Categories
Economy

My thoughts on US healthcare reform: II

Reading Time: 3 minutes

When I first came to the US in fall 1997, I bought the university healthcare insurance plan, which is pretty basic, and pretty cheap. I don’t have a primary physician, and I never went to the university clinic (part of the reason was I don’t know how to say those medical terms in English, part of reason is I did not have major illness). I did take one of my fellow graduate student to the University hospital at Columbia, Missouri, and was very impressed by the facilities. Hey the hospital in the US looks much better than China: less crowded, clean, new facilities etc.

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Web

Order Domino’s pizza online

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Through the years I have bought books, digital cameras, computers, mouse, shoes and many other things on the web, from Amazon, eBay, buy.com, Sears, Zappos and so on. In some stores I could pick up the merchadise at the store (Sears, for one). I did that at Circuit City before its bankrupcy.

But today is my first time to order Pizza online. In the past, what I usually do is call the store, tell them what I want (usually I have a coupon). Today I decided to do something different (I don’t have a coupon anyway). So I went to Domino’s at around 11:25 AM. The steps are pretty straight forward.

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Investing

Huntsman Corp

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Huntsman corp (NYSE:HUN) is a specialty chemical maker in the US, with operations all over the world. It was founded by Jon M. Huntsman in 1970.

Huntsman settles lawsuit with Apollo and banks
June 25 2009, SEC filing 8-K regarding settlement with banks.

Dec 15 2008, SEC filing 8-K regarding settlement with Apollo Group.

Matlin Paterson, who owns a big chunk of Huntsman stocks, sold his stake in 2007 (in hindsight, that’s a good price. Source: Yahoo Finance; Forbes). It seems he still has a significant stake though (source: MSN MoneyCentral, HMP Equity Trust).

Jon Huntsman (father, founder and chairman) and Peter Huntsman (son, CEO) on Fox Business News (link here)

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Categories
earning Fun Video

EBITDA explained to children

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courtesy of CNN UK (CNN video link no longer available, here is a text link on LinkedIn, LinkedIn registeration needed): translating financial jargon into plain English, CNN’s Jim Boulden tackles EBITDA and a classroom of children.

EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.

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Categories
Life Life Tips

A tragedy related to iPhone

Reading Time: 2 minutes

(CNET) Chinese authorities probe iPhone worker’s death

(PCWorld) iPhone Suicide Case Spotlights Tech’s Dark Side

Apparently many foreign media can not understand why a guy will jump off the building just because the iPhone he was in charge went missing? Well, it appears to me there are two factors:

1) It’s very very hard to get a good job for new graduates in China these days. Thus they join Foxconn, the “sweater shop” if you will. Not much rights once you join that shop. I suggest my western friends go there once and get some real world experience on sweater shop before express their views.

2) He was tortured. Again remember Foxconn is a “sweater shop” happens making iPhone.

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Economy

My thoughts on US healthcare reform

Reading Time: < 1 minute

This topic is heating up in recent days. I think there are a lot of mis-understandings and mis-conception on this. One is a lot people think medicare is inefficient, I have not used medicare but it seems quite efficient in reality.

Obama healthcare reform pic
(Source: economist)

The bottom line is healthcare boils down to two issue:

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Categories
Web

Google finance new interface, dividend screener

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Google finance released the new interface last week. I did not feel comfortable with it at first sight, but after reading its explaination and spent some time on it, I am feeling more comfortable with it now. One quick thing, those who are interested in financial statements may complain where is the good old financial statement for a particular stock? Again check top left panel (a lot goodies there), click on “financials” you will see the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow. In other words, they did not take away anything, my guess is they try to add new things and present the information better. Another minor feature is: they finally added the opening price of a stock, in the past, they only have stock closing price. This is not revolutionary, but something nice to have. On a related matter, now you can see their monthly stock chart in real fashion. In the past they merely connect the closing price of each day, which is still the case with 3 month (or longer) stock chart.

Dividend stock screener
Since I am talking dividend recently, I am creating this stock screener. Criteria:

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Categories
earning

One caution note on dividend paying ADR stocks

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Was listening to WealthTrack podcasting in the weekend, and Westwood Holdings CIO Susan Byrne mentioned some European dividend paying stocks (Nestle, Danone, Novartis etc), which reminded me one thing. Not all dividends are equal. As I recall, I bought Sygenta (NYSE: SYN), the Swiss agriculture stock last year, and my broker withhold some of the dividend. Although I did claimed deduction from income in the tax return, I was not happy I did not receive the dividend at first place.

Barron’s had an article on some large European companies earlier this year, and here is the dividend table. Looks quite enticing:

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Categories
gadgets

FStream is very good

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I was looking for an iPhone radio stream (particularly wma format because it seems middle kingdom likes this Microsoft audio format), and I found this FStream at iTune store to be good. After I set up the following:

北京人民广播电台首都生活 (Beijing Radio)
mms://alive.bjradio.com.cn/AM603
format: wma
rate: 64 k/sec

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Categories
Investing video

WealthTrack

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I found this program when doing research for Huntsman (NYSE:HUN). I found value investor Jean Marie Eveillard has a little of Huntsman stocks at gurufocus. Noticed there are some video clips for Jean Eveillard in this gurufocus web page, including one from YouTube.

So I looked around and found this program.

WealthTrack Podcast
Here is the web site: www.wealthtrack.com

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