanzhaiji are much cheaper with ok quality. You can read more about this Shanzhaiji thing from my del.ico.us bookmarks (articles in Chinese). I learned about Shanzhaiji from pacificepoch article by LiJing (yes, it’s in English).

Other percepted negatives include: SPRD bet on inferior domestic brewed 3G standard TD; co-founders leaving on Feb; consumer slowdown. But I view those more as glass half full, rather than glass half empty. Let me explain.

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Categories
Web

GSeeker no longer update

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I am a tech guy, and not surprisingly I like Google. A while ago I found this gseeker blog which talks extensively about Google products in Chinese. Although I shifted my interest to finance in recent years, I read gseeker almost everyday, and it was like a friend to me. Now this relationship comes to an end. Creative Weblogging, which owns gseeker domain name and the content, decided to cease its Chinese operation. It’s sad.

The good thing is KenWong, the author of gseeker and gseeker vision, still maintains a personal blog here. To be honest, I found out gseeker vision just today. It was cool.

Another interesting thing I notice is CW asked $20 k for the GSeeker domain name and the content, when Ken and his friend asked to buy. Not a small sum for Ken. (quote gseeker, CW对GSeeker域名及内容的开价是20K，美元。我肯定是没这么多钱买了，但我也远没有想到我的blog竟然能值十几万人民币。)

PS, another blog which I like but no longer up-to-date is letsthinkchina, written by my friend Zhong Siwei.

Categories
Shanghai Composite

Reasons behind big drop in China market

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Fundamentals
The common census is China economy growth will slow down significantly, due to the slow down from export (trouble in US economy); rising inflation (food, oil etc.)

The rights of minority shareholders are also not protected as well as mature market, because in some cases the management cooked up the accounting books, and get away from it.

The flaws in market itself
Recent arrest of former vice head of China securities regulatory commission (Wang Yi): people fear this is not an isolated event, and bigger fish will be caught as this thing unravels. Insider trading was rampant and still is prevalent in China. Insider trading reduces the confidence of long term investors, people just want to make quick money and run.

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Categories
Saint Louis

Flood

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It seems the market is not the only thing that is testing our mind/heart/nerve/will, the midwest flood has also caused substantial demage to WI, IA, IL and the Show Me state. Couple days ago the levee at Hanibal broke. Don’t know if the Mark Twain museum there has been demaged?

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Categories
IPO

WuXi Pharma WX continues to drop

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WuXi Pharma Tech (NYSE:WX) continued to slide, during my absence. One (main) concern is heavy insider selling (source: seekingalpha) lately, after the secondary offering was suspended on May 4.

I double checked the F1 filings for secondary offering (principal and selling shareholders), and found its CEO Dr. Ge Li was going to sell 8 million shares, and he unloaded 200,000 shares on May 30 according to AOL finance. BTW, it is a bit strange I could not find those transactions at SEC web site. Adding insult to the injury, United Overseas Bank (UOB) said it was going to sell 2.1 million shares at $18.4 each, according to Reuters. I guess they must need cash badly (hint: sub-prime trouble). Seriously, from its F1 it appears to me UOB is a venture investor in WuXi, and I am not surprised to see it wants to cash out some (note it intended to sell those shares in the now aborted Secondary). In other words, UOB still sells the shares planned in the Secondary, but the Wuxi management did not.

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Categories
Saint Louis

I am back to St. Louis

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Bread and gas
Panera officially raised the price of Asiago cheese bagel, from 97 cents to $1.25, which is expected as I read it from news couple weeks ago. The regular unleaded gas is $3.999 in STL. Cheaper than Salt Lake city, but more expensive than Jackson, WY.

Some random thoughts about the trip
Chevlet Impala is good. Dodge Avenager is a piece of xxx.

Mount Washburn and Teton pass (WY-Idaho route 22) are difficult to drive. Perhaps also because I am getting older?

The news I missed
Tim Russert: the number and profile of people attended a journalist’s funeral and memorial service speaks the volume of his legacy. Quote Tim “go to other people’s funeral, otherwise they won’t come to yours”. I will write more about Tim later.

Anheuser-Busch Inbev merger (STLToday): now Buffett is into play because he has 5% stake in A-B. I believe he was incidentally pulled in, because he bought the A-B stock couple years ago mostly out of valution, not speculation on M&A.

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Categories
Life

At Jackson WY

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Finanlly I got the free Wifi here at Jackson, WY, the foot hill town of Grand Teton National Park. The Anvil hotel has free Internet, which is better than the fees starting from $9.95 at Hilton at SLC.

Back in STL, I noticed Chinese politicians, led by vice Premier Wang Qi Shan (note he is the son-in-law of former vice Premier Yao Yi Lin), are signing big trade deals with Missouri (news: STLToday; video: v.ifeng.com 凤凰网). Maybe a direct flight from STL to PVG in the near future?

As to stock market, I noticed 600030 (Citic Securities) crashed, which is expected considering the US broker houses lost big lately. The sentiment on brokers won’t be good.

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Categories
Fun

Vacation

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Interesting news: Buffett is put up a one miilion dollar bet for any hedge fund beat S&P in next 10 years. The proceeds (if Warren wins) will go to his charity.

I am going to take a week of vacation from tomorrow, and I may not update this blog during this period.

Meanwhile, I am going to read the chapter 20 of Intelligent Investor (Ben Graham). I already read chapter 6 as suggested by Warren in this year annual shareholder meeting (Q&A): it’s about knowing the risk of investments. Chapter 20 is about margin of safety.