stlplaceBelow are some pictures and videos from this week’s flash flood in the area. Quote the last article (the last tweet) written by Mr. Tony Messenger. “These sure the hell aren’t 100-year floods,” Criss says. “They’re like two-year floods. It’s staggering.” || We were not flood, but I know some people were impacted or lost car or belongings (their house or apartment were flooded).
Update 07-3-2022: I just realized Eastern Kentucky experienced much worse flash flood (refer to this news).
Some disclaimer: not district official doc. I believe each kid is unique, special and gifted in her / his own way. And for many parents / guardians they do sincerely believe their kids are the smartest. Years ago I think when my older daughter was probably 3 or 4 years old, at the preschool a few parents talked about the competitiveness of getting into gifted programs at public school (I was not the parent to initiated this topic :-). And one parent said that’s one reason they are sending their kids to private school. Although now I think about it, their kids were very smart and they can get into the gifted programs in many public schools.
Anyway, the official web page for gifted program is here. There is also a contact info at the bottom of the web page for the curriculum department.
Quick overview
The gifted program runs from grade 1 to grade 8. It’s called Idea Lab between grade 1 and 5; Apogee between grade 6 and 8. The main identification period is at the end of kindergarten, and at the end of grade 2. There are also exceptions, for example, there are opportunities, both for transfer (in) students, and occasionally at recommendation of classroom teacher (as he / she sees fit for the kid). Some may ask why they stopped at middle school: one explanation I heard is in high school they have the AP (which personally I think it’s different, but AP itself is a topic I don’t want to get into today). Note the program is not accelerated math or turbo charged STEM. The teacher has a lot of topics, but usually it covers topics such as science, creativity (think Lego etc) and some presentation. They usually meets twice a week in regular school time: which may or may not impact other regular subjects. Please check with the classroom teacher for the missing content and make sure the kid make up the work as need.
The work: I recall when Serenity our older daughter was at 2nd grade, she made a very nice hard cover book on a topic she was interested. I was impressed with the quality of the work: it seems Serenity carries this “attention to details / carry it through” to other subjects such as music. Serenity also benefited quite a bit from the presentation training, as she is an introvert and she usually gets nervous in front of people. I saw her progressing over the years. || This probably is applicable to everyone, and every job. Over the years I have seen myself improve on this front, and in one instance, we (a fellow mom to be precise) helped a shy student to speak up at the Creative Convention. Back to topic below.
Tests
There are two stages of test. One has to pass the first stage before entering the 2nd stage: which is an IQ test, it requires parents / guardians’ approval, as well as the kid has to be at least 6 year old. The first stage tests are described as below. I quote some content from the letter I received via email from the gifted program coordinator, for my younger daughter. I believe there is no proprietary information here: may be helpful to share it on district proper web page? I did take out the actual percentile or score threshold etc. See below in Italics:
“…During the initial steps of the process, we first evaluate two categories of learning and review students academic performance. Students need to pass at least two of the three screeners to move onto the phase (2) of testing.
Please note those scores or numbers are not absolute. The teachers and staff do have some flexibility interpreting the scores. We did not do anything special prep other than the daily math and reading work which the kid does at school or home (depends on the grade). My old daughter passed the tests at the kindergarten year, and my younger daughter at 2nd grade. Note the tests are usually done at the second semester. I recall there is usually an authorization form for parents to fill out at the beginning of school year as well.
For the second stage there is this IQ test, again note another form the parents need to fill. They emphasize there is nothing to prep for this IQ test. And we did not do anything 🙂 And it seems they rely on a specialist outside from district to perform the evaluation. I honestly don’t recall how my old daughter did (it was 6 years ago), but my younger daughter did the eval recently, and I felt the lady who does the eval has great patience with her. Both my girls scored similarly. Their scores are above 130. I think they maybe smarter than me 🙂
Experience
Note each school has one gifted teacher. My older daughter has gone through 4 teachers now (she had two teachers at elementary due to teacher change). Parent has option to do a parent / teacher conference, which is helped by Zoom for middle school nowadays. One thing I do remember is the Creative Convention, which is organized by the Gifted Resource Council. They do Equation competition too, also organized by GRC. I vaguely recall 2nd grader and up participate the Creative Convention; 3rd grader and up participate the Equation Competition. For the latter I am pretty certain it’s not limited to the gifted program kids. The team is usually organized by each school though.
Other Resources
The gifted program at Ladue Schools are usually not that easy to get into, because the program is limited (again only one teacher at each school; I think there are more in middle school) in terms of size. But for the parents, it’s not the end of the world if the kids did not get in, or did not get in at the kindergarten year testing. Remember it’s not Harvard admission either: both in terms of difficulty and its impact. Every kid is unique and as parents / guardians our main responsibility to provide an environment (along with the teachers) to help them learn / grow in their own ways, and hopefully to their full potential. In our case as you can see our younger daughter did not get in during her kindergarten year (her spring break was the time we got covid shutdown). We were obviously disappointed, but not disheartened. My wife was a bit anxious on her math and she made sure Sophia our daughter do some extra work when possible.
Last but not the least, I want to thank you all the Spoede/Ladue teachers who have taught our kids.
Gifted Resourced Council (GRC)
Also, there are many other resources such as GRC’s learning labs and summer academies (summer camps), and they are open to all the kids and parents. (Update 09-29-2022) Please note the fall 2022 learning labs, and parenting classes here. It looks all are in person now (no more Zooms).
There are other interesting STEM programs such as Maryville Science and Robotics program and Project MEGSSS for math enthusiasts as well. Again both are open to all the interested kids / families. They have some scholarship opportunities too. Last but not least there are tons of good materials on the Internet including YouTube nowadays. The internet definitely democratized the STEM learning.
Other Resources for Families
2022 Best schools with gifted and talented programs in the St. Louis Area (Niche) (While I believe Clayton school and some other public schools are great, I don’t think they top Ladue. I know I know 🙂
Cuts in gifted education hurt kids’ potential (STLToday, AISHA SULTAN, Jul 5, 2011)
SLPS Magnet Schools: this is a voluntary reciprocal program between STL City and County (not all county school district participate though). I have seen couple kids (Clayton, Ladue) went to the city magnet school, stayed for couple years, before coming back to their regular public school.
St Louis Regions Program for Exceptionally Gifted Students (South – Lindbergh; North – Pattonville). I have seen something similar for a Ladue kid (went to the Lindbergh for a year, then come back to Ladue). Note my kids never went to the city magnet school or the PEGS program.
FB Private Group (Parents of Gifted & High Ability Children): they will ask a few questions before you can join. It has a range of questions and discussions. || Btw, I came across this advice from the FB group: “As the mom of an older gifted child (10 years old in the 99.99 percentile), I want to HIGHLY recommend getting your kids into sports while they are little. A majority of gifted kids have asynchronous development that you begin to really notice throughout elementary school. This means they are VERY advanced learners, observers, emotional beings.. but usually a year or two behind socially and physically which can seriously affect self esteem and physical health. Starting and keeping them on sports teams early can really really help this. Best of luck 
“
(04-25-2023) How To Parent And Build Confidence In Your Highly Sensitive Child. By: Author Pamela Li
(05-21-2023) YouTube – Chinese (about 40 mins long) – 老梁故事汇：1978天才少年班 神童现状如何 天才为何泯然众人 父母如何正确认知“神童教育”
(02-21-2024)
Why Being Gifted Actually Makes Life Harder (YouTube)
Why Smart Kids Are The Loneliest (YouTube)
The Unique Challenges of Studying as a Gifted Kid (YouTube)
I understand those at first look, doesn’t seem intuitive, but we as parents (especially for parents of gifted kids) probably will benefit a lot learning about all this.
(Update 09-17-2024) GRC is offering free webinars for parents (google form registration here)
This is the worst stock market I experienced for last few years. As shown below.
I am not disheartened though. Because I think long term is always good to get rid of the extreme speculations, just like the subprime mortgage last time around (2007 to 2009), this time it seems the speculation in cryptos is equivalent, if not more. China, on the other hand, they successfully cracked down the cryptos (Bitcoin ₿ etc). But China’s economy was very much dependent on the real estate industry in last few decade. In other words, there were lots of speculation and bubbles there. So there is some reckoning of that due to the recent zero covid / shutdown policy: or put it another way, it’s the the straw that broke the camel’s back （压死骆驼的最后一根草）。
Back to last 6 months, the bottom started to fall out during Jay Powell congress hearing (I think it was this one, or this one. I felt the google video search functionality can use some improvements). I recall the market reaction when he said that.
There is an old saying in the wall street: don’t fight the fed. In similar tone, I think we don’t want to fight the market either.
Cyclical stocks and econ cycles
We all know the real estate and commodities (oil, gas, metal, etc) tend to be cyclical: boom bust and so on. To some extent, the internet and software stocks too. If one bought the $AMZN or $MSFT at the high in year 2000, it would take many years (maybe 15) to get back even. For $CSCO (Cisco), it never reached its high (about $77 on March 31, 2000), more than 22 years later. This is due to the “irrational exuberance” as Allen Greenspan said. And comparing that to $AAPL (Apple). Is Apple at the Cisco moment in March 2000 now? I recall I got my 1st job in March 18, 2000 and Nasdaq hit its dot com high on March 20, 2000 (over 5,000). I don’t know. We don’t know. We only know after 22 years 🙂
Btw, I listen to this amazing background music (FLYING OVER JAPAN (4K UHD) Amazing Beautiful Nature Scenery with Relaxing Music | 4K VIDEO ULTRA HD) on Youtube when write this.
Last but not least, listen to this word from the Oracle of Omaha.
Last but not least, the YTD performance of S&P 500 individual companies stocks. Interestingly I have the best performer of last year $DVN #Devon Energy and this year $OXY #Occidental Petroleum. Guess who is the worst performer in S&P YTD? Hint: it’s a familiar name and a former high flyer.
First let me get the Cryptos out of the way.
Oil:
also
Btw, I sense the current market probably wiped out a lot of new retail investors (home gamers in Jim Cramer’s words), or many new Robinhood app users.
Last but not least, is this transitory?
(06-17-1023) (STL Business Journal) Matt Crisp, who co-founded Benson Hill, out as CEO of the publicly traded firm. Quote the article:
Crisp received total compensation of $17.1 million for 2022, including a base salary of $613,462 as well as stock awards and incentive plan compensation.
Benson Hill has recently enacted a “liquidity improvement plan” aimed at reducing costs and improving cash flow, with Benson Hill setting a target of achieving profitability by 2025. Initiatives that Benson Hill has outlined to improve liquidity include refinancing “high-cost” debt, trimming operating costs, staffing cuts, and exploring a possible sale of a soybean crushing facility it owns in Seymour, Indiana.
My quick comment: the CEOs got the usual gold parachute. For investors, not so much. Again quote: Since going public, Benson Hill has rapidly grown its revenue but has operated with losses. Its share price has also sagged since becoming publicly traded, down significantly from its starting point of $10 per share to close Thursday at $1.19 per share.
(05-11-2023) The Q1, 2023 results are here. It looks like they burned about $38 m cash. They still have about $110 liquidity (cash + marketable securities) per page 19. One thing I am not 100% is on page 20, they were saying “Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash, end of period $ 41,107”, that cash equivalent may include “Current assets held for sale” in page 19. Anyway in about 2 to 3 quarters, they may run out of cash. It seems the stock rallied in last 2 days after earning report though.
(01-03-2023) The Q3 results is here. It looks like they burned about $49 m cash, and they have $30 m cash on hand. Keep in mind they came to market via SPAC and in last year or 2 SPAC bubble pretty much busted. Another example is Nextdoor ($KIND). Note the marketable security position is the same: still about $163 m. Also, it seems they may issue new shares down the road (quote from the Q3 release again): “The Company also filed a registration statement to put in place an At-The-Market (“ATM”) facility for up to $100 million. Once effective, the ATM facility is expected to provide additional flexibility to supplement the Company’s cash position over the next two to three years.”
(Update 09-20-2022) They released the q2 results. It looks like they burned about $50 mil cash in q2 and I also noticed they do have some marketable securities: worth $163 m. They also made an announcement on the ADM partnership news. I am staying away from them for now.
(Original 05-25-2022) They are across the street neighbor (linkedIn, web page, career page, current openings, Investor Relations, google finance stock).
Some readings
Latest 10-Q for the 3 months ends at 03/31/2022; investor presentation April 2022; investor presentation June 2021). They seems to have cash to sustain two quarters (source: from 10-Q page 8 we can see $53.2 m being used in operation in Q1, and they have $104 m cash on hand at the end of the Q.
Earning call transcript (seekingalpha)
“The total reported mark-to-market loss was approximately $13 million, with $5 million realized during the quarter for settlement of contracts corresponding to higher price sales in the quarter…Lastly, use of cash to fund our operations during the quarter was $53 million, which included a temporary timing effect of approximately $15 million for the margin calls on the mark-to-market losses in the quarter…” || #MajorsTake: it sounds like they are buying soy beans and do some food processing. Assuming they sold the processed material to the brand name or store name food makers. In terms of food chain (figuratively speaking) or business model, this is not the top of the food chain.
The PIPE news
It’s combined with the full year 2021 results news release, quote below: Today, Benson Hill also announced that it has entered into definitive agreements with certain investors for a PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity) offering of common stock and warrants to purchase common stock, which delivered approximately $85 million in gross proceeds. The Company intends to use the proceeds from the transaction to help fund its ongoing business growth, namely in its Ingredients segment...
The definitive agreements define the issuance and sale of 26,150,000 units at a purchase price of $3.25 per unit in a private placement. Each unit consisted of one share of the Company’s common stock, par value $0.0001 per share, and a warrant to purchase one-third of one share of the Company’s common stock. In the aggregate, 8,716,661 shares of the Company’s common stock are underlying the warrants.
The warrants have an exercise price of $3.90 per share of common stock (subject to customary adjustments), were exercisable upon issuance, and will expire on March 25, 2027. Each warrant is redeemable by the Company for $0.10 upon the Company’s common stock trading greater than $9.75 per share for 20 of 30 consecutive trading days.
Impact of Russia / Ukraine war
Because both are main grain producer / exporter of the world, Benson Hill plant based food (mainly soy beans) seems poised to benefit from the war, ironically. “Benefit from war” is cringy to me, to say the least.
More info: Benson Hill | A SPAC to solve world hunger?!
2021 Letter to shareholder (dated 05/09/2022 by CEO Matt Crisp)
My comments: right now as of 06-08-2022, this is still on “too good to be true” or “too hard to understand” people. However, I am holding a small position and trying to understand it better.
“Founded in 2012 by two pioneering researchers in the photosynthesis field, Andrew Benson and Robin Hill, Benson Hill Biosystems is an agricultural solutions company dedicated to increasing crop yield primarily by increasing photosynthetic efficiency and carbon fixation. Benson Hill employs an integrated approach of computational and systems biology, bioinformatics, synthetic biology, and next-generation phenotyping, which afford it significant advantages in the field of intrinsic yield.” (source: BENSON HILL BIO INCREASES TOTAL FUNDING TO $34.7 MILLION)
Last but not least: couple YouTube videos below. The first one (business wire) sounds a bit like infomercials to me, when I watched it.
This one has a bit more analysis.
Overall, I don’t like companies used AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) too much in its pitching deck. For that matter, big data, data science and in a promotional video.
Link to all videos; course overview page.
I saw the first video (Introduction, Financial Terms and Concepts) a while ago. Some background on instructor Dr. Jake Xia.
Portfolio Management (also by Jake Xia)
The stock market continued its downward trend this past week, and on Friday, S&P 500 went down 20% from the beginning of the year, and it officially tested the bear market (20% down is a measurement of bear market). But, per other measures, such as Schiller PE, it’s 36 as of 04-01-2022 (may down a bit since then), and historically this PE is still quite high. Some people are expecting the giants such as Apple $APPL (I heard it’s 7% of S&P 500, and 13% of Nasdaq 100), and Microsoft $MSFT to fall, before the capitulation.
I don’t know. Predicting market is a fool’s game. Predicting individual stock’s near term performance is hard too. For Apple, in particular, it will experience some fall out from the manufacturing / logistics challenges in China (mainly around Shanghai zero covid extended lockdown), as well as weakened demand from Europe (war in Ukraine), China (again Covid policy and economy slowdown), and the US (rising gas price, and we saw the fallout from Target $TGT and Walmart $WMT earnings last week).
Apple Fitness+
I tried Apple Fitness+ the second time. As the old saying goes, second time is a charm. Plus this time I got Apple Music from the Apple One subscription as well. It works better for me when I tried “Time to Run”, and I picked the Charleston themed music and picture. I cancelled the Peloton sub recently, and I think I will likely stick to the Apple Fitness+: start with walk and run, and maybe expand to meditation and Yoga later on. Btw, talking about Yoga, I recall JCC (the J) will restart pool side Yoga on Saturday morning again: after 3 years due to pandemic in last 2 years.
Youtube Videos
I watched quite a bit of those last few weeks. Topic varies from Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meetings over the years, to travel or city vlogs, and other business / investing related topics as well. I listened to some old pop songs I listened when I was in college too (陳淑樺 Sarah Chen; 梁靜茹 Fish Leong): sometimes YouTube will reminds me try YouTube music if the same playlist is available there, and potentially it could save me some data if I am on the cell phone data plan.
老范讲故事: I like this channel. Interestingly enough: first time I saw his video, he was talking about why Coca-Cola is more popular than Pepsi Cola during Shanghai lockdown. He is former developer (Borland), development relationship, investor relations (Cheetah Mobile), and VC. He is about my age.
I heard a lot of inflation talk among friends recently. I think the CPI data kinda confirms it. The gas and food prices went up a lot in recent months. Last time we saw $4 a gallon gasoline, it was about 2012 or 10 years ago. The answer to “whom to blame” question, like many things in this country, depends on “to whom” you ask this question. Once I saw a small Biden sticker at local Sam’s Club gas station, the point the sticker trying to convey is “the high gas price is all president Biden’s fault”. I think the real answer is more nuisance, and I think it’s largely supply and demand. For the crude oil, the Russia and Ukraine war, aka. Putin is to blame, because he started the war. But again this can get political quite easily. There are a lot of supporter of Putin in this world, unfortunately. Then there is the refinery cost. I think recently the refiners are adjusting from the winter to summer (they need to tune their refineries), and this cause some disruption and could reduce the output too. Diesel is in similar situation as gasoline. Note the crude oil, fuel cost etc is a part of cost for many other things such as fertilizers, transportations (cars, trucks, rails and airplanes) and so on. So there is the secondary effect (tangential effect) from the rising oil prices. Last but not least, inflation adjusted, the gas price seems flat in the US for last 40+ years.
Gasoline and diesel aside (and the war), other factors I can think of is the supply chain issue, and related China zero covid policy did not help here either. Then there is this labor shortage in the US due to pandemic, basically the people doing the physical labor were a bit hard to find especially in the early phase of pandemic due to various reasons: some people got Covid; some people got money from the government to stay at home for quite a while; at the same time the demand actually increased since pandemic, here is a good example at Starbucks. I saw similar situation at local Chipotle’s and Pot’s Belly. People are now used to order online via mobile phone.
Last and definitely not the least, the Federal Reserve. I think they have been accommodating the stock market for too long since 2008 financial crisis, and they did buy too much assets, printed too much money to prop up the economy artificially since March 2020 pandemic shutdown. Note the money was made way to the real economy via congress, via various rescue packages since March 2020 (both presidents), or President Biden’s infrastructure plan.
How to counter the inflation? For that I would borrow Warren Buffett’s idea. Blame someone else does not help in the real world, on the other hand, if we can make us more valuable to others, and live below the means, we will get desired outcome.
Indoctrination (powered by Oxford Language): the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically. When I grew up in China, I recall my first Chinese lesson is “Chairman Mao lives always in our heart” （毛主席永远活在我们心中）。I recall the time when Chairman Mao passed away: when I was about 5. That’s the first time I recall I knew someone passed away. And I can feel the sorrow and uneasiness of the grownups around me: the sad music in the broadcast, and people are rushing to make white paper flower and 黑袖章 (black armband).
Fast forward to 1997 to 1999, I came to the US, and to be more specific, Rolla, Missouri, for graduate school. I went to church for a while, mostly for social reasons, but sometimes I did have some other worries too: such as find a job or get the sought after H-1b visa. The belief system or some people literally follow every word on the bible initially puzzled me but now when I heard about there is a similar movement in the Chinese textbooks nowadays, especially on the natural science (math and science), I think I found a common thread between the two. This, along with what I saw in terms of the different attitude toward science, medicine, masks, vaccines, etc. during the last 2 years’ of pandemic, made me to think many people are indoctrinated or manipulated. This include my own extended family members too.
The key to growth, though, is always be open minded, listen to the facts on the ground, as well as scientific findings, rather than some pseudo facts, half truth, but it’s always easily said than done. We have seen a lot of silliness in the Missouri legislature too. For example, this one in which Missouri legislature says pharmacists should not express opinion on the horse dewormer.
My comments are: 1) We live in an interesting time now; 2) We can only influence those who are willing to listen.
Interesting YouTube videos
Wang Jianlin at Harvard Business School, Going Global the “Wanda” Way (No Subtitles): I like his comment and thought on giving manager autonomy (don’t do micro management), among other things. Mostly are Q&As, not much speech / talk. (In Chinese, Wiki, NetEase).