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

Reading Time: < 1 minute (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

Reading Time: < 1 minute I was a bit surprised to see Dixie Chicks won the “album of the year” award. I was happy because it’s a band I like. I got the “Taking the long way” CD last May when it was just out with lots of controversy. I guess the CD sales will soar and the price will go up 🙂 For the Dixie Chicks

Reading Time: < 1 minute 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

Reading Time: < 1 minute 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

Reading Time: < 1 minute This is probablly the hottest IPO this year (so far). It went up 89% on its debut. But I did not jump into it because: 1) I don’t have much cash; 2) Hedge fund is the business I don’t know too much about. I am not against shorting stocks, trading options and other exotic stuff; but