Categories
401k and Personal Finance Investing

Close AMZN puts, Portfolio update

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I closed the Amazon Feb $65 puts last Wed, when I saw the stock dropped to around $68, which is the low point the day after it released Q4 earning.

Lesson learned:
1) short/put a stock is much harder than I thought. I started this trade because I saw EDU, AAPL, and VMW all dropped big after missing earning. But I have hind-sight bias on them: things are always clearer on rear view mirror. I did not know EDU will issue a so-so guidance for this Q; I did not know iPod suddenly stopped growth, iPhone did not sell as fast as Steve wanted, and Mac computers are expensive considering consumer slow down.

Categories
China Stocks

China ADR crashed

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(Update) Halter US China Index closed down 7.89% and FXI down 7.55%. China Mobile (CHL), a major component of both index, is down 7.79% today.

FXI (FTSE Xinhua 25) dropped 7.23% as of now 11:27 AM US CST.

Halter US China Index (web site), which is more broad based Chinese ADRs traded in the US (although PetroChina, China Mobile has a bigger weight), dropped 7%.

And last but not least, trader818 China ADR index, dropped 8.4%.

Sounds a lot like the Feb 28, 2007, except the bear comes early this year. Although the general US market also dropped a lot, this Chinese drop seems a bit excessive. I unloaded some LFT today (yes I decided to take the bite, rather than hanging there dead). I think going forward small cap Chinese ADRs, especially newly listed IPOs, will perform wose than the large cap ones. Just like the “2-8” and “8-2” phenomena in China domestic market, when things are uncertain, stay with the big guys 🙂

Categories
China Stocks

Got some China Mobile

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I decided to buy some China Mobile shares, after did some reading in the weekend. Today’s news is China Mobile walked away from Apple regarding iPhone, cool. Since I placed a limited order ($85.25) last night, I got it at $84.22 shortly after it started trading.

Two things: China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HK:0941) is not cheap, at PE 33 and a market cap of about $340 b (Yahoo and Google Finance), it is the biggest mobile operator in the world. It has around 362 m subscribers (end of Nov 2007, according to its web site). Note the stock price has gone up 100% in 2007, and about 80% in 2006.

On the other hand, China Mobile is growing at around 20% top and bottom line. For a company of that size, it’s not easy. And one nice thing about it, it does not carry as much risk as other Chinese ADRs (say LFC, or PTR). This is important in current uncertain economy and market environment; and relevant for me after I suffered the paper loss from CROX and LFT. I believe people (especially young people) in China will use their mobile phone talk to their friends, text messaging, get to Internet…even if Chinese economy slows down after Olympics, as many people expected (which I don’t agree).