Categories
IPO

Demystify the sale of CCB shares

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Coule day a ago I came across this BoA (NYSE:BAC) bought CCB (China Construction Bank, Hongkong 0939) shares at dirt cheap price story from my Chinese friend StrengthTrader (English news here). After that I read this one original written by 21cbh, titled The Mystery of 70% Off of CCB Shares, here is a faster link from baidu finance. BTW, I always bought and liked 21cbh when I was in Shanghai last year.

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Categories
China

What Wangshi and KFC dont know

Reading Time: 3 minutes

We all know the terrible earthquake happened in China, and the Chinese goverment and people are doing the best helping the survivors. There are many many heart touching stories since May 12 when the quake hit. NPR Melissa Block and Robert Siegal (read their Chengdu diary) did a good job from a foreign journalist perspective.

Wang Lao Ji tea drink pic

But I also noticed it is not free of controversies in this all out effort to save lives and help the needy. Notably, Wang Shi (王石), the chairman of Vanke (largest home builder in China), is inadvertly got into this “donation gate”.

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Categories
Investing

Cramer’s new tech

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I am not a big fan of Jim Cramer, and I watch his Mad Money show (CNBC) mostly for entertainment. But he recently comes out this new tech series, which is a kind interesting.

What is new tech?
According to Cramer’s definition, old tech means the traditional sillicon valley stocks: Apple, Cisco, Google are good examples. We all know old tech companies, solve problems for business and consumers. They make the business more effient (Cisco, Oracle), and make our lives more entertaining (iPod, iPhone). Cramer thinks, with the global energy, environment, and food problems we are facing, the New tech, which are mostly old industrial companies, are trying to solve those larger problems.

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Categories
gadgets

Second thought on China Mobile CHL

Reading Time: 3 minutes

(Update May 26 11:35PM) Just found the Google finance has the wrong EPS and PE ((EPS 2.62, PE 29.92) for CHL. Yahoo finance has the right number for CHL: ttm EPS $3.08, PE 25.44 as of Friday May 23.

Market sentiment
GS downgrade (Bloomberg): the ladies at Goldman Sachs cut the rating of 0941 (China Mobile H share) from neutral to sell, and cut price target from 135 HKD to 105 HKD. I don’t trust Goldman rating blindly (no disrespect to people at GS), this downgrade combined with the share drop both in NYSE and Hongkong, signals the big boys are leaving the table. I don’t want to stick my head out at this time, so I am going to sell 2/3 of my CHL shares tomorrow morning (Tuesday May 27).

China telecom re-org pic
(Source: XinHuaNet)

More background of the re-org, 3G license

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Categories
Shanghai Composite

Pork producers in China

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I did a little reading on China pork industry lately. I found 3 pork producers listed in Shenzhen, Hongkong and the US. There are Henan Shuanghui (000895 Chinese, English), Nanjing Yurun (1068.HK), and Henan Zhongpin (Nasdaq: HOGS).
I believe they are three major pork producers, and the sales of pork are also in this order (descending): Shuanghui, Yurun, Zhongpin. I remember I ate many Shuanghui sausages while in college. I also determined that was junk food (not much real good meat) recently.

Interestingly, as of Friday May 23, the PE (price earning, ttm) ratio of those three are also in this order: 44 for Shuanghui (000895.SZ), 22 for Yurun (1068.HK), and 13.4 for Zhongpin (HOGS, Yahoo Finance). Assume the companies has similar profit margin and financial leverage, the different PEs shows how different market values the similar business (pork/food) in mainland, Hongkong and the US.

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Categories
gadgets

Is China Mobile CHL still a buy?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

The re-org of China telecom/wireless industry started officially, with the China Mobile Group acqusision of China Railway Telecom (Teitong), a small fixed line operator. The news drove down the stock price of China Mobile (0941.HK, NYSE:CHL) sharply lower today. Many pundits, speculators and short term investors are worrying the golden (monopoly) days of China Mobile will be over soon.

Not quite. I think about this question hard: will China Mobile lose its competetive edge in the Chinese wireless arena, with the widely expected next steps of re-org? In the re-org China Unicom will sell CDMA networks to China Telecom, and combines with China Netcom, the smaller fixed line operator with a footprint in North China; China Telecom will enter into wireless business with the Unicom CDMA acqusition.

China Mobile pic
(China Mobile restoring wireless service in Sichuan earthquake region, more pics here)

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Categories
Master Series

Buffett in Europe

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Warren Buffett is visiting Europe these days, mainly looking for acqusition targets (family private owned business). Here is an interview at IMD (Switzerland). IMD is a premier business school in the Europe (thanks to investmentpostcards). There is a link to webcast at the end of the post. It covered a range of topics, and the title was “How to grow wealth in a responsible and sustainable manner”.

On a side note, one of Buffett’s holding, Moody (NYSE:MCO) took a big hit recently because of mistake in giving out ratings. Interestingly, Buffett did not sell MCO shares in Q1 2008. He did sell some Well Fargo shares in Q1, this seems contradicts with he said in his annual letter: Moody probably lost intrinsic value in sub prime crisis, Well Fargo did not.

Categories
China

Sichuan Jiu Zhai Gou pictures

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We all know the terrible earthquake happened seven days ago (May 12, 14:28 PM) in Sichuan province. Today the while country is mourning the loss of the lives in China. I belive many people in the world share the same loss too. After all, we are living in the same earth (global village).

I visited Sichuan Jiu Zhai Gou about 3 years ago. While mother nature is ruthless sometimes, we should not ignore that Sichuan is a beautiful place, same as her people. So don’t refrain yourself from visiting Jiu Zhai Gou or Sichuan in the future. I gurantee you will love it.

Jiu Zhai Gou Chang Hai
Full size picture here, my blog post in June 2005 (at blogspot).

more Jiu Zhai Gou pictures note as of 11-28-2023 the pictures link are not working 🙁

(Update) I set the color of the header of this blog to black (#000000), as we mourn the loss of lives in this earthquake.

Categories
Fun

Have you seen Smart car?

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I saw quite a few Smart cars in St. Louis lately. Another sign the gas price is going through roof. While the car looks cute, I would not drive one personally, because it is so tiny compared to other cars on the road.

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Categories
Investing

Carl Icahn and activist investor movement

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Carl Icahn is again in the news. This time is about the Yahoo (Nasdaq:YHOO) shareholder proxy fight. Basically Carl bought a bunch Yahoo shares after the Microsoft deal fell through, and he is trying to remove the current Yahoo board, and make the sale to Microsoft. Intelligent observers may say did not Microsoft walked away already? What if MSFT do not take the bait? Well, I think Mr. Icahn has plan B when he has this in mind. If the MSFT deal do not work, and it looks like Google is neither interested nor in a position to buy the whole piece of Yahoo (anti trust issue), Carl can cut Yahoo in pieces and sell it to different companies. So for instance, sell Alibaba stake to eBay (I use this just as an example, not that I know eBay is interested in Alibaba), sell Yahoo Finance to Sina,…anyway you got the idea.

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