stlplaceBarrons has an article on solar plays, specifically it mentioned First Solar recent China project may not hold water. Interesting observation. I don’t know all the facts, but being curious, I listed some stuff here.
That’s exactly how I did with Shanda Games (Nasdaq:GAME) IPO today. Shanda is not new to me. I lost money on this one three years ago (see my old stock lesson here). I am not bitter about losing money either. Because after about 5 (6) years in US stock market, especially the roller coaster ride in the past year, I started trying to get emotion of making/losing money out of the stock game, I am not perfect yet but making progress.
One lesson I should learn is trust my own gut. The spin off of Shanda Games seems odd to me, because from business point of view, typically companies spin off non-core business, like Sohu/Changyou (Nasdaq:CYOU), EMC/VMWare (NYSE:VMW). The Shanda spin off looks like a secondary offering of Shanda Entertainment itself, because Online Game is its core business. Although Shanda (Nasdaq:SNDA) had committed itself to other ventures, including at one point use a sloan like “become China’s own Disney”. It has not make real inroad in other online business yet. Except made some money buying and selling Sina stocks couple years ago.
“Be Greedy When Others Are Fearful”: Why Buffett Didn’t Buy More at the Bottom (Yahoo Tech-ticker)
More importantly, I think controlling one’s emotion is key in this market (like yesterday and today :-(. Obviously easily said than done. Yesterday I read the WSJ top page story on people trading AIG stock, most of them lost money eventually (I believe so, at least most people gave back the gains). Trading AIG stock is an extreme example, because of its volatility in last month (August).
Other lessons from Mr. Buffett:
(Google finance NYSE:BPO) company web site
Wikipedia: link
Brookfield Properties Corporation (TSX: BPO, NYSE: BPO) is a Toronto-based North American commercial real estate company. Brookfield Asset Management owns 50% of its outstanding common shares.
Brookfield owns, manages and develops premier office properties in the downtown core of New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, Toronto, Calgary, Ottawa, and Vancouver. Brookfield’s properties include One Liberty Plaza and the World Financial Center in New York City; Brookfield Place (formerly BCE Place), First Canadian Place, and Queen’s Quay Terminal in Toronto; Canadian Western Bank Place and Enbridge Tower in Edmonton; Suncor Energy Centre, Fifth Avenue Place, Altius Centre, Herald Building, and Bankers Hall in Calgary; and Royal Centre in Vancouver. It also operates real estate service businesses and has a land-development business primarily based in Canada.
Secondary offering August 12
(From Reuters) Brookfield Properties Corp. Prices $900 Million Common Share Offering
Wednesday, 12 Aug 2009 10:23am EDT (F-10 here)
Warren was asked about Healthcare reform at Fortune Most Powerful Women’s conference.
I have NOT added any new money to my brokrage account since Sept 15 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse, so it’s easier to calculate the performance of my portfolio (+25%, from Sept 30 2009 to today Sept 14 2009), and compare to benchmark (S&P -16.75%, from Sept 15 2008 to Sept 14 2009). We can not predict catastropic events, if we really want to predict future or talk about any lessons for industry, I think one thing is clear:
one either becomes too big to fail (like AIG), or becomes the first to fail (like Bear Stearns), the last thing one wants to be is being No. 4 investment bank, leverage heavily and caught in the financial and political turmoil. We all know the day before Lehman fall, Merril Lynch (No. 3 investment bank) got bought by B of A, and shortly after that No. 1 Goldman and No. 2 Morgan Stanely converted into bank holding company.
For me personally, I can think of the following.
Buy and hold, long term investing? I hold CROX from $75 to $20, hoping for a rebounce. It never came. Sometimes we got to trade stocks to take advantage of price volatility (up and downs). I was successful on this aspect from time to time, especially since the stock rally started this March. I made some money back from NRG Energy (NYSE:NRG) and Huntsman (NYSE:HUN), to cover the loss from holding Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B). Here again the lesson of “buy and hold”, even for a good company like Berkshire, I bought it at wrong time (April, May 2008).
BRK.B Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Buy Apr 9, 2008 1.00 4,349.89 7.00
BRK.B Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Buy May 12, 2008 1.00 4,130.00 7.00
BRK.B Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Sell Mar 23, 2009 1.00 2,894.25 7.00
BRK.B Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Sell Mar 26, 2009 1.00 2,939.51 7.00
Pros and Cons of low cost trading: Sogotrade
(Update 22Sept09) Sold all my SVA shares. The stock is trading at bubble price and it is very speculative. Initially I made some money, but I gave it all back and then lost some. So the lesson here is don’t overpay for “hot” stocks.
(Update 14Sept09) Sansar Capital (Sanjay Motwani), the hedge fund who is also the largest shareholder of Sinavac, sold a bunch following the run up of the stock. See SEC 13G filing here. He still holds 1,238,042 shares (2.9% of all outstanding shares) according to this Sept 10 report. He has twice more on June 30 report SANSAR CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LLC 2,953,503 6.89 $11,666,336 30-Jun-09 (Source: yahoo finance)
(Original) When I was a little kid, village doctors will come and give free vaccinations. Because I was scared of the pinch of needle, I would ask my grandma shut the door (not open) and begin to hide when I heard doctor is coming. Things changed after I started attending school, I will be quitely taking the shot when the doctor comes to class giving vaccinations, as I was the president of the class (have to make an example of myself).
(Source: PrisonPlanet: notice the number of death from H1N1 has risen since the July)
Vaccinations are a wonderful thing. As I read from HowVaccinesWorks, many lives have been saved, and many more illness have been prevented. I am glad to learn this is still free to children in China (according to Wang Jianshuo).
Went to St. John’s Mercy hospital last week, accompanying my wife for the baby ultrasound thing. I am familar with St. John’s because I went there couple times before (once was I hurt myself during roller blade skating, and I had to get two stitches there).
As I said in my previous healthcare reform post, 10 years ago I was amazed by the good conditions of University of Missouri hospital (Columbia) because it’s clean and it’s just not like hospital (my impression of hospital back in China, read Went to Children’s Hospital – Refugee Camp from Wang Jianshuo and you will know. More recently he wrote Hospital is Badly Needed). This time I had similar feeling about St. John’s. Now they got Wifi so theoretically we can work from hospital cafeteria. I even told my wife does they have openings.
eBay agreed to sell a majority stake of Skype to a consortium of private investors lead by Silver Lake Partners. (WSJ: EBay CEO: Skype Investors “Confident” of Work-Around Software, get it from Google if necessary).
Silver lake is not new to me. Because they bought Seagate, and my former employer (hint: a major CAD/PLM software company) and made money from both (WSJ: Silver Lake’s Skype Deal Resembles Its Seagate Investment). See more of their investments here.