stlplaceI got this email from spammer, it feels very much like a real one except in the end it says “please act within 24 hours”. You know how desparate the spammers want your identity.
Be careful about those messages look like from eBay and PayPal.
I bought air ticket for my late July trip back to Shanghai. It cost me $1260, American Airlines, STL to PVG (via ORD). Compared to $1090 I paid for my March trip (UA), it’s a little more expensive. The main reason is of course the soaring oil price lately.
This sounds like a deal (dealsea), $129 for a refurbished iPod nano. If you want more discount, you can click through fatwallet. You need to register at fatwallet to get the cashback.
For those iPhone junkie, here is an opportunity to win an iPhone, by participating in the stock picks contest hosted by WR Hambrecht and Motley Fool.
1) Don’t jump into an IPO on its first day. Do some research if you really want to jump.
2) A controlling shareholder is also the CEO: usually not good for small shareholders.
3) One customer (Chinese goverment), one product (custome declaring software), be very worried.
Obviously the new Vista is creating problems for competitors’ product, such as Google Desktop Search. See this news. I remember four or Five years ago the US justice department ruled to split Microsoft into two companies, because of its monopoly practice. That rule was over turned.
I don’t know all legal issues but I am aware many geeks don’t like Microsoft and its people. Once I went to a UNIX user group meeting in which a Microsoft guy did presentation, he got booed frequently.
Here is the Yahoo Finance experts’ blogs. Among them I like Ben Stein the best, because of his wit and humor, Laura Rowley and Jeremy Siegel are also my favorites. Laura talked about “happiness and money”, as you may know there is a balance between those two. Her background in theology makes her talk more interesting too. Jeremy is a professor in Finance at Wharton, I read his recent book “The Future for the Investors” 2 years ago. His analysis is good, but I don’t like his conclusion: basically he is saying individual investors have no way to beat the market, so go buy the index fund and settle for the market return (about 10% annually). While I think what he said has some merits, I do believe there are chances for individual investor, if one has the time, disicipline and average IQ.
The split day is June 14, Thursday. It has a nice run since last week. I will wait it calm down a bit before adding my postions. Obviously, I missed the buying opportunity about two weeks ago when there were some insiders sellings. It pulled back to 76~78 at that time. Oh well, no rear mirror view for stocks.
A bit reality check, Crocs 2006 Revenue is 354.7 m; 2007 est. Revenue 675 m, a 90% growth, note the company says sustainable growth rate over next few years is 45%. The market cap as of today is 3.64 b (stock closed at $90.97), so the P/S ratio is roughly 5.39. PE (ttm, trailing twelve month, according to Yahoo Finance) is about 44.77, I think it’s fairly valued at this time.
Also as you may know, President Bush was wearing Crocs. You can see a picture of him wearing Crocs (courtesy of CrocFans).
Went to a newly opened Starbucks at Olive and Price yesterday. This is a very nice place, compared to the one at Olive and Craig (much older). The traffic there was OK consider this was Sunday morning.
A lot things are against Starbucks business lately, according to a guest at CNBC this morning.
Bill Gates got Harvard degree finally, 30 years after drop out from Harvard;
Dell announced to sell laptop at Sam’s Club (Major’s comment: too little, too late);
Andy Xie, former chief economist of Morgan Stanley Asia, says the odds of making money in Chinese stock market is lower than casinos (40% vs. 48%);
I received an email from a friend asking me whether New Oriental Eudcation (EDU) will be a good investment or not. I was not warm to it initially, changed my mind and bought it in Jan., sold it in Feb., because I did not know how to evaluate it.
First I want to say EDU is in a very sweet spot in Chinese private education market: English and test preparation. A little background, English is a very important skill in finding good jobs in China these days: from multinational companies to domestic companies, from private sector to goverment, and non-for-profit, all because the increasing interactions between China and the west in last 20 years.