Reading Time: < 1 minute I used to sell used books, mostly textbooks on Half.com, an eBay subsidirary. Half does a decent job for me and their commission is reasonable (about 10%?). But I have not enjoyed much success selling books there lately. It could be one of the two reasons: My books are unpopular; Half.com is not popular anymore. I started

Reading Time: < 1 minute The Chinese version, the year of Pig (roar, whatever you want to call it). I am using Keso’s new year card because I can not create a card as good as his 🙂 Image created by Keso.

Reading Time: < 1 minute When Steve (Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft) speaks, Wall Streets listens. Yesterday in the MicroSoft analyst day Steve tried to put a more realistic picture on the Vista sales. Basically he says that the Vista sales won’t be as good as analysts thought. With his words the stock MSFT lost 2.4% today. When did Steve

Reading Time: < 1 minute I think one of the most important take away from Ken Fisher’s book is “be open minded”. This is easily said than done. Because our brain is not trained that way. For instance, we usually felt pretty bad when we have to cut a loss after buying a stock, even if the company’s fundamental is

Reading Time: < 1 minute I found a new trend about the companies’ quarterly earning Conference Call lately. Usually a company will do the conference on the Internet and on the phone at the same time. But Crocs (CROX) and Heelys (HLYS), two shoe makers (I have shares for both), lead the fashion again by doing the call exclusively over the

Reading Time: < 1 minute 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

Reading Time: < 1 minute Google Checkout is doing promotion again. I found this while I Googled “Heelys”. Here are the links for Heelys. I think the $10 off can be applied to other things too. A gift from Google for your V-day. Sports Authority, Dick’s Sporting Goods By the way, I visited couple Sports Authority stores and Dick’s recently, and

Reading Time: < 1 minute 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

Reading Time: < 1 minute 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

Reading Time: < 1 minute 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