stlplace

China

Passport renewal

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It’s that time again. Note from Jan 1, 2007 the Chinese consulate or embassy no longer take the renewal (due to the new passport laws taking effect). Here is a link for the Chicago Consulate. Note you need the Adobe reader Simplified Chinese Patch to read the PDF form.

China Passport

BTW, the Nov. 2006 visa bulletin is out, and here is the link. I used to subscribe to the email list but it did not sending out the email as soon as it put on the web. At one time, I even received an email which is a question asked by somebody on the mailing list. OK so much for the reliability of their email system 🙂

Saint Louis

Great River Road

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Drove along the “Great River Road” from Alton to Grafton yesterday, the Missisipi River and the changing colors on the mountains looks great. No wonder there are so many people in the bars and grills at the town of Grafton. I also saw people with boats enjoying the water before the winter chill – this is probally last good moment for this year. I took some pictures and put it up in Flickr. And here is one:

China

New direct flights to China

Post author By stlplace
Post date October 7, 2006
No Comments on New direct flights to China

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The following are some of the proposed new direct flights from US to China.

AA is applying for the new direct flight from Dallas (DFW) to Beijing (PEK). Here is the link to sign up for the petition.

Northwest is working on the Detroit (DTW) to Shanghai (PVG) route. Here is the link.

Last but not least, United is bidding on the Washing Dulles (IAD) to Beijing (PEK) route. And here is the link.

You can support them by signing up the petition letter. Only one route will be approved by USDOT next year. Please note I am not advertising for any of the airlines because what I really want is a Saint Louis (STL) to Shanghai route 🙂

Life Technology

Instant Message Scandal

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OK, I will take a break from the stock lesson today. I am going to talk about the TV media here. I bet president Bush doesn’t like what he sees on TV these days, not just daily casualties in Iraq and Afganistan, and the conspiracy theory of lower gas price. Being a president, the president can not be a winner on this gasoline price issue. When the price goes up, people complains; when the gas price goes down, people are suspicious why the price goes down exactly before this congress mid-term election. Of course the biggest headache for him and republican party, is this “Foley” scandal. Yes, it’s not Shanghai had the big scandal lately. These days when you turned on the TV (say, CNN, FOX, or NBC), you will hear and see the Florida congressman Floey’s scandal (criminal investigation is under way). The center of the matter, is Mr. Foley sent instant message to under aged boy who works for congress. So let’s call it “Instant Message Scandal”, or “IM Gate”?

Many people think the instant message does not have any record. And I think that’s one reason people say stupid thing in IM. Wrong. It turns out many IM providers keep copies of conversation on the server. Also the participants can save the conversations on the computer. More specifically, the Google talk (by default) stores the chat content in your Gmail account.

I remember Warren Buffett once said : when he was not sure about doing something in business, he will use the criteria “can this be put on the front page of local newspaper”. He certainly meant put be on the paper as a good story. Ironically, Mr. Foley’s story did show up in a lot newspaper’s front page, in a totally different tone.

Stocks

Stock Lesson IV

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I started this “stock lesson” series because I want to write down some of the mistakes I made on the stock market in the past few years. I hope I can avoid making the same mistakes in the future; I also hope others can learn from my mistakes.

OK, back to the subject. I have talked about enough about “Grass is not always green on the other side”, find your own rythm (stocks and trade pattern), the investment goal and plan, all these good stuffs. Now comes the practical question: when to buy? when to sell?

This seems like an easy question. I think we all want to buy low and sell high, so that we can make money. But how do we know whether a stock will go down or up when we buy it? Remember our good friend Warren Buffett once said “buy when others are scared; sell when others are greedy”. Fair enough. But there are some caveats on this one. I have done this: in Spring 2004 I bought some Nokia (NOK) stocks at $17.xx when it released earning below expectation. And I bought more at $14.xx a week later when it said it would miss the next quarter earning estimates too. The main reason is Nokia is a bit slow releasing those Flip phones which are more popular in the US market. They lost market share to competititors. So here is the mini lesson one: don’t try to catch a falling knife. When the earning is bad, and everyone is selling, why would I fight against the market? So what was my results? The stock went down as low as $11 before it recovered to $17 in one year. By that time I already lost patience and sold it at a loss.

Life Stocks

Stock lesson III

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Set a realistic goal, e.g., 20% return in one year. Don’t get too carried away from other people’s success and try to emualte it without learning its risk.

I have some hefty goals in the past two years. To be more exact, although I don’t have a number (for percentage gain), I know I have some wild expectations from time to time. When I bet on the earning reports of Netease (NTES) last November, I have two chances to make 10% gain but I was expecting more. Eventually I lost 20% instead because the actual earning report is not as good as wall street expected. Note the “Wall Street expectation”. We know the stock price is ultimately determined by the earnings (how much money the company make), but in the short term, it is also related to the Wall Street expected earning and the actual earning. If it beats (like Google did in last few years), the stock soars; if it misses, the stock tanks (like DELL did lately).

OK so much for the expectation. Back to the goal, besides the percentage gain. I think we also need to determine how much money we want to put in the stock market. This is important because we also need to pay bills (food, cars and house), and save for retirement. I like Jim Crammer’s “mad money” definition on this. Basically as the name suggests, we should only put the money we don’t need to use for a while (maybe 6 months to a year), a.k.a., the mad money into the stock market. I made mistakes on this because twice I had to sell the stocks because I need the cash for something. We should never let this happen. This is just a sign of poor budgeting. We should sell the stock only if “we think the stock price peaked, or we are confident there are other investment opportunites with better return/less risk”.

This planning and expectation thing also applies to other aspects of life very well. I think a lot times we feel disappointed about someone or something because we had too high expectation. Another good example, Saint Louis Cardinals won the 1st division series games against San Diego Padres this afternoon. Because a lot people expect Padres will win (low expectation for Cardinals), I feel very happy now.

China Stocks

Getting RMB in China

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Bring the green backs and exchange it at Bank of China or other banks is the common way. They do require the passport though. And sometimes the wait time could be long (I found out Friday is usually bad). But it is not very safe if you have large amount of cash. So I tried the Citi Bank card this time but they charge me 1% fee. There is a way to get around it.

Open a checking account from Bank of America (BOA) and get a Visa Check card. BOA has agreement with China Construction Bank (CCB). It is said that you can withdraw RMB using the Visa Check card (market conversion rate for USD to RMB) at CCB ATM machines. Better yet, if you open a checking acct from BOA, they will credit $50 or $100 depending on the account type. Pretty cool, huh?

CCB pix

Saint Louis

Saint Louis Cardinals won MLB central division

Post author By stlplace
Post date October 2, 2006
No Comments on Saint Louis Cardinals won MLB central division

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That’s 3 years in a row. Quite impressive, isn’t it? Interestingly, it seems they are not the favorites (for world series) among commentators. Some even said they are a two men team (Carpenter, Pujos). Let’s see how they do. The series with San Diego Padres starts on Tuesday Oct 3rd.

Cardinals pix

I tried to put a real picture for Carpenter (from Yahoo Sports) but it does not allow me to do that. Here is the picture I really like: the star pitcher Carpenter with his son.

Saint Louis

Creve Coeur Lake

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Went to Creve Coeur Lake Park today. This is my roller blading (skating) place. The trees are changing colors these days and the view is very beautiful. Sometimes we travel long ways to famous places like Yosemite (in California), but in my mind we can enjoy similar things (in smaller scales) near our home: Creve Coeur Park is just an example. The riverside view near Alton (Illinois) is very good too. I still remember last Fall I went there with a friend. Here is a picture of the Creve Coeur Lake (a lady is rowing). For more pictures, visit my Yupoo. Note you can search the photos by tag (e.g., Creve).

Creve Coeur Lake

Stocks

Stock lesson II

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Follow the crowd; follow the stock picker or gurus such as Jim Crammer without doing own research; follow the friends.

Following the crowd is dangerous because statistically majority of small investors lose money in the stock market (I know I am since got into market in late 2003). I think one reason for doing this is the “herd” mentality – most of us have it. We feel safe to buy the stocks when the market is up; vice versa. But as the famous investor Warren Buffett says “buy when people are scared; sell when people are greedy”. 1999-2000 dot com is a perfect example, many people made money on the paper but they did not get out, while some others (who did not follow crowd) did make real money.

So “follow the crowd” is out, how about follow Warren Buffett? It’s a good idea and it’s usually safe approach (because Warren makes safe bets these days, and sometimes he just sits on the cash). But remember Warren’s investment objective is not same as yours: he may expect a 10% return because he got 40 billion already. Another thing is we don’t know when he will sell. This applies to Jim Crammer’s mad money also well.

Follow the friends: I did this when I first started. I bought a stock called “LookSmart” after he bought (and I paid a higher price); I sold after he sold (and I sold for a lower price). Looking back, I think I was pretty stupid (not smart). It’s not that my friend’s pick is bad, the timing is an issue (because the friend can not be available 24×7). Also tangling the stock (money) with friendship is not a good pratice. We can talk about stocks, but do our own research and make own decisions.

The bottom line: only you know your own objective. Doing the stock research not only helps making wiser decisions; it could also be fun. Don’t blame the friends for our own mistakes.