May 1, 2007
Stock Du Jour (IOTN) & Random ObservationsSelling from the start in the morning, quite mild until the afternoon when things got extremely nasty. Ugly, with small caps hit especially hard. Lots of Financials and Regional Banks on the new lows list. International Securities Exchange (ISE) bought out, eh? If Deutsche Boerse locks up the extremely valuable ISE Sentiment Index, I’m going to scream.
Ionatron was the stock du jour, going the opposite direction of the broad tape. A good way to lose money if you’re day trading is to ignore the direction of the broad market.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070430iotn15.png
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Cat:[*]Stocks | Time: 8:09 am (utc+8) Comments (8)
April 30, 2007
Chalco.com Triples on Shanghai DebutChalco’s Shanghai Stock Gains Threefold on Its Debut, by Helen Yuan
Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd., China’s biggest aluminum maker, also known as Chalco, rose as high as 20.07 yuan from its issue price of 6.6 yuan.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/chalcodebut480.GIF
Click to enlarge
Every day in every way things are getting crazier and crazier and crazier. ;-)
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Cat:[*]China[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 6:17 pm (utc+8) Comments (14)
April 29, 2007
Mad for MadrasI’m considering buying a pair of these pants. Any thoughts?
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/vibrantpatch.jpg
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 9:52 pm (utc+8) Comments (47)
For Dummies Considering Trading OptionsReader “Born2Code” left this comment in a recent post that intrigued me:
“If you are looking for a day trade and you have a dummy entry you can use the exact setup to enter ATM (or ITM) front month calls.”
Is this a good idea? I tried to get the data off the Bloomberg to draw an overlay chart (option on top of stock), but I couldn’t. I’m an old fart like Sandy Weill so if anyone can tell me how to export intraday options data from the Bloomberg I’d be much obliged. Anyway, I just grabbed some screenshots instead.
So here we have the call summary page which has Delta, Gamma, Vega, but no (Catherine) Zeta (-Jones), alas.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/amzncalls480.GIF
Click to enlarge
OK, enough fooling around, let’s look at the 1-minute chart of the AMZN May 55 Calls. That, my friends, is a chart which makes me break into a cold sweat just squinting at it because there’s nothing happening there. Sure I screwed up and didn’t grab the whole day’s chart, but you get the idea.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/zqnek1480.GIF
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Now to be fair we can look at it from a volume at price perspective for a better view of the action, seeing exactly where those 2,964 contracts traded.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/zqnekh480.GIF
Click to enlarge
Still I’m not comfortable with the idea of using options to trade dummy spots. I’ll keep thinking about it, and I’ll try not to be such a fuddy-duddy — I’m trying to keep an open mind. Comments about the (de)merits of Dummies trading options are most welcome!
UPDATE:
Here’s the 15-minute chart for the May 55 calls over Thursday and Friday. You can see that the action on the 26th (Thursday) was pretty good, but the 27th (Friday) looks just awful. They would get you coming and going if you tried to be an options Dummy that day.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/zqn15480.GIF
Click to enlarge
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 3:54 pm (utc+8) Comments (19)
The Name is Steinhardt, Michael SteinhardtThis line from an interview in this week’s Barron’s made me laugh out loud:
Back when he started, says, hedge-fund chiefs were members of “a very limited, elite group that had mystery and excitement and élan. Now, it’s all about making money for the managers.”
I think there’s still plenty of élan and excitement around, but I’m not sure about the mystery. And it was always about the money. Anyway, later in the article he redeems himself by saying something I totally agree with:
“Mutual funds have been a disgrace, and if they were really measured in terms of their real performance, the disgrace would be much bigger.”
Good thing an unwitting public doesn’t know they’re being shaken and stirred. Maybe there’s our missing mystery.
The main interview in this week’s issue was with someone named Charles Hess whose firm is called Inferential Analysis. Here’s one of his inferences: In an insecure world people need to maintain their sanity… preferably through getting more sleep… so they will spend money on replacing their mattresses. No word on what he charges “an elite group of financial institutions and hedge funds and multinational corporations” for this kind of deep thinking.
And China did not knock “one of our satellites out of the air in October,” as Hess said, they knocked out one of their own. A petty detail for someone obviously focused on “mega-trends,” but it would have been a wee little bit more of a problem had it been one of ours.
I did learn one interesting thing from the interview and here it is:
“The Web-TV series and podcast, Diggnation, features two guys sitting with laptops and talking about technology. But they attract 250,000 viewers and have 15 sponsors paying $10,000 each per episode to place products like beer and tea on the show. Adagio Teas sold $100,000 of tea after the two hosts plugged the tea on the show.”
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 11:22 am (utc+8) Comments (0)
April 28, 2007
Gratuitous Cute Chick Pic — April 27, 2007
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/alnaka.jpg
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 8:18 pm (utc+8) Comments Off
Best & Worst Relative Performance — Week Ending April 27, 2007Oil Services, the Q’s, and Semis all outperformed …
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070427rpbest.png
… while Gold, Retail, and Regional Banks were relative underperformers.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070427rpworst.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:00 pm (utc+8) Comments (0)
Looking for Another Bill RuaneWant to Be Next Warren Buffett? by Karen Richardson (W$J, but link may work)
“ will have little to judge on but their words, personal and private investment records — and his gut reaction to them. Mr. Buffett says he is confident that he will find one, and maybe two successful candidates. Famous for buying companies after brief meetings with owners, Mr. Buffett prides himself on being able to read strangers quickly … plans to hand up to $10 billion to manage until it is time for them to take over the entire portfolio. Mr. Buffett explains that the purpose of the trial run is ‘to see if their decision-making apparatus works out, hopefully while I’m still alive.’”
I was reminded of this bit (paraphrased) from the Louis Simpson profile:
In 1979 Geico’s chairman, John J. Byrne, sent several candidates to see Mr. Buffett about the chief investment officer job. After a four-hour interview with Mr. Simpson, Mr. Buffett called Mr. Byrne. “Stop the search,” Mr. Bryne recalled him saying. “That’s the fellow.”
That was a good decision; let’s hope Buffett can find someone equally “unfancy.”
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 5:39 pm (utc+8) Comments (4)
Stock Du Jour (BIDU) & Random ObservationsPoor tone all day, not a great time for the longs. A few notables from the new lows list: Southwest Airlines (LUV), Rackable Systems (RACK), and OmniCare (OCR).
Baidu.com (BIDU) was the stock du jour though it would’ve been darn tough to make a dime there.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070427bidu15.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 7:08 am (utc+8) Comments (6)
April 27, 2007
Baltic Exchange Capesize Index Moves to New HighHigh demand, high growth, high… inflation?
Baltic Exchange Capesize Index (BCI) - 11 daily Capesize vessel assessments including voyage and time charter rates.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070425bciyd.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/capesize.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:09 am (utc+8) Comments (4)
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April 27, 2007
Stock Du Jour (AMZN + Long-term Perspective) & Random ObservationsAlong with all the usual Short and UltraShort ETFs, there’s Ballard Power Systems (BLDP) on the new lows list. (Check out the PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy ETF (PBW) if you’re interested in exposure to that sector).
Homebuilders jumped nicely… meanwhile some jerk’s lowball limit order is sitting in there.
AMZN was the stock du jour (again) doing over 175,000 trades and moving up smartly.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070426amzn15.png
Here’s a monthly chart of Amazon.com since it came public back in August 1997 to give you a better long-term perspective.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070426amznm.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:44 am (utc+8) Comments (24)
April 26, 2007
Louis Simpson: Unfancy Man with Fancy ReturnsA Maestro of Investments in the Style of Buffett, by G. Fabrikant
A rare interview with Geico’s Louis Simpson:
“I have always felt I could do a better job in adding value by being somewhat removed from the circus and parimutuel atmosphere of the market … We are sort of the polar opposites of a lot of investors. We do a lot of thinking and not a lot of acting. A lot of investors do a lot of acting, and not a lot of thinking … If I have the Bloomberg on, I find I am looking at what the market is doing. I am looking at every news story. I really like to be the one who is parsing the information, rather than having a lot of irrelevant information thrown at me.”
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 11:22 am (utc+8) Comments (8)
Stock Du Jour (AMZN) & Random ObservationsMarket was pretty mixed in the morning but the buying kicked in around noon and was strong all afternoon. Looks like every single Short and UltraShort ETF made the new lows list. Young QID has overtaken the QQQQ — I made the point long ago, why trade the Q’s when you can double your leverage in the QID? (The QLD is not particularly liquid if you were wondering.)
Amazon (AMZN) was the stock du jour, doing over 250,000 trades. It popped after the close on Tuesday and continued up all day Wednesday.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070425amzn15.png
Young QID, star of the show, old QQQQ slinks to the sidelines on screens around the world.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070425qid15.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 7:53 am (utc+8) Comments (3)
April 25, 2007
When Elites Embrace Tabloid ValuesDavid Halberstam, back in 1999, on the sorry state of American journalism:
“… television executive producers have redefined what constitutes news — often going for stories that television likes to cover, stories which are telegenic, because they have action or are sexy or are tabloid- or scandal-driven.
We have morphed in the larger culture from a somewhat Calvinist society to an entertainment society, and that is reflected in the new norms of television journalism — where the greatest sin is not to be wrong but to be boring. Because boring means low ratings.
… gradually, but systematically, there has been an abdication of responsibility within the profession, most particularly in the networks.
Television’s gatekeepers, at a time when a fragmenting audience threatens the singular profits of the past, stopped being gatekeepers and began to look the other way on moral and ethical and journalistic issues. Less and less did they accept the old-fashioned charge for what they owed the country.
The viewpoint seemed to be — from their testing and polling — that the American people did not want to know what was going on, so why bother them with unwanted facts too soon? So, if we look at the media today, we ought to be aware not just of what we are getting, but what we are not getting; the difference between what is authentic and what is inauthentic in contemporary American life and in the world, with a warning that in this celebrity culture, the forces of the inauthentic are becoming more powerful all the time.”
“The forces of the inauthentic….” Well said! I wonder if the execrable Roger Ailes has ever thought about what he owes his country?
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Cat:[*]Internet/Media | Time: 4:57 pm (utc+8) Comments (13)
Stock Du Jour (WHR) & Random ObservationsUtilities (XLU) are like the Energizer Bunny — they just keep going and going (up).
Whirlpool (WHR) was the stock du jour moving to a new high on over nine times normal volume.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070424whr15.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 7:54 am (utc+8) Comments (3)
April 24, 2007
Spurned, He Stabs Her ThriceWhy we read (and re-read) P.G. Wodehouse:
“Mr Meggs’s home-town was no City of Pleasure. Remove the Vicar’s magic-lantern and the try-your-weight machine opposite the post office, and you practically eliminated the temptations to tread the primrose path. The only young men in the place were silent, gaping youths, at whom lunacy commissioners looked sharply and suspiciously when they met. The tango was unknown, and the one-step. The only form of dance extant — and that only at the rarest of intervals — was a sort of polka not unlike the movements of a slightly inebriated boxing kangaroo. Mr Meggs’s secretaries and typists gave the town on startled, horrified glance, and stampeded for London like frightened ponies.”
From the story, A Sea of Troubles
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 10:22 am (utc+8) Comments (3)
Stock Du Jour (CMI) & Random ObservationsChop, an absolutely perfect day to lose money trading. Lots of Regional Banks on the new lows list, including one I’ve spoken highly of here before, IBCP. And there’s poor Sirius Sat. Radio (SIRI) under $3.
MEDI bought out — given the price action since mid-March, a lot of people knew what was brewing there. Bausch & Lomb (BOL) looking fabulous — I wondered about buying it back during the “eye fungus” thing, but held off (too bad). Lots of Metals on the new highs list — the best proxy for that sector is the Metals & Mining SPDR (XME).
Cummins (CMI) was the stock du jour, moving to a new high on around five times average volume.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070423cmi15.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 6:55 am (utc+8) Comments (2)
April 23, 2007
Turkish Lira — Steady Eddie for NowLooking at a chart of the Istanbul Stock Exchange National 100 Index today reminded me of my old Mugabe posts.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070420xu100q.png
The Index looks pretty good until you look at it together with the Turkish Lira chart.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070420tryq.png
Then when you pull it all together, adjusting for Lira devaluation, you can see that the run since 2002-2003 when the Lira stabilized has been darned impressive. Currency-adjusted price charts are key.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070420xu100qa.png
Bloomberg has a great feature where you can currency-adjust any chart… see the drop-down menu in the upper-right-hand corner? Another reason why the terminal may be worth $1500 a month.
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Cat:[*]Currencies | Time: 10:09 pm (utc+8) Comments (2)
Why Technical Analysts Don’t Deserve To Be Taken SeriouslyI was bothered by this story, which was widely read today: In Case You Missed It: Charts Show Bond Rally Is Over.
Bloomberg stories are cobbled together with a bunch of quotes and data and facts, but they’re not necessarily coherent. The author gets quotes from no less than six people: John Kosar, Louise Yamada, Ed Yardeni, James Grant, Lacy Hunt, and Walter Burke. The writer tried to contact Burton Malkiel, but he was traveling, thank god. The article also mentions Bill Gross, Peter Peterson, Paul Volcker, and Alan Greenspan.
Anyway, some guy named John Kosar is quoted/paraphrased:
The turning point was so obvious that even “a five-year- old who has a ruler and a pencil can draw a line under the lows and make a determination'’ that bond yields have bottomed and are poised to climb for many years to come.
Well, this -five-year old just drew this line and I can’t determine that bond yields have bottomed, let alone “are poised to climb for many years to come.” What nonsense. It’s true that the trend has shifted in the bonds on the monthly time frame, but so what, that doesn’t mean they are “poised to climb for years to come.” No wonder “technical analysis” has such a bad name.
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Two more precious lines that entertain or annoy (depending on your mood):
“Yamada in 2001 correctly predicted 10-year Treasury yields would range between 3.5 percent and 5.5 percent for several years….”
Hooey! Isn’t it more accurate and honest to say: “Yamada in 2001 happened to guess that 10-year Treasury yields would range between 3.5 percent and 5.5 percent for several years….”
“Greenspan reduced inflation below 4 percent.”
Poppycock! Isn’t it more accurate and honest to say that “inflation fell below 4% when Alan Greenspan happened to be Federal Reserve Chairman.”
There was one useful thing to take away from the article and here it is:
“Investors who bought Treasuries in 1981 reaped almost twice the returns as those who bet on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index … The 13 1/4 percent bond due in 2014 that the government sold on May 15, 1984, returned an annualized 24 percent. The S&P 500 returned 13 percent, including dividends, during the same period.”
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:14 pm (utc+8) Comments (12)
April 22, 2007
Deploy a Little Capital, Get a Lot of ProfitGood interview with Michael Pralle, CEO of GE Real Estate, in the week’s Barron’s. He has interesting things to say about commerical real estate around the world — I found his take on Mexico (he’s super bullish) especially telling.
“Ignoring the residual value, the current yield for real estate is about 7% or 8%. And when you look out at the rest of the world, Russian debt is about 5.6%, Brazilian debt is 6.2%, and junk bonds are 7% or 8%. The 10-year Treasury yield is about 4.7%. You’re in a world where there is very, very little risk premium. When you look at what you can earn on real estate compared to what you can earn everywhere else, real estate doesn’t look that bad. It’s expensive only in a historical context, but it’s not expensive relative to the other asset classes. Besides, it’s a hard asset so it’s always going to be there.”
Another good bit:
“When I took over GE Real Estate seven years ago, I looked at the kind of profits property owners were earning — how they can deploy very little capital and get a lot more of the potential profit.
Say you have a $100 project. You might have a $75 first mortgage on it, and a $15 slice of mezzanine debt. For the last $10, you bring in an equity partner for $8 and you, as the real-estate guy, would put in $2. The way it would work is your mortgage guy ends up earning $1, the mezzanine guy would get another $1 or $1.50. The equity guy, for putting up 80% of the last $10, might get $2 or $3 or $4. But the real-estate guy putting in the $2 is getting $5 or $6.
To me, it was obvious that returns were accruing to the people who own and operate real estate. In fact, 85% of all profit in global real estate is made in owning real estate.”
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 3:51 pm (utc+8) Comments (12)
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Bubble in BelgradeThe year-to-date return in the Belex 15 Index caught my eye, so I thought I’d post a chart. Visit the Belgrade Stock Exchange’s very nice website.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070420belex15.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:13 am (utc+8) Comments (3)
Stock Du Jour (EPCT) & Random ObservationsVery strong day of buying so my new lows list is filled with UltraShort ETFs and one of my favorites from the dot com era: Stamps.com. Those of us with a long and good memory for prices remember old STMP at $98.50 in November 1999 and at $2.10 in September 2001 — it’s now $12.85. ;-)
The new highs list is too long to talk about, but there’s old Exxon (XOM) leading the way.
EpiCept (EPCT) was the stock du jour. It more or less doubled in the pre-open session and then went blah the rest of the day, no delight in dummyville.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070420epct15.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:00 am (utc+8) Comments (0)
15 Ideas Portfolio UpdateHere’s a screenshot of how the 15 Ideas portfolio is doing. It’s still underperforming the S&P 500, but on a total return basis it may actually be doing better (all 15 Ideas were hefty dividend payers). Thanks again to my many generous donors who threw me a bone.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/2007042015ideas.png
Related: 15 Ideas Portfolio screenshot, March 22, 2007
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 7:39 am (utc+8) Comments (4)
April 20, 2007
Both Greeks and Japanese Lie About Their Sex LivesOne of the best functions on the Bloomberg is being able to see what the “Most Read” news stories are over various time periods (one hour, eight hours, one day, one week, etc.). Over the last week one of the most popular stories has been: Greeks Have the Most Sex, Japanese the Least (data provided by Durex’s Global Sex Survey).
The survey reported that Greeks report the most sex (87% have sex weekly) and Japanese have the least (34% have sex weekly). But the table that accompanied the story included the birth rates for all countries surveyed, and this revealed that Greece and Japan are tied at 9 per 1,000.
Greeks are boasters, yes? And Japanese are probably pretty reticent when talking about their sex lives, yes? Isn’t the right conclusion on these sex surveys: garbage in, garbage out?
(Aside: The single most read story over the last year was this one from last September: Amaranth Says Funds Lost 50% This Month on Gas Trades. Three of the top 15 most read stories over the past year were related to Amaranth. And anything written about bonuses on Wall Street is guaranteed to make the most read list, lol.)
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 5:14 pm (utc+8) Comments (0)
Jim Grant Calls Top #28,378It’s a good thing my friend John reads Jim Grant at Forbes. By faithfully reading ControlledGreed’s feed, I’m alerted to things written by people like Grant who (foolishly) don’t have RSS feeds. I would add Grant (and Dreman) to my feed reader in a heartbeat if I could. Anyway, enough kvetching about dumb publishers who refuse to adapt.
Grant’s column is titled REIT bubble. Here are the key bits:
“At the low March 2000 valuations REIT investors had that sleep-enhancing cushion known as a margin of safety. At the much, much higher prices now prevailing, they have no such protection, only the smug knowledge of past returns … the Bloomberg REIT index yields a mere 4%, a discount of 0.6 percentage points to the ten-year Treasury note–and a most expressive contrast to the REIT’s 8.1% yield in March 2000, which at the time was a two-point premium to the ten-year note.”
True, but calling a top is something that only guys who put out $850 a year newsletters can harmlessly engage in.
Last July I wrote a post called REITs Still Outperforming After All These Years, an excerpt:
Folks with long memories know that the REITs were totally out of favor and huge underperformers in 1998 and 1999. But when the bubble burst in the first quarter of 2000, people who were paying attention noticed that the sector was strong as everything else came crashing down.
Savvy investors shifted into REITs in May 2000 and held until April/May 2004 when they were shaken out. It didn’t take long for the trend to reassert itself though — long positions were reestablished in June 2004 and are still being held today.
… and are still being held today, though everyone is keeping a wary eye on the trend in the IYR, believe me.
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Stock Du Jour (EBAY) & Random ObservationsTough day again — OK morning but then selling hit in the afternoon and by around 2:30 things were officially ugly. Healthcare (XLV) and Big Pharma (PPH) again at new highs … Schering-Plough (SGP) especially strong with Lilly (LLY) close behind.
EBAY reported earnings after the close on Wednesday and it looks like the initial reaction as it spiked above $36.50 in after-hours trading was exactly wrong.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070419ebay15.png
AVNR was active again, no doubt trapping all the folks who blindly buy the previous day’s big mover. The worst thing that can happen to a day trader who knows what he’s doing is taking a small, pre-determined loss and moving on. The ability to manage risk is what separates professional speculators from amateur punters.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070419avnr15.png
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April 19, 2007
CMBS BBB- Spread — Putting the Recent Spike in PerspectiveI was looking for the ABX.HE indices on the Bloomberg and was surprised to learn that they don’t carry them. They do have a similar set of indices put out by Morgan Stanley (?) and here’s the chart for their Commercial Mortgage-Backed Security BBB- spread (over the 10-year Treasury).
You can see how it spiked up with the week ending March 2nd, and has continued to climb every week since. But compared with the action surrounding the Russian debt crisis back in 1998, this recent jump is a walk in the park.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070413cmbsbbbmw.png
Of interest? Commercial Mortgage Securities Association
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:53 pm (utc+8) Comments (6)
Stock Du Jour (AVNR) & Random ObservationsFlat day, terrible for day trading unless you found a super unusual suspect like Avanir (AVNR). Komag (KMAG) on the new lows list. Utilities (XLU), a bunch of railroads, and long-term holding Boeing (BA) on the new highs list.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070418avnr15.png
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April 18, 2007
British Pound — Long-term PerspectiveHere’s a quarterly chart of the British Pound since 1971. You can see why the “2″ level is considered a big deal. When we moved to London in February 2003 GBP was around 1.57 and when we left in March 2005 it was around 1.93. Dumb luck to be earning pounds then, but the long-term investments that we intentionally made in Pound-denominated stuff during those years look pretty good when we translate them back today.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070418gpbq.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:22 pm (utc+8) Comments (7)
Stock Du Jour (YHOO) & Random ObservationsTough choppy day — a good time for day traders to lose money. There’s Micron (MU) on the new lows list again. I remember seeing a report from a broker on Micron titled “How Low Can It Go?” and thinking to myself: pretty low! 15 Ideas members McDonald’s (MCD) and Lilly (LLY) on the new highs list along with that relic from the dot com era: priceline (which was definitely not one of my ideas).
Yahoo! (YHOO) wasn’t really the stock du jour, but it has just blown up after hours so I thought I’d feature the chart.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070417yhoo5.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 7:01 am (utc+8) Comments (8)
April 17, 2007
Shenzhen Composite Index - Trading with the Trend (Part II)I promised some intraday charts in my last post so here they are. Being aware of the trend in multiple time frames is so important. It pays to keep the weekly, daily, hourly and 15-minute charts open on a screen for every issue you’re actively trading.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070416szcompd.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070416szcomp60.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070416szcomp15.png
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Cat:[*]China[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 10:42 pm (utc+8) Comments (5)
Renminbi Revaluation ReduxThe nice thing about having kept a blog the last five years is being able to go back and pick out times you happened to get things right and then brag about them.
“One thing we’re looking forward to is the revaluation of the Chinese currency, the Renminbi (RMB), which we think is inevitable.”
C. Maoxian, June 12, 2003
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070416cnyw.png
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Cat:[*]China[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 10:36 pm (utc+8) Comments (1)
Stock Du Jour (FMD) & Random ObservationsStrong buying all day long, so the new lows list is filled with “UltraShort” ETFs, and there’s poor Sirius Sat. Radio (SIRI) as well — I always thought subscription radio was doomed. Sallie Mae (SLM) bought out, eh? Solar stocks continue their ascent: JASO, FSLR, TSL, SOLF. Steel strong. Old Amazon.com (AMZN) on the new highs list. 156 out of 384 ETFs I follow at new highs - yowza.
First Marblehead (FMD) was the stock du jour, though of course it was going in the opposite direction of the broad market and no day trader was interested in the short side.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070416fmd15.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 7:04 am (utc+8) Comments (24)
April 16, 2007
Shenzhen Composite Index - Trading with the TrendChina has two stock exchanges, one in Shanghai and one in Shenzhen. The Shenzhen Composite Index has been going much crazier than the Shanghai Composite index, so I thought I’d post a couple charts.
You can see that the trend on the weekly flipped up in February 2006 and price has gone more or less straight up since the beginning of 2007.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/szcompw.png
Everyone knows to drop to a smaller time frame to find spots of “weakness” within overall strength. This is one of the basics of “multi-timeframe” trend trading. Anyway, you can see from the daily below that there have only been two times in the last year and a half where the daily trend flipped down, thus giving trend traders a spot to get long.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/szcompd.png
The late February “plunge” that supposedly rattled markets around the world wasn’t even a blip on the daily chart, let alone the weekly. I’ll try to collect some hourly data tomorrow and post charts showing the intraday trends over the last six months.
Shenzhen Composite Index - Trading with the Trend (Part II)
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Cat:[*]China[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 10:05 pm (utc+8) Comments (6)
April 15, 2007
Growth at What Price?From an interview with Jason Trennert in this week’s Barron’s:
“There is no question that the growth dynamics of, say, China and India are better than the prospects for U.S. economic growth. But what are you are paying for that growth? The S&P 500 is trading at 15 times earnings, and it’s a very liquid market, while the China Shanghai A-Index is trading at 40 times earnings. At this stage of the game, you get plenty of exposure to Thailand, to China, to India in large-cap U.S. stocks without any of the liquidity or valuation risks that you are taking by playing in local emerging markets. About 40% of the S&P 500’s operating profit comes from outside the U.S.”
I’m always pleased when I happen to catch the commercials running on prime time Chinese TV: a pitch from Procter & Gamble, next an an ad for McDonald’s, with some Johnson & Johnson product following behind, etc.
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 1:53 pm (utc+8) Comments (8)
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Cat:[*]GCCP | Time: 2:17 pm (utc+8) Comments Off
Best & Worst Relative Performance — Week Ending April 13, 2007Like last week, Big Pharma, Healthcare, and Biotech all outperformed - add Energies…
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070413rpbest.png
… while, like last week, Regional Banks and Financials were relative underperformers — add Retail and REITs.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070413rpworst.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 2:13 pm (utc+8) Comments (0)
Stock Du Jour (DYAX) & Random ObservationsNowhere day until after 2 PM when a huge burst of buying hit the market. 15 Ideas member Merck (MRK) was the most active stock moving to a new high. Aren’t you glad you made a donation? Big Pharma (PPH) and Healthcare (XLV) ETFs moved to new highs. QID again more active than QQQQ — you’ve come a long way since I first wrote about you, baby. Gold (GLD) darn near to making a new high, which makes sense.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070413dyax15.png
Related:
UltraShort Q’s Update
UltraShort Q’s Come Front and Center
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:20 am (utc+8) Comments (6)
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April 13, 2007
An Almost Perversely Dégagé AttitudeI have about 100 Criterion Collection DVDs piled up on my desk unwatched (including Ugly’s favorite, Harakiri), but the other night I put Charade (1963) in and was really pleased with it. Cary Grant plays Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn at age 34 never looked more beautiful. People compare the movie to Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, but I don’t know why, Charade is much better. Recommended!
Michael Sragow’s review
Charles Taylor’s review
Bosley Crowther’s review (from 1963!)
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 4:10 pm (utc+8) Comments (5)
Strenuous Exercise and Oral HealthEvery time I start to work out a little harder at the gym, I have trouble with my teeth. Let me back up and say I have very poor teeth to start, a combination of bad genes and growing up semi-poor (my mother always gets furious when I say this, but the dental care in rural upstate New York was pretty bad when we were little — one of my dentists was named Dr. Ruff, but I digress). Anyway, I have several teeth that have had root canals. There are “pockets” around these teeth which are more or less chronically infected, my dentist tells me.
When the immune system is solid, I don’t have a problem because my body fights these little infections effectively and I’m in no pain. However, when I work out hard and run my immune system down, then I have trouble. My dentist will try to treat these “pockets” with an anti-bacterial gel called “Periocline” (not available in the US) once he gets his hands on some. In the meantime, I just have to throttle back on my workouts, which is unfortunate since I enjoy pushing myself a bit in the gym.
Anyone else suffer from this problem or know someone who does? I’d like to compare notes on treating the problem. Thanks.
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 2:51 pm (utc+8) Comments (24)
$1,500 a Month, Real-Time Not IncludedBloomberg’s Money Machine, by Carol Loomis
“Michael Steinhardt, the hedge fund pioneer, said recently that he has a Bloomberg on his desk but doesn’t know how to use it. The retired chairman of Citigroup, Sandy Weill, says he uses his but wouldn’t dare stray from the pages that show the price of Citi stock and changes in the major indexes, for fear he could never get back to them. (Another financial notable, Warren Buffett, does not have a Bloomberg on his desk, though a member of his staff uses one gratefully.)”
There are folks who can play the Bloomberg like concert pianists but I’m not one of them. Like the old timers mentioned above, I often lose my place and can’t find my way back (and then throw things at the wall). I think the guys at TickerSense can bang on a Bloomberg with the best of them.
I came close to working for Bloomberg here (a schoolmate from Hopkins-Nanjing is Beijing bureau chief), but they didn’t hire me. It was either the blog that killed my chances (not likely?) or the fact that they didn’t like my writing style (more likely). It’s a crying shame because I would have busted my ass working there. (I did get “The Bloomberg Way,” their writing manual for reporters, as a parting gift.)
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 12:27 pm (utc+8) Comments (4)
When All Else Fails, There’s Always DelusionConan O’Brien’s great Commencement Speech to the Havard Class of 2000:
“Many of you are justifiably nervous about leaving the safe, comfortable world of Harvard Yard and hurling yourself headlong into the cold, harsh world of Harvard Grad School, a plum job at your father’s firm, or a year abroad with a gold Amex card and then a plum job in your father’s firm.”
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 11:04 am (utc+8) Comments (0)
Shanghai Composite Index — Taking the Long ViewHere’s a monthly chart of the Shanghai Composite Index since 1995 — puts things in perspective. I still think the recent parabolic move is going to end badly, but picking a top is a fool’s game (that I can’t help playing again and again — human nature is a terrible thing to waste).
Here’s the daily data for the Shanghai Composite Index if you’d like to download it:
DATA: Jan. 4, 1995 - Apr. 12, 2007 Shanghai Composite Index (.xls format)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070412shcompm.png
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Cat:[*]China[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:10 am (utc+8) Comments (9)
MedImmune Not QIDding AroundA little hesitation in the morning but then buying kicked in after 10 AM and continued all day. Hundreds of diverse stocks on the new highs list. Homebuilders (XHB) jumped — feel like a bit of an ass with my $29 limit order. ;-) QID more actively traded than the Q’s — I don’t remember that ever happening, do you? Here’s a look at MedImmune (stock du jour) and the QID, intraday.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070412medi15.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070412qid15.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:02 am (utc+8) Comments (0)
April 12, 2007
US Dollar Index - Bearish Any Way You Look At ItHere are three different style charts for the US Dollar Index: Bar, Point & Figure, and Renko.
If you’d like to play with the data yourself, here’s the daily US Dollar Index price data… have fun!
DATA: US Dollar Index: Jan. 4, 1971 - Apr. 12, 2007 (.xls format)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/dxybar.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/dxypf.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/dxyrenko.png
Learn more about Point & Figure Charts
Learn more about Renko Charts
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:32 pm (utc+8) Comments (7)
A Look at RIMM’s After-Hours ActionBad tone from the get-go, across the board selling, but it accelerated after the release of something by “Fred” at 2 PM. New lows list full of homebuilders, and mortgage lenders, and regional banks.
All the elements came together once again for a solid Dendreon (DNDN) Dummy trade: 1) unusually active and volatile; 2) clearly trending down; 3) broad market tone at its back; 4) low-risk spot to get short. If you were lucky enough to enter under the 11:30 bar, your reward to risk was over ten times. “So you had that goin’ for you, which is nice” (other Carl Spackler fans out there?).
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070411dndn15.png
RIMM, what can I say, it broke so fast even this 1-minute chart shows that it was next to impossible to execute against. (Apologies for the bad ticks but they always happen when trading gets fast and furious.)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070411rimm1.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:48 am (utc+8) Comments (2)
April 11, 2007
Energy SPDR at New HighThe Energy SPDR (XLE) moved to a new all-time high. Readers with a good memory will recall my post last September: Reducing Exposure to Energies. Turns out that was a perfect time to Increase Exposure to Energies. It’s smart to rebalance from time to time, but it’s even better to be humble when you get things wrong.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070410xlem.png
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Cat:[*]Energies | Time: 9:54 am (utc+8) Comments (12)
April 10, 2007
Stocks Du Jour, China A-Share Fund, Buffett & FriendsA few semi-random things before I run out the door: all three of these stocks du jour (DNDN, NUVO, CEGE) were active pre-open and Dummies had no excuse for not stalking them. Study the charts closely.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070409dndn15.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070409nuvo15.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070409cege15.png
Morgan Stanley’s China A-Share Fund (CAF) moved to a new all-time high (following the A-Share market of course). This is the only US-listed product I know of that gives foreign investors access to China’s domestic share market.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/20070409cafd.png
Buffett & Friends (no comment necessary)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200704/hootersfan.jpg
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:05 am (utc+8) Comments (9)
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Precision StealGood strong day of continuous buying. Looking through the new lows list (a good thing to do on strong days) I found something called China Precision Steel (CPSL). Chart has “suckers” written all over it. Love the price range established since its December 29, 2006 debut — a 5.7 million share float means anything’s possible.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070405cpsld.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:17 am (utc+8) Comments (4)
April 5, 2007
Flavia of the MonthI read this article about Flavia Cheong, manager of the $700 million China Opportunities Fund. (Do her friends call her Flavor Flav?) Anyway she’s a typically risk-averse Singaporean and her fund’s two-year performance puts her 51 out of 53. Doesn’t matter, she gets paid an obscene amount of money (no doubt) whether she performs or not — that’s the beauty of the mutual fund business.
This bit annoyed me:
“Investors from around the globe poured $22.4 billion into emerging-market mutual funds in 2006 and half of that — $11.2 billion — went into China funds…. That helped buoy the Shanghai Composite Index 130% last year.”
Wrong! I’d bet next to none of that money went into domestically-listed shares. What’s buoying the Shanghai Composite are a bunch of manicurists, day trading grannies, and other folks who pick stocks with “lucky” names.
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Cat:[*]China[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 10:37 am (utc+8) Comments (8)
Perspectives: Independent Bank Corp. (IBCP)My experience as a trader taught me to respect trend followers. My education (especially getting the CPA) taught me to respect value investors. I’m comfortable in both camps, which is probably unusual.
I find Independent Bank Corp interesting here because I know that trend followers caught a huge move these last several years, recently exited the stock, and wouldn’t think about touching it here (see below).
http://maoxian.com/images/200703/20070404ibcpm.png
However, I also know that value investors are just now beginning to get interested in adding to (or initially buying) IBCP after many years of patiently waiting for the stock to get cheap again.
I’m not an ideologue about either style. I understand that stocks that represent good value almost never look attractive from a trend follower’s perspective, just as I know that strongly trending stocks rarely appear to be good values. It’s best if you can think about every potential investment from both perspectives.
http://maoxian.com/images/200703/20070404ibcpw.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 7:08 am (utc+8) Comments (10)
April 4, 2007
Custom Sentiment DataI read this article about ISEE Select with some interest because I plan to take the service for a test drive. The author writes:
“My theory is that institutions will short QQQQ heavily, but may buy call options to temporarily hedge that short position.”
But I always thought the value in the ISEE data was seeing what small retail traders are doing; the institutional traders, who are legitimate hedgers and not wild-ass speculators, are out of the picture. As the ISE says (emphasis mine):
“The traditional put/call ratio makes no distinction as to the source of the trade. ISE categorizes three sources of trades: Market Maker trades, Firm trades which include institutional trading desks, and Customer trades. If a large institution’s proprietary trading desk buys 2,000 XYZ calls, are they bullish? Although buying call options are generally viewed as a bullish move, a proprietary trading desk could be short 1,000,000 shares of XYZ and they could be hedging 20% of their position. Therefore it cannot be determined if this purchase was bullish or bearish, but the traditional put/call ratio calculates this as a bullish trade. The ISE sentiment calculation omits Market Maker and Firm trades when calculating the sentiment value, which we believe provides a more accurate representation of true investor sentiment. ”
Am I missing something here? (I’m slow — no big words (over two syllables) in the comments, please.)
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 3:49 pm (utc+8) Comments (3)
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April 4, 2007
UAVV: Unusually Active, Very VolatileUninterrupted buying all day long… lots of new highs, especially in the foreign markets.
Two interesting charts from daytrader land … CEGE was active pre-open which made it one to stalk, and JTX blew up in the afternoon — no day trader knew the news there but everyone’s scanner went nuts at 2:09 PM putting it front and center on thousands of screens around the world.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070403jtx15.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070403cege15.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:19 am (utc+8) Comments (5)
April 3, 2007
Follow-up to Pre-open Comments (DNDN)I hope some of you guys were stalking DNDN after I highlighted it in my pre-open comments. It set up beautifully for Dummies on both the 15- and 30-minute charts yesterday morning (I’m 12 hours ahead here in China). Remember that point number one in every Dummy Lesson is that the stock must be unusually active and very volatile — DNDN fit the bill.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070402dndn15.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:09 am (utc+8) Comments (0)
April 2, 2007
A Few Pre-open CommentsDendreon (DNDN) is the most actively traded stock pre-open.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/dndn1.png
Very much aware of Volume At Price levels.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/dndn2.png
A final look at DNDN right after the regular hours open (click to enlarge).
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/dndnsmall.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:17 pm (utc+8) Comments (7)
China’s New Petit-BourgeoisieI had afternoon noodles yesterday near the old Bell Tower with one of my companions. (I’ve stopped saying “girlfriends” because of the stream of emails I’ve received whose messages range from “your wife must be a saint” to “you need psychiatric help.”) We went to this cool invitation-only or “private” Tibetan tea house, which I may or may not report about later (probably be nice to keep this place a secret).
My girlf… companion mentioned that the term 小资 (Xiao Zi), which is short for 小资产阶级 or petit-bourgeoisie, is back in vogue. This was a highly charged political term in the fairly recent past in China; remember Mao’s four classes: the working class, the peasantry, the urban petit-bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. Anyway she explained (I think) that it’s now a kind of comic label for fashionable yuppies.
I asked her the best way to identify the new 小资 and she said, oh that’s easy: they’re the pretty girls sitting in Starbucks reading Harry Potter.
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Cat:[*]Personal[*]China | Time: 3:16 pm (utc+8) Comments (15)
Do Analysts Eat Their Own Cooking?I was reading a one page “Flash” on Home Inns and noticed this in the three pages of disclosures and certifications that followed:
An analyst involved in the preparation of this report has visited certain material operations of the subject company within the past 12 months. The analyst may not have visited all material operations of the subject company. The travel expenses of the analyst in connection with such visits were paid or reimbursed by the subject company.
Now I don’t care who paid for the travel, but I’m extremely interested to know if the analyst actually stayed in a Home Inns hotel while in China. I’d bet a dollar to a dime that the analyst stayed in a five-star hotel while here, and only briefly visited “certain material operations.” (And don’t you just hate such lawyers who write such disclosures? — I’m in a running battle to eliminate every such I see in China — such also badly infects Hong Kong.)
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Cat:[*]Personal[*]China[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 2:49 pm (utc+8) Comments (1)
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 11:36 am (utc+8) Comments Off
Best & Worst Relative Performance — Week Ending March 30, 2007Gold, Biotech and Energy outperformed…
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070330rpbest.png
… while Semiconductors (again) and Financials were relative underperformers. The Semiconductor HOLDR (SMH) was listed on June 5, 2000 — just in time to destroy everyone who invested in it.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070330rpworst.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070330smhm.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 11:35 am (utc+8) Comments (2)
March 30, 2007
One Button to Rule Them AllNowadays I always bookmark an article I like to delicious. Frequently I use the Google Toolbar “Send To” function to save the same article in my Gmail “database.” And lastly I often want to Digg the article if I think it deserves it. Shouldn’t I be able to do all three things with a single click? Why do I have to futz around doing these things separately?
Again, if I knew anything about programming, I’d write a little thing that would accomplish all three tasks with a single click.
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Cat:[*]Internet/Media | Time: 11:11 am (utc+8) Comments (12)
You’re Not in Nebraska Anymore, WarrenPosco, South Korea’s largest steel maker, was among the 17 largest equity holdings in Buffett’s portfolio as of the end of 2006, alongside one other Asian stock, PetroChina, China’s largest oil company. Berkshire Hathaway paid $572 million for a 4% stake in Posco. In 2002, Berkshire paid $488 million to accumulate a 1.3% stake in PetroChina.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070329pkxm.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070329ptrm.png
Related: Buy China, Hold America, Short Europe (April 30, 2003)
Just found this great Buffett quote while rummaging around in the maoxian archives… it’s astonishing how much good stuff is buried somewhere on this site. ;-)
“Markets are there to serve you, not to instruct you. You can often find a couple of companies that are out of line. Find one; get rich. Most people think that what the stock does from day to day contains information, but it doesn’t. It isn’t just something that wiggles around. The stock market is the best game in the world. You can take advantage of people who have no morals. High prices inside of a year will typically be 100% of the low price. Businesses don’t change in value that much. That is simply crazy. There are extreme degrees of fluctuation, and Mr. Market will call out the prices. Wait until he is nutty in one direction or the other.”
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:42 am (utc+8) Comments (1)
March 29, 2007
NUM_TRADES_RTI think there are precious few canned screens on the Bloomberg for finding stock trading ideas. There’s one called “LVI” (Largest Volume Increase) which is just a simple screen comparing today’s or yesterday’s volume with a 1-, 5-, 20-, or 90-day average of volume, ranked by percentage change. It screens by exchange but doesn’t offer China’s, though it does have HK’s, Taiwan’s, etc.
I think the deal with the Bloomberg is that everyone builds scanners and other tools (usually in Excel?) that use the feed. I was looking at the fields available through their API: a mere 25,000 or so (including 246 real time fields). Impressive.
I should have taken the money spent on business school and leased a Bloomberg terminal and explored it for fourteen months instead. With the savings, I could have gone to night school at DeVry in New Brunswick and learned how to program instead. In other words, I could have done something useful and productive, instead of getting a stupid MBA. Live and learn. (My son will know better.)
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 5:40 pm (utc+8) Comments (25)
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March 29, 2007
Major Life EventsI was just confirming my beneficiary information at Vanguard and re-wrote their “why you should confirm these details” blurb to give myself a chuckle:
It’s important that you review your beneficiaries and keep them current, particularly when you experience a major life event, such as death, that could affect your beneficiaries.
I’m not sure how many people share my sense of humor.
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 12:20 pm (utc+8) Comments (3)
Waiting for XHB to Come to PapaWeak market, bad day for all the stocks I already think are cheap. But as we know, cheap often gets cheaper. I have a limit order in to buy some of the Homebuilders SPDR (XHB). Don’t know if it will ever come to Papa, but I’m patient.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070328xhbd.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:14 am (utc+8) Comments (19)
March 28, 2007
Accelerated Generation GapsLast night I saw the low budget monster movie from Korea, The Host (92% Fresh!), with one of my girlfriends. It was in Chinese so I probably only caught 80% of the dialogue, but I still found it very funny.
J. Hoberman’s review
Stephen Hunter’s review
Afterwards at dinner my companion made a very interesting observation (not related to the movie). She said that because change has been so rapid in China these last 25 years, the generation gaps appear in about half the normal time, which she figured to be about 15 years. So young people in China who are a mere seven or so years apart can’t relate at all to one another. Darned interesting, I thought. I value brains over beauty, but like all my girfriends, she has both.
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 5:31 pm (utc+8) Comments (4)
Sharing Bloomberg WorksheetsDoes anyone know if you can share New Worksheet (NW) layouts from the Bloomberg? These are the default five they offer, but I’d like to see and share different people’s creations. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. ;-)
http://maoxian.com/images/200703/nw.bmp
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 10:28 am (utc+8) Comments (6)
Mixing Memory and DesireWhy we read (and re-read) J.D. Salinger:
“She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing.”
From: A Perfect Day for Bananafish
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 10:15 am (utc+8) Comments (0)
Beazer BlowsCrummy tone all day long and then Beazer Homes (BZH) blew up after hours. Interestingly, BZH was already unusually active during the regular hours session moving to a new low on over three times normal volume. Beazer saw even more unusual volume than Lennar (LEN), which reported earnings. Somebody somewhere knew something was brewing in Beazer and acted on it — price reveals all public and non-public information.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070327bzh60.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:55 am (utc+8) Comments (7)
March 27, 2007
Boo-hoo, boo-hoo-hooUgly linked to this great post from May 2006 by Bill Mann recently and I thought it worth repeating the best line:
“Vonage’s management and underwriters convinced a bunch of people and institutions that a company worth roughly the price of a Happy Meal should be valued on the market at $2.6 billion!”
Now selling for 1.3x Happy Meals!
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070326vgw.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 11:07 am (utc+8) Comments (2)
March 26, 2007
A Pile of Poorly Underwritten LoansKey bits from this week’s interview with Sy Jacobs in Barron’s:
“… the train wreck is accelerating and is turning into a contagion. Subprime will bring down mortgage lending, housing and, in turn, the economy and the market … The problems in subprime are not self-contained. It is a pinprick to a larger problem, and it needs to be looked at that way. The notion that subprime home-equity lending is somehow ring-fenced because it is only 12% of total mortgage loans outstanding and won’t affect the rest of the mortgage and housing market is absurd. First of all, subprime lending was over 20% of 2006’s volume … Nearly $700 billion of mortgages reset this year and nearly half of that is subprime … The subprime home-equity market peaked in 2005, and the most popular product from that year was a two-year-fixed, 28-year-floating mortgage. It resets this year … Housing hasn’t bottomed, and it is just getting going to the downside.”
He might know what he’s talking about or he may just be talking his book, who knows?
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 10:58 am (utc+8) Comments (5)
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 11:49 am (utc+8) Comments Off
Best & Worst Relative Performance — Week Ending March 23, 2007Energies leading the way again with strong outperformance…
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070323rpbest.png
… while Semiconductors, Gold, and REITs all showed relative weakness.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070323rpworst.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 11:43 am (utc+8) Comments (2)
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A Word about QuickiesI enjoy playing no-limit Texas Hold’em and consider myself a professional amateur (just as I consider myself a professional amateur trader). Paradise runs tournaments named “Quickies,” so called because the levels last only six minutes. When the blinds double that quickly, luck plays a larger role than usual; if you don’t make a move early on, you’re not going to do well.
Patience is a virtue in poker, but not in a Quickie tournament. Nevertheless, I still like competing in the low stakes ($3, $5, $7) 50 and 100 player games.
<DIV class=cent
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/quickie.pnghttp://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/quickie13.png time saved
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 10:41 am (utc+8) Comments (4)
March 23, 2007
Cellphones as Fashion AccessoriesWeak market… noticed Motorola (MOT) on the new lows list (along with AMD). As soon as MOT hit the 38.2% retracement level late last year, I bought a RAZR to assure a reversal there.
A few comments about the RAZR: 1) It looks slick, but its square shape doesn’t feel so hot in my hand; 2) no smiley face function while texting; 3) difficulty typing in curse words since there are none in its dictionary; 4) my girlfriends think I’m a fuddy-duddy because they long ago moved on from the RAZR (almost all to a Samsung product), like years ago, Dad.
(She Who Must Be Obeyed has a Samsung SGH-D488.)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070322motm.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:59 am (utc+8) Comments (9)
March 22, 2007
Step on Dee GasTone was slightly positive all morning but then it just exploded post-Fed announcement. Folks positioned on the wrong side got crushed. The intraday chart of 15 Ideas portfolio member Washington Mutual (WM) is pretty representative of the action.
A word about the 15 Ideas donation campaign: I figure about 1% of my regular readers chipped in and were on average extremely generous: I thank you all. I’ll be sending donors a screenshot of the portfolio P&L from time to time (similar to the one below) to let you know how much we’re underperforming the S&P ;-).
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070321wm15.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070321port15.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:07 am (utc+8) Comments (8)
El Fogoncito - Beijing BranchOne of my girlfriends and I had dinner last night at El Fogoncito — it was terrible. I learned about it from that’s Beijing and it’s near her office so we decided to try a new place.
The place smelled like wet paint and the waitress told me “don’t sit upstairs, the stink is even worse up there.” We scrambled around for a good place to sit considering a spot near a door to diminish the paint smell but decided no, the draft was too bad.
We got some fajitas and tacos. They came with a tiny plate of weak sweet sauce, weak hot sauce, and awful guacamole (something from a jar? Yech!). As for the food itself, I can describe it in a word: GREASY! It was like fake Mexican food made by bad Chinese cooks; hang on, that’s exactly what it was. There were a couple of gratuitous authentic Mexican workers hanging around, but they weren’t in the open kitchen, that’s for sure. And my Corona wasn’t ice cold the way it should be.
Cost 155 kuai (about $20) - insult to injury. Definitely not recommended. Mantenganse lejos, mis amigos.
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Cat:[*]China | Time: 8:14 am (utc+8) Comments (52)
March 21, 2007
Rare Elevator Music by Roy HargroveI enjoy listening to Roy Hargrove (and jazz trumpeters in general since I used to play trumpet back in high school). This tune, The Stroke, sounds a bit Muzaky to me, but I still like it. Sometimes I close my eyes and can hear a little Clifford Brown in there, but maybe I’m imagining things. Let me know what you think.
The Stroke (6.4MB mp3)
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 10:08 pm (utc+8) Comments (6)
March 20, 2007
Wealth and Greatness are Mere Trinkets of Frivolous UtilityI read this profile of James Montier and was curious about his Ten Rules for Happiness. Here they are, ordered and grouped by my preference:
[*]Exercise regularly.[*]Give your body the sleep it needs.[*]Devote time and effort to close relationships.[*]Have sex (preferably with someone you love). …
[*]Take control of your life, set yourself achievable goals.[*]Seek work that engages your skills, look to enjoy your job. …
[*]Pause for reflection, meditate on the good things in life.[*]Don’t pursue happiness for its own sake, enjoy the moment
[*]Don’t equate happiness with money. …
[*]Remember to follow all the rules.time saved
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 10:38 pm (utc+8) Comments (15)
More from Our Man in HarareI got some more data on the Zimbabwean dollar going back to 1986 when it was around 1.70. This monthly chart puts things in a little better perspective than the one I posted earlier. You can see the long terrible slide through the 1990’s … scary stuff. Anyway it looks like things were falling apart long before Mugabe started his disastrous land seizure campaign. Can someone remind me when Mugabe came to power?
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/zbwm.png
And here’s the Zimbabwe Industrial Stock Index … I only have data from the beginning of 2005.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/zimindus.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 7:36 pm (utc+8) Comments (12)
It’s All About the BenjaminsA comment from “callmebob” on my post about Seeking Alpha’s Great Leap Backwards led me to this post by Michael Eisenberg, Five Reasons Full RSS Feeds Should Come to an End. Here’s my summary of and response to Eisenberg’s post:
1) “You can’t post a comment in your feed reader so ‘conversation’ is limited.” Nonsense. If I want to post a comment to something I read in my feed reader, I’ll just click through and comment.
2) “You can’t accurately or reliably measure your readership with feeds.” Nonsense. Feedburner’s stats are first-rate. How many publishers have Seeking Alpha’s problem of having 6,500 feeds (which is stupid in the first place) to track? What Eisenberg really wants is to “bring people back to your site so you can measure their interaction on a granular level” because…
3) It’s All About the Benjamins.
“When a reader signs up on email, you have there subscription information and an email address. That information enables you to target an ad more accurately to that subscriber. As Daily Candy and other email businesses have proven, good old email is a monetizable channel. RSS is not.”
Ka-ching! There’s the money shot. Of course RSS is a “monetizable channel” - why does Eisenberg say it isn’t?
4) Some waffling about websites being “dynamic organisms” and the “evolution of content,” but really… It’s All About the Benjamins.
5) “Readers want headlines only.” Nonsense. I can choose to read headlines, summaries, or full-text posts in my reader, and if you don’t offer me a choice for full-text posts, you’re going to piss me off and lose me as a reader.
I am not enamored of guys who want to get my email or measure my “interactions” at a “granular level” in order to better target an ad to “monetize” me. What do you guys think?
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Cat:[*]Internet/Media | Time: 11:37 am (utc+8) Comments (13)
March 19, 2007
Mugabe Orders More Zeros Chopped OffI happened to be looking at some African stock index charts today and thought the Zimbabwean indexes looked a bit odd. Then I called up the Zimbabwe dollar chart. I don’t keep up with events in Africa (few do), but yowza, that’s some serious currency devaluation.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has a pretty nice website where I learned this:
Our Vision
To become the financial cornerstone around which Zimbabwe’s economic fortunes and developmental aspirations are anchored.
Our Mission
The pursuit of the Bank’s vision will express itself through leadership in the formulation, implementation and monitoring of policies and action plans for fighting inflation, stabilisation of the internal and external value of Zimbabwe’s currency and of the financial system in a manner that gives pride of achievement to Zimbabweans across the board.
Our Values
1. Fairness and equality in employment opportunities;
2. Openness without offence;
3. Honesty, integrity and uprightness;
4. Transparency in whatever we do in the name of the Bank;
5. Commitment to teamwork and cooperation;
yada yada
16. Respect for the environment.
I guess their last value, respect for the environment, includes littering the countryside with little bits of colored paper. ;-)
I’ve gotta read up on what happened down there these last several years — bound to be interesting. I’ll update this post with links to good articles I find.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/zbk.png
How the Loss of Property Rights Caused Zimbabwe’s Collapse, by Craig J. Richardson (CATO Institute)
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Cat:[*]Currencies | Time: 8:35 pm (utc+8) Comments (17)
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Yeah, when FMT was going ahead and LEND wasn’t, that was a time to dump FMT.
Broad market firming — pre-open swing lows a spot to watch anyway.
HEPH has been active for about the last half hour but I’ve been ignoring it (without reason).
LEND FMT NFI second burst of buying?
SYMC actively bought.
Be more meaningful if these ramblings were time-stamped, hrm.
Broad market moving higher, looks like that early action was a tad contrived.
OK, it’s 9:25 PM (China time), I’m gonna wrap up here. Have a good day, guys.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070316lend1.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070316lend1f.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 7:57 pm (utc+8) Comments (7)
Beleaguring the Moron LongsAmusing bit from this interview with James J. Cramer:
Cramer: Now you can’t foment, that’s a violation of…
Task: Ferment?
Cramer: You can’t… FO-ment
Task: FO-ment
Cramer: You can’t create yourself an impression that a stock’s down, but you do it anyway cuz the SEC…
Task: Right.
Cramer: doesn’t understand it. So, ya, I mean, it’s, that’s the only sense I would say it’s illegal.
Good thing Governor Spitzer was an investor in Cramer’s hedge fund.
- hat tip to my buddy, Bob -
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 11:52 am (utc+8) Comments (0)
To Twitter or Not To TwitterIf I get a chance tonight, I’ll “live blog” the market’s pre-open session. Last night I was chatting with Trader Eyal (via Gtalk) about what was on the move pre-open (ICE, BOT, LEND, etc.) and the advantages and disadvantages of having a group of fellow traders on Twitter. I’m still on the fence about Twitter, but I’m in the mood to do a pre-open post.
Anyway, CME set up pretty nicely for Dummies.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070315cme15.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:48 am (utc+8) Comments (5)
March 15, 2007
Passing Tests within FailurePost mini-crash, there were the classic Three Little Indian pushes down and then today the big test…
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070314spy30.png
But the trend on the daily flipped down with the mini-crash…
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070314spyd.png
So all countertrend rallies on smaller time frames will be looked at as potential shorts.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070314spy60.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:13 am (utc+8) Comments (5)
Born at the Wrong TimeBuyers learn that China + IPO doesn’t necessarily equal a homerun. Here’s XFML’s F-1 if you want to learn about the business (maybe one in a thousand current shareholders has read it).
As Paul Simon once (almost) sang:
And the whole world whispering
Born at the wrong time
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070314xfml30.png
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Cat:[*]China[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:52 am (utc+8) Comments (0)
March 14, 2007
Creating Modern SpartansInteresting article about the four-month regimen the actors and stunt crew of the film “300″ went through at Gym Jones:
The first misconception is that we used a bodybuilding-type program of progressive overload and over-feeding with the goal of making the guys look huge. We took the opposite route of calorie restriction to make them look like they lived off the land, in the wild, all sinewy and ripped. The diet was adequate to fuel effort and recovery, barely. And we prescribed random physical challenges to keep them off balance, to ensure they never knew what was coming, to cause a stress-reaction, to break them, to make them look bad in front of each other, which eventually led them to trust one another.
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 9:39 pm (utc+8) Comments (6)
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Discredited Home LendersUgly. The only nice thing I can say is that the selling wasn’t as bad as the mini-crash of Feb. 27. Here are some key charts to keep an eye on as things further unravel or stabilize (I expect things will calm down).
(The 15 Ideas portfolio fell a little over 2% today - about the same as the S&P 500 - with Washington Mutual a real drag. In case you were wondering, I’m still accepting donations. ;-) )
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070313gsw.png
GS: -1.76%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070313lendw.png
LEND: -65.17%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070313wmw.png
WM: -5.03%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070313mcow.png
MCO: -6.30%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070313bscw.png
BSC: -6.64%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070313xlfw.png
XLF: -2.98%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070313kbhw.png
KBH: -5.39%
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:51 am (utc+8) Comments (4)
March 13, 2007
Tip the Chairman and Get 15 Stock IdeasOK, I had a chance to put together a list of 15 stocks that I like right here. The mood is ugly out there and that’s when you should be interested in putting some of your cash to work. If you want me to email you the list (a Word document that has a chart and some basic information and some inane comments from me), just make a donation.
Time for some high pressure contribution tactics:
[*]These ideas are extremely boring.[*]These ideas won’t win you any friends at a cocktail party.[*]These ideas will definitely not make you rich quick.Thanks for throwing the Chairman a bone, guys.
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:45 am (utc+8) Comments (35)
Ripping Shareholders a NEW OneI was looking forward to writing about NEW entering drillbit territory, but it got halted at $1.65. It wasn’t long ago that this stock was trading at $30 as you can see from the hourly chart below. Condolences to all holders of the equity - poof!
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070312new60.png
Related: Nothing NEW about High-Risk Lending (Feb. 10, 2007)
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:43 am (utc+8) Comments (1)
March 12, 2007
The Limitations of Google TranslationsI got a new set of tea cups and a teapot. Beautiful stuff, no?
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/dumbbeauty.jpg
Here’s a description of the teapot in Chinese followed by its Google translation:
「用我泡茶，痴而不呆」，一语诠释了这把壶的特性。中庸厚道的壶型，以紫砂土的古朴温润为坯体，施以春意盎然柔嫩的橄榄绿，犹如为千年的茶文化，注入一股新生命
“I use the tea addict without living”, a phrase interpreted this regard pot characteristics. Mean-kind pots, the ancient stone to the adobe soil in Yixing, the olive green E. imposed spring. like for the Millennium tea culture, injected new life
The original Chinese is kind of nonsense anyway, but I don’t think human translators need to fear that machines will take their jobs quite yet.
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Cat:[*]Personal[*]China | Time: 10:48 pm (utc+8) Comments (9)
Blame the Homeless Mortgage BrokersBest unintentionally funny line in a Page A1 article in the WSJ on New Century Financial: At a Mortgage Lender, Rapid Rise, Faster Fall
Brokers “work out of homes and cars and little offices,” Mr. LaMalfa says, and they’re often willing to go to customers’ homes in the evening or on the weekend.
Cars?
And there’s this amusing blame game the reporters go on: it’s the fault of the lenders, no the mortgage brokers, no the banks that securitized the loans, no the investors who bought those mortgage-backed securities.
No blame for the dumbass borrowers who took out loans they didn’t understand or obviously couldn’t handle in the first place.
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 11:57 am (utc+8) Comments (0)
Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in Detail (#7 in a Series)Finally, the last one in the series to review. When there are new day trades to look at, we’ll study them. After collecting comments on this post, I’ll put together a summary of conclusions about these trades.
January 10, 2007
- Sold 3,000 of OBCI at $5.10 (cost $3.33) (intraday): profit $5,310.00 (+53.16%)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/kirkobci.png
Related: Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in Detail (#6 in a Series)
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 11:55 am (utc+8) Comments (10)
Sino-American Symbiosis: ChimericaLearned about some guy named Niall Ferguson from reading Barron’s this week. Here’s an excerpt from an article he wrote called Not two countries, but one: Chimerica:
Think of the United States and the People’s Republic not as two countries, but as one: Chimerica. It’s quite a place: just 13 per cent of the world’s land surface, but a quarter of its population and fully a third of its economic output. What’s more, Chimerica has accounted for around 60 per cent of global growth in the past five years.
Their relationship isn’t necessarily unbalanced; more like symbiotic. East Chimericans are savers; West Chimericans are spenders. East Chimericans do manufactures; West Chimericans do services. East Chimericans export; West Chimericans import. East Chimericans pile up reserves; West Chimericans obligingly run deficits, producing the dollar-denominated bonds that the East Chimericans crave. As in all good marriages, the differences between the two halves of Chimerica are complementary.
Strikes me as slightly simplistic and pollyannish, but Ferguson is such a smooth, handsome bastard that people probably swallow his ideas whole.
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Cat:[*]Personal[*]China | Time: 11:50 am (utc+8) Comments (2)
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March 11, 2007
Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in Detail (#6 in a Series)This is the next to the last day trade we’ll dissect. I’m getting some really great comments to these posts which I will summarize later this week. Thanks for everyone’s input.
January 10, 2007
- Sold 200 of VOL at $61.06 (cost $55.01) (intraday): profit $1,210.00 (+10.10%)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/kirkvol.png
Related: Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in Detail (#5 in a Series)
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 7:49 am (utc+8) Comments (3)
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 4:10 pm (utc+8) Comments Off
Best & Worst Relative Performance — Week Ending March 9, 2007Stabilization week as expected; Energies, Materials and Tech outperformed…
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070309rpbest.png
… while Biotech ugliness continues, and Financials stink up the joint.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070309rpworst.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 4:00 pm (utc+8) Comments (0)
Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in Detail (#5 in a Series)This is one that I understand more easily since I’m a play-of-the-day, explosive pace, light-up-the-scanner, stock du jour man myself. Nevertheless I’m interested to hear what you guys think about the mechanics of Kirk’s entry and exit.
January 18, 2007
- Sold 3,000 of HOKU at $6.88 (cost $5.53) (intraday): profit $4,050.00 (+24.42%)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/kirkhoku.png
Related: Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in Detail (#4 in a Series)
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 7:12 am (utc+8) Comments (26)
March 9, 2007
Typical Conversation with a Beijing CabbieFrom this morning, translated from Chinese:
Cabbie: Where to?
Me: Mr. Li, let’s go to Oriental Plaza
Cabbie: How should we go?
Me: You tell me.
Cabbie: Second Ring Road?
Me: Good.
Cabbie: You’re wearing too much cologne .
Me: You like it?
Cabbie: Sure, but it’s just too much; I had a guy from Pakistan the other day who really stank!
Me: You mean he stank stank or had too much cologne on like me?
Cabbie: Too much cologne.
Me: So you’re saying I stink?
Cabbie: You? Of course not! Where ya from?
Me: Yugoslavia. never say America since it makes things very complicated.]
Cabbie: Tito! A great man!
Me: If you say so.
Continued later (all conversations with cabbies follow this general script)…
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Cat:[*]China | Time: 12:49 pm (utc+8) Comments (4)
Nothing to Ring Home AboutNoticed these two China-based companies on my “actively traded” screen. I don’t know much about either of them, but I do know an ugly chart when I see one. Linktone was founded by a foreigner (Derek Sulger) back in 1999 and is based in Shanghai. Hurray! is more or less in the same business but it’s based in Beijing.
For what it’s worth, I have no background or screensaver on my RAZR (it’s just gray) and I use the built-in ringtone, “jazz” (a Miles Davis (?) snippet that I think is pretty cool). But I’m a dull old man. ;-)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070308ltonm.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070308hraym.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:36 am (utc+8) Comments (0)
Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in Detail (#4 in a Series)We know the who, what, when, and where. What I’d like commenters to tell me is WHY?
January 26, 2007
- Sold 700 of BMTI at $14.15 (cost $13.60) (intraday): profit $385.00 (+4.05%)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/kirkbmti.png
Related: Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in Detail (#3 in a Series)
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:13 am (utc+8) Comments (7)
March 8, 2007
Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in Detail (#3 in a Series)We know the who, what, when, and where. What I’d like commenters to tell me is WHY?
January 26, 2007
- Sold 200 of WFR at $52.02 (cost $50.05) (intraday): profit $394.00 (+3.94%)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/kirkwfr.png
Related: Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in Detail (#2 in a Series)
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:48 pm (utc+8) Comments (11)
Random Thoughts about Night at the MuseumNot many English language movies come to the big screen in the People’s Republic, so we take what we can get. Last night I saw Night at the Museum with one of my girlfriends for a hot mid-week date.
Ben Stiller played Ben Stiller, Owen Whatshisname played Owen Whatshisname, and Ricky Gervais played his character from the Office (in a more expensive suit) — why not do the predictable Hollywood thing and cast Stephen Fry in that role?
Wasn’t thrilled with the story idea that loser Dad has to win over his own kid — the little brat should love his wimpy Dad for the schmuck that he is. And why would that uptight Christine Todd Whitman type be the mother of Ben Stiller’s child? There’s no way those two would ever meet, let alone get married and procreate. And I don’t know a single bond trader who wears a cellphone on his belt, let alone two. (I mean cellphones; I know a couple of bond traders.)
Anyway, annoying family angle and unrealistic characters aside, the movie was pretty cute. The CGI wasn’t overwhelming. No bouncy cam, no quick cuts. Some bits made me laugh out loud for about a half minute — Stiller’s showdown with Attila the Hun springs to mind.
Stephen Holden got it right when he wrote that it’s “an uneasy blend of wisecracks and pallid inspirational blather,” and the director “subscribes enthusiastically to the current Hollywood philosophy that coherence doesn’t matter if enough stuff is thrown onto the screen.” Correct, it’s crap but it’s cute crap.
It has an abysmal Rotten Tomatoes score of 45%, but that’s unfair. I didn’t think it was that terrible, and Rainbow liked it.
The best part of the movie was seeing Mizuo Peck (who played Sacagawea) for the first time. With a name like Mizuo, she must be half-Japanese, no? Reminds me of Rachel Yamagata….
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/mpeck.jpg
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 3:31 pm (utc+8) Comments (7)
Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in Detail (#2 in a Series)We know the who, what, when, and where. What I’d like commenters to tell me is WHY?
January 26, 2007
- Sold 300 of VPRT at $41.81 (cost $40.16) (intraday): profit $495.00 (+4.11%)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/kirkvprt.png
Related: Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in Detail
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:39 am (utc+8) Comments (7)
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March 7, 2007
Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in DetailSolid buying all day long. The good news is I’ve identified over a dozen stocks I like here. The bad news is that by the time I write my little report about them (this coming weekend?), they may all be too expensive again.
On a completely unrelated note, I’m happy to see that Kirk is now reporting more information (days held) in his trading log. You can finally study his trades in detail. Here’s a day trade he made February 1st in ROCM: Sold 700 at $16.67 (cost $15.47), profit $840.00 (+7.76%). Can you figure out why he was looking at this stock? Why he entered where he did? Why he exited where he did? Here’s a 15-minute chart for your reference:
UPDATE: I’ve replaced the original ugly chart with this prettier chart which has the entry and exit levels marked clearly. When the trade was made the stock was near a yearly high (all-time too) of $15.58.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/kirkrocm2.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:58 am (utc+8) Comments (35)
March 6, 2007
Notable New LowsHere are a few Notable New Lows… guess what they all have in common? ;-)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070305nnl.png
NSO% means Net percent change Since Open | % means percent change since previous close
Related:
All Fusion Abruptly Stops: NovaStar Implodes (Feb. 24, 2007)
Nothing NEW about High-Risk Lending (Feb. 10, 2007)
Subprime Mortgage Lenders’ Submerging Share Prices (Dec. 9, 2006)
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:05 am (utc+8) Comments (6)
March 5, 2007
Market Leader in Subprime, Alt A, and Option ARM LoansI was looking through the year-end 2006 slides for the Home Loans segment (PDF) from Washington Mutual. The best graph is on page two that shows “Industry Originations.” In both 2004 and 2005, ARM loans accounted for half of all originations, about $3 trillion worth. That’s a very different picture from the previous three years when ARM loans accounted for only 16%-26% of originations.
I read that 80% of subprime ARM loans are 2/28s (30-year loans where the “teaser” rate (of say 7.55%) adjusts after two years (to say 11.25%), but that may not be accurate — does someone have a link to accurate numbers?
WM looks cheap on paper (I own it), but it makes me a little leery that one of their stated “Strategic Objectives” is to become the market leader in Subprime, Alt A, and Option ARM products.
Aside: A mortgage is a pledge of collateral against which a lender makes a loan. I don’t like it when people refer to their “mortgage” when they mean their debt, but maybe I’m a nitpicker. “Home loan” is a nice, simple term I like.
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 3:47 pm (utc+8) Comments (19)
March 4, 2007
Market Sentiment — Week Ending March 2, 2007I wasn’t surprised to read this in Barron’s given last week’s dramatic market break:
the American Association of Individual Investors to 39.6% bearish and 36.6% bullish, from 53.9% bullish and 22.3% bearish the previous week.
That is bullish of course. The ISE Sentiment Index (I re-jigger it into a put call ratio) turned bullish with its move above “1″ and the huge spike in the Volatility Index is also bullish. I expect the market will stabilize next week. If I get a chance this week, I’m going to write a little report on the stocks that I think are especially interesting here, which I’ll send out to folks who make a donation. More details later…..
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070302spyw2.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:07 am (utc+8) Comments (12)
March 3, 2007
Maoxian’s Top Ten Links — March 2, 2007[*]The structure of adolescent romantic and sexual networks I don’t think my high school looked like this, but then I was one of the “pairs unconnected.” How do they define “romantic relations” anyway?
[*]Subway Maps of the World Nice site for subway map junkies like me.
[*]Clean Like a Maid Top to bottom, left to right.
[*]3% Declines in the S&P 500 Since 1962 The guys at TickerSense put together a nice table of 3% declines.
[*]Center for Responsible Lending The Center for Responsible Lending is a nonprofit%2
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Cat:[*]Links | Time: 6:30 pm (utc+8) Comments (0)
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 1:18 pm (utc+8) Comments Off
Best & Worst Relative Performance — Week Ending March 2, 2007It’s especially telling to see what the relative outperformers and underperformers are when the market gets ugly.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070302spyw.png
Utilities, Big Pharma and Healthcare all outperformed (defensive stuff, part of the “fright” to quality) — I don’t include the Bonds (TLT) in my scan, but if I did they would of course be the biggest relative outperformer last week…
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070302rpbest.png
… while Biotech, SmallCaps and Tech. got hammered hardest.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070302rpworst.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 12:05 pm (utc+8) Comments (1)
March 2, 2007
Warren Buffett’s 2006 Letter To Berkshire ShareholdersWarren Buffett’s 2006 Letter to Shareholders was posted yesterday. As always, it’s simply and clearly written. It’s also full of smart observations and sensible advice. And of course it’s highly entertaining (if you like cornball humor). Read the whole thing closely. Here are a few selected excerpts to whet your appetite:
Size seems to make many organizations slow-thinking, resistant to change and smug. In Churchill’s words: “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Here’s a telling fact: Of the ten non-oil companies having the largest market capitalization in 1965 – titans such as General Motors, Sears, DuPont and Eastman Kodak – only one made the 2006 list.
My only tasks are to cheer on, sculpt and harden our corporate culture, and make major capital-allocation decisions.
At ISCAR, as throughout Israel, brains and energy are ubiquitous.
We remain prepared to lose $6 billion in a single event, if we have been paid appropriately for assuming that risk. We are not willing, though, to take on even very small exposures at prices that don’t reflect our evaluation of loss probabilities.
Our behavior… in financial markets: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.
We sometimes encounter accounting footnotes about important transactions that leave us baffled, and we go away suspicious that the reporting company wished it that way. (For example, try comprehending transactions “described” in the old 10-Ks of Enron, even after you know how the movie ended.)
When an industry’s underlying economics are crumbling, talented management may slow the rate of decline. Eventually, though, eroding fundamentals will overwhelm managerial brilliance. (As a wise friend told me long ago, “If you want to get a reputation as a good businessman, be sure to get into a good business.”) And fundamentals are definitely eroding in the newspaper industry, a trend that has caused the profits of our Buffalo News to decline. The skid will almost certainly continue.
…the economic potential of a newspaper internet site – given the many alternative sources of information and entertainment that are free and only a click away – is at best a small fraction of that existing in the past for a print newspaper facing no competition.
Charlie and I love newspapers – we each read five a day – and believe that a free and energetic press is a key ingredient for maintaining a great democracy. We hope that some combination of print and online will ward off economic doomsday for newspapers…. But the days of lush profits from our newspaper are over.
The slowdown in residential real estate activity stems in part from the weakened lending practices of recent years. The “optional” contracts and “teaser” rates that have been popular have allowed borrowers to make payments in the early years of their mortgages that fall far short of covering normal interest costs. Naturally, there are few defaults when virtually nothing is required of a borrower. As a cynic has said, “A rolling loan gathers no loss.” But payments not made add to principal, and borrowers who can’t afford normal monthly payments early on are hit later with above-normal monthly obligations. This is the Scarlett O’Hara scenario: “I’ll think about that tomorrow.” For many home owners, “tomorrow” has now arrived.
I fervently believe in real trade – the more the better for both us and the world.
… derivatives, just like stocks and bonds, are sometimes wildly mispriced. For many years, accordingly, we have selectively written derivative contracts – few in number but sometimes for large dollar amounts. We currently have 62 contracts outstanding. I manage them personally, and they are free of counterparty credit risk.
It’s not hard, of course, to find smart people, among them individuals who have impressive investment records. But there is far more to successful long-term investing than brains and performance that has recently been good. Over time, markets will do extraordinary, even bizarre, things. A single, big mistake could wipe out a long string of successes. We therefore need someone genetically programmed to recognize and avoid serious risks, including those never before encountered. Certain perils that lurk in investment strategies cannot be spotted by use of the models commonly employed today by financial institutions. Temperament is also important. Independent thinking, emotional stability, and a keen understanding of both human and institutional behavior is vital to long-term investment success. I’ve seen a lot of very smart people who have lacked these virtues.
… board members be owner-oriented, business-savvy, interested and truly independent. … Charlie and I believe our four criteria are essential if directors are to do their job – which, by law, is to faithfully represent owners. Yet these criteria are usually ignored. … I’ve been queried many times about potential directors and have yet to hear anyone ask, “Does he think like an intelligent owner?”
At Berkshire… I am a one-man compensation committee who determines the salaries and incentives for the CEOs of around 40 significant operating businesses. How much time does this aspect of my job take? Virtually none. How many CEOs have voluntarily left us for other jobs in our 42-year history? Precisely none. … When we use incentives – and these can be large – they are always tied to the operating results for which a given CEO has authority. We issue no lottery tickets that carry payoffs unrelated to business performance.
Compensation reform will only occur if the largest institutional shareholders – it would only take a few – demand a fresh look at the whole system.
In my will I’ve stipulated that the proceeds from all Berkshire shares I still own at death are to be used for philanthropic purposes within ten years after my estate is closed. … I’ve set this schedule because I want the money to be spent relatively promptly by people I know to be capable, vigorous and motivated. These managerial attributes sometimes wane as institutions – particularly those that are exempt from market forces – age.
When Walter and Edwin were asked in 1989 by Outstanding Investors Digest, “How would you summarize your approach?” Edwin replied, “We try to buy stocks cheap.” So much for Modern Portfolio Theory, technical analysis, macroeconomic thoughts and complex algorithms.
… a finance instructor who the nerve to question EMT about as much chance of major promotion as Galileo had of being named Pope.
Fred Schwed’s classic, Where are the Customers’ Yachts? … was first published in 1940 and is now in its 4th edition. The funniest book ever written about investing, it lightly delivers many truly important messages on the subject.
Charlie and I are extraordinarily lucky. We were born in America; had terrific parents who saw that we got good educations; have enjoyed wonderful families and great health; and came equipped with a “business” gene that allows us to prosper in a manner hugely disproportionate to other people who contribute as much or more to our society’s well-being. Moreover, we have long had jobs that we love, in which we are helped every day in countless ways by talented and cheerful associates. No wonder we tapdance to work.
Related:
Warren Buffett’s 2005 Letter To Berkshire Shareholders
Warren Buffett’s 2004 Letter To Berkshire Shareholders
Warren Buffett’s 2003 Letter To Berkshire Shareholders (still can’t find my notes)
Warren Buffett’s 2002 Letter To Berkshire Shareholders
Warren Buffett’s 2001 Letter To Berkshire Shareholders
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Cat:[*]Investing | Time: 2:45 pm (utc+8) Comments (4)
I’ve Owned Amgen for Seven Years…and haven’t made a dime or been paid a dividend. Guess I overpaid for it. - Sigh -
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070301amgnm.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:33 am (utc+8) Comments (9)
March 1, 2007
When Index Calculations LagEveryone knows about the Dow Jones Industrial Average calculation glitch during Tuesday’s slide. Here are a couple overlay charts: 1) the Dow futures with the DJIA, and 2) the Diamonds ETF with the DJIA. You can see that both the futures and the ETF were tracking the Dow component stocks correctly the whole time. There were no opportunities for arbitrage.
I don’t even watch indexes on a quote sheet anymore (who watches the DJIA intraday anyway?), but I do follow all the ETFs based on major indexes closely. I can trade the DIA; I can’t trade the DJIA.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227glitch.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227glitch2.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:41 pm (utc+8) Comments (11)
« Previous Page• Next Page
March 7, 2007
Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in DetailSolid buying all day long. The good news is I’ve identified over a dozen stocks I like here. The bad news is that by the time I write my little report about them (this coming weekend?), they may all be too expensive again.
On a completely unrelated note, I’m happy to see that Kirk is (days held) in his trading log. You can finally study his trades in detail. Here’s a day trade he made February 1st in ROCM: Sold 700 at $16.67 (cost $15.47), profit $840.00 (+7.76%). Can you figure out why he was looking at this stock? Why he entered where he did? Why he exited where he did? Here’s a 15-minute chart for your reference:
UPDATE: I’ve replaced the original ugly chart with this prettier chart which has the entry and exit levels marked clearly. When the trade was made the stock was near a yearly high (all-time too) of $15.58.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/kirkrocm2.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:58 am (utc+8) Comments (35)
March 6, 2007
Notable New LowsHere are a few Notable New Lows… guess what they all have in common? ;-)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070305nnl.png
NSO% means Net percent change Since Open | % means percent change since previous close
Related:
Dec. 9, 2006)
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:05 am (utc+8) Comments (6)
March 5, 2007
Market Leader in Subprime, Alt A, and Option ARM LoansI was looking through the year-end 2006 slides for the Home Loans segment (PDF) from Washington Mutual. The best graph is on page two that shows “Industry Originations.” In both 2004 and 2005, ARM loans accounted for half of all originations, about $3 trillion worth. That’s a very different picture from the previous three years when ARM loans accounted for only 16%-26% of originations.
I read that 80% of subprime ARM loans are 2/28s (30-year loans where the “teaser” rate (of say 7.55%) adjusts after two years (to say 11.25%), but that may not be accurate — does someone have a link to accurate numbers?
WM looks cheap on paper (I own it), but it makes me a little leery that one of their stated “Strategic Objectives” is to become the market leader in Subprime, Alt A, and Option ARM products.
Aside: A mortgage is a pledge of collateral against which a lender makes a loan. I don’t like it when people refer to their “mortgage” when they mean their debt, but maybe I’m a nitpicker. “Home loan” is a nice, simple term I like.
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 3:47 pm (utc+8) Comments (19)
March 4, 2007
Market Sentiment — Week Ending March 2, 2007I wasn’t surprised to read this in Barron’s given last week’s dramatic market break:
the American Association of Individual Investors to 39.6% bearish and 36.6% bullish, from 53.9% bullish and 22.3% bearish the previous week.
That is bullish of course. The ISE Sentiment Index (I re-jigger it into a put call ratio) turned bullish with its move above “1″ and the huge spike in the Volatility Index is also bullish. I expect the market will stabilize next week. If I get a chance this week, I’m going to write a little report on the stocks that I think are especially interesting here, which I’ll send out to folks who make a donation. …..
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070302spyw2.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:07 am (utc+8) Comments (12)
Lending is a nonprofit%2 [*]time saved
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Cat:[*]Links | Time: 6:30 pm (utc+8) Comments (0)
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 1:18 pm (utc+8) Comments Off
Best & Worst Relative Performance — Week Ending March 2, 2007It’s especially telling to see what the relative outperformers and underperformers are when the market gets ugly.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070302spyw.png
Utilities, Big Pharma and Healthcare all outperformed (defensive stuff, part of the “fright” to quality) — I don’t include the Bonds (TLT) in my scan, but if I did they would of course be the biggest relative outperformer last week…
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070302rpbest.png
… while Biotech, SmallCaps and Tech. got hammered hardest.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070302rpworst.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 12:05 pm (utc+8) Comments (1)
March 2, 2007
Cat:[*]Investing | Time: 2:45 pm (utc+8) Comments (4)
I’ve Owned Amgen for Seven Years…and haven’t made a dime or been paid a dividend. Guess I overpaid for it. - Sigh -
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070301amgnm.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:33 am (utc+8) Comments (9)
March 1, 2007
When Index Calculations LagEveryone knows about the Dow Jones Industrial Average calculation glitch during Tuesday’s slide. Here are a couple overlay charts: 1) the Dow futures with the DJIA, and 2) the Diamonds ETF with the DJIA. You can see that both the futures and the ETF were tracking the Dow component stocks correctly the whole time. There were no opportunities for arbitrage.
I don’t even watch indexes on a quote sheet anymore (who watches the DJIA intraday anyway?), but I do follow all the ETFs based on major indexes closely. I can trade the DIA; I can’t trade the DJIA.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227glitch.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227glitch2.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:41 pm (utc+8) Comments (11)
« Previous Page• Next Page
March 7, 2007
Studying Mr. Kirk’s Trades in DetailSolid buying all day long. The good news is I’ve identified over a dozen stocks I like here. The bad news is that by the time I write my little report about them (this coming weekend?), they may all be too expensive again.
On a completely unrelated note, I’m happy to see thatheld) in his trading log. You can finally study his trades in detail. Here’s a day trade he made February 1st in ROCM: Sold 700 at $16.67 (cost $15.47), profit $840.00 (+7.76%). Can you figure out why he was looking at this stock? Why he entered where he did? Why he exited where he did? Here’s a 15-minute chart for your reference:
UPDATE: I’ve replaced the original ugly chart with this prettier chart which has the entry and exit levels marked clearly. When the trade was made the stock was near a yearly high (all-time too) of $15.58.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/kirkrocm2.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:58 am (utc+8) Comments (35)
March 6, 2007
Notable New LowsHere are a few Notable New Lows… guess what they all have in common? ;-)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070305nnl.png
NSO% means Net percent change Since Open | % means percent change since previous close
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:05 am (utc+8) Comments (6)
March 5, 2007
Market Leader in Subprime, Alt A, and Option ARM LoansI was looking through the year-Washington Mutual. The best graph is on page two that shows “Industry Originations.” In both 2004 and 2005, ARM loans accounted for half of all originations, about $3 trillion worth. That’s a very different picture from the previous three years when ARM loans accounted for only 16%-26% of originations.
I read that 80% of subprime ARM loans are 2/28s (30-year loans where the “teaser” rate (of say 7.55%) adjusts after two years (to say 11.25%), but that may not be accurate — does someone have a link to accurate numbers?
WM looks cheap on paper (I own it), but it makes me a little leery that one of their stated “Strategic Objectives” is to become the market leader in Subprime, Alt A, and Option ARM products.
Aside: A mortgage is a pledge of collateral against which a lender makes a loan. I don’t like it when people refer to their “mortgage” when they mean their debt, but maybe I’m a nitpicker. “Home loan” is a nice, simple term I like.
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 3:47 pm (utc+8) Comments (19)
March 4, 2007
Market Sentiment — Week Ending March 2, 2007I wasn’t surprised to read this in Barron’s given last week’s dramatic market break:
the American Association of Individual Investors to 39.6% bearish and 36.6% bullish, from 53.9% bullish and 22.3% bearish the previous week.
That is bullish of course. The ISE Sentiment Index (I re-jigger it into a put call ratio) turned bullish with its move above “1″ and the huge spike in the Volatility Index is also bullish. I expect the market will stabilize next week. If I get a chance this week, I’m going to write a little report on the stocks that I think are especially interesting here, which I’ll send out to folks who make a
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070302spyw2.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 9:07 am (utc+8) Comments (12)
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 1:18 pm (utc+8) Comments Off
Best & Worst Relative Performance — Week Ending March 2, 2007It’s especially telling to see what the relative outperformers and underperformers are when the market gets ugly.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070302spyw.png
Utilities, Big Pharma and Healthcare all outperformed (defensive stuff, part of the “fright” to quality) — I don’t include the Bonds (TLT) in my scan, but if I did they would of course be the biggest relative outperformer last week…
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070302rpbest.png
… while Biotech, SmallCaps and Tech. got hammered hardest.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200703/20070302rpworst.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 12:05 pm (utc+8) Comments (1)
| Time: 2:45 pm (utc+8) Comments (4)
I’ve Owned Amgen for Seven Years…and haven’t made a dime or been paid a dividend. Guess I overpaid for it. - Sigh -
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070301amgnm.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:33 am (utc+8) Comments (9)
March 1, 2007
When Index Calculations LagEveryone knows about the Dow Jones Industrial Average calculation glitch during Tuesday’s slide. Here are a couple overlay charts: 1) the Dow futures with the DJIA, and 2) the Diamonds ETF with the DJIA. You can see that both the futures and the ETF were tracking the Dow component stocks correctly the whole time. There were no opportunities for arbitrage.
I don’t even watch indexes on a quote sheet anymore (who watches the DJIA intraday anyway?), but I do follow all the ETFs based on major indexes closely. I can trade the DIA; I can’t trade the DJIA.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227glitch.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227glitch2.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:41 pm (utc+8) Comments (11)
« Previous Page• Next Page
February 28, 2007
The Rout: 10 Intraday ChartsA lot of my data is messed up (this drubbing obviously strained the system), but it looks like the worst intraday “tone” since July 2002. I don’t have much time to blog this morning, but here are ten “notable” intraday (15-minute) charts. The plunge had a lot more to do with the psychology of the market post-NovaStar than with China, in my humble opinion.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227vix15.png
VIX: +64.22%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227spy15.png
SPY: -3.91%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227dia15.png
DIA: -3.75%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227qqqq15.png
QQQQ: -4.11%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227qid15.png
QID: +9.5%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227gld15.png
GLD: -3.95%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227tlt15.png
TLT: +1.26%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227efa15.png
EFA: -4.03%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227eem15.png
EEM: -8.13%
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070227fxi15.png
FXI: -9.87%
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:19 am (utc+8) Comments (24)
February 27, 2007
Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer TrueNoticed iRobot on the new lows list. Looks like it has been all downhill for IRBT since they came public in November 2005. Might be interesting to look through some of their SEC filings, figure out how quickly they’re burning cash, etc.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070226irbtw.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:58 am (utc+8) Comments (7)
February 26, 2007
Yahoo’s Plans for Carrying More Financial Blogs?Just noticed that under the News & Info section on Yahoo! Finance there’s a link titled “Financial Blogs.” (Maybe it has been there awhile and I haven’t been paying attention.) Looks like Seeking Alpha articles are the only ones listed there now, but they must intend to include more contributors than SA alone, no? Anyone know what Yahoo’s plans are for carrying more financial blogs?
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/finblogs.png
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Cat:[*]Internet/Media | Time: 10:57 pm (utc+8) Comments (8)
A Knight Without Armor in a Savage LandJust stumbled across this in something called Manas Journal from 1965:
McGee is an ultramodern Robin Hood who disdains adjustment to the established order of things, seeking neither status, financial security, nor conventional comforts of any other kind. Though the plots in which he becomes involved pit him against one or another criminal exploiter to regain expropriated moneys for his clients, his real dedication is to resistance to routinized living.
…
is MacDonald’s way of opposing the Orwellian horrors of 1984 and the humdrum confinements of W. H. Whyte’s Organization Man. Who is responsible? Not a league of capable demagogues who plot the submergence of individuality; the real offender is the inertia of so many citizens of the ‘affluent society.’”
This is why the McGee character appeals now more than ever.
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 6:23 pm (utc+8) Comments (8)
Random Thoughts about Casino RoyaleI saw the new Bond movie, Casino Royale, a couple of weeks ago with one of my girlfriends. Movie tickets cost 70 RMB (just over US$9) a pop here in Beijing so it’s not a cheap date.
I like the fact that the new Bond is kind of homely, but I didn’t like much else about the movie. It was too violent for me and the story was idiotic. Oh, I also liked the villain, Le Fish or whatever… he had a great face and the slashed eye was a nice touch (but drop the asthma inhaler next time).
Various Bond girls: yawn. And what’s with Bond wanting to settle down with Vespa, sheesh! Is he going to wear a fanny pack and drive a minivan in the next movie?
Um, even the SEC in all their enormous incompetence would probably flag the miraculously well-timed purchase of 100 million dollars worth of puts (you’d have to see the movie to get this). What’s with the continuous product placements? I wear an Omega! I fly Virgin Atlantic! Yuck.
Deeply amused by the prominent role that Texas Hold’em played — hasn’t the Hold’em craze passed by now? Note to Bond: 75s is a terrible starting hand, even in heads-up. Political correctness alert: M is a woman and Felix Lighter is black.
RottenTomatoes score: 94% WTF?!? This movie is not recommended. (Jessica liked it.)
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 8:06 am (utc+8) Comments (0)
February 24, 2007
Selected Excerpts from The Quick Red Fox (Part II)MacDonald briefly frees his inner rebel, and is especially acerbic toward the inhabitants of “Santa Rosita”:
“I am not a nine to five animal. I cannot swallow the myths which say that nine to five is a Good Thing because that’s the way nearly everybody else gets stuck. I cannot be an orderly consumer, with 2.3 kids and .7 new cars a year, and an after-hours secretarial arrangement. I am not properly acquisitive. I like the Busted Flush, the records and the paintings, the little accumulations of this and that which stir memories, but I could stand on the shore and watch the whole thing go glug and disappear and feel a mild sardonic regret. No Professional American Wife could stomach that kind of attitude.”
“I get this crazy feeling. Every once in a while I get it. I get the feeling that this is the last time in history when offbeats like me will have a chance to live free in the nooks and crannies of the huge and rigid structure of an increasingly codified society. Fifty years from now I would be hunted in the street. They would drill holes in my skull and make me sensible and reliable and adjusted.”
“The incomparably dull tract houses, glitteringly new, were marching out among the hills, cluttered with identical station wagons, identical children, identical barbecues, identical tastes in flowers and television. You see, Virginia, there really is a Santa Rosita, full of plastic people, in plastic houses, in areas noduled by the vast basketry of their shopping centers. But do not blame them for being so tiresome and so utterly satisfied with themselves. Because, you see, there is no one left to tell them what they are and what they really should be doing.
The dullest wire services the world has ever seen fill their little monopoly newspapers with self-congratulatory pap. Their radio is unspeakable. Their television is geared to a minimal approval by thirty million of them. And anything thirty million people like, aside from their more private functions, is bound to be bad. Their schools are group-adjustment centers, fashioned to shame the rebellious. Their churches are weekly votes of confidence in God. Their politicians are enormously likable, never saying a cross word. The goods they buy grow increasingly more shoddy each year, though brighter in color. For those who still read, they make do, for the most part, with the portentous gruntings of Uris, Wouk, Rand and others of that same witless ilk.”
Related: Selected Excerpts from The Quick Red Fox (Part I)
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Best & Worst Relative Performance — Week Ending February 23, 2007Things flip flop a bit as Semiconductors, Energies, Gold, Materials (again) and Utilities were the best relative performers last week…
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070223rpbest.png
… while REITs, Big Pharma, Financials and Healthcare were relatively weak.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070223rpworst.png
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Baby T at TwoBaby T recently turned two. He’s a big, strong kid. (I don’t know how big exactly — I’m not one of those parents who pays attention to percentiles.) He still has a remarkably sweet disposition (not entered the “terrible two’s” yet, I guess).
He doesn’t talk much, but he understands everything: English & Mandarin (parents), Shanghainese (grandparents), Shandongese (nanny), Sichuanese (cook), Beijingese (driver), and a slew of Yiddish swear words (Uncle Morty). He has an excellent memory and appears to be sharp (takes after his mom, obviously). He also has great balance. ;-)
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/tat2.jpg
Related: Baby T Turns One
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Cat:[*]Baby | Time: 4:09 pm (utc+8) Comments (19)
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February 24, 2007
All Fusion Abruptly Stops: NovaStar ImplodesFollowing mytext in your blog posts that isn’t a link - this is horrible netiquette - and quit using bold and italics so much while you’re at it, thanks.
You can see from the chart below that NFI blew up back in 2004, did the textbook Fibonacci retracement bounce, muddled along for a couple of years, and then imploded. Clearly, like the other subprime lender victims of late, the market has been signalling trouble for a long time… no smart money (trend follower) was hurt here, that’s for sure.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070223nfiw.png
Here’s a look at the intraday chart, all sessions, since the blow up — lots of spots to get short (assuming there are shares to borrow).
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070223nfi15.png
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February 21, 2007
Adding 150 Basis Points to Top Line GrowthBest bit from an interview with David Herro in this week’s Barron’s:
“Longer-term, I’m very bullish on global economic growth. The theme I’ve been preaching about for 10 years is finally happening: When you have three-fifths of the world’s population finally becoming consumers, that is going to have an impact. The second biggest market for the BMW 7 Series outside the U.S. is China. If China or any of the emerging markets could add 100 to 150 basis points of growth to the top line of, say, a Diageo, a Nestlé, a BMW, that is significant to its valuation in the long haul and that’s exactly what’s happening.”
BMW 3- and 5-series in Shenyang.
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Cat:[*]Links | Time: 8:53 pm (utc+8) Comments (25)
Best & Worst Relative Performance — Week Ending February 16, 2007Materials were the best relative performers last week followed by Industrials, Financials and Tech…
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070216rpbest.png
… while Energies, Biotech, Big Pharma, REITs and Gold were relatively weak.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070216rpworst.png
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FIG Flagsyou haven’t already read it. (Reading the S-1 is the first thing you should do if you want to understand a business.) Some pundits think their listing marks a top for the “alternative investment” business, to which I say, nah, probably not.
Fortress Investment Group is a leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $29.9 billion in assets under management as of September 30, 2006. Fortress was founded in 1998 as an asset-based investment management firm with a fundamental philosophy premised on its alignment of interests with the investors in its funds. Fortress raises, invests and manages private equity funds, hedge funds and publicly traded alternative investment vehicles.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070216fig30.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 10:35 am (utc+8) Comments (1)
ETF to Watch — CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (FXY)The
[*]Australian Dollar (FXA)[*]British Pound (FXB)[*]Canadian Dollar (FXC)[*]Euro (FXE)[*]Japanese Yen (FXY)[*]Mexican Peso (FXM)[*]Swedish Krona (FXS)[*]Swiss Franc (FXF)None of these ETFs is very actively traded (even the Euro), but they’re still handy instruments for small investors to get easy access to foreign currencies.
“The Japanese yen is the national currency of Japan and the currency of the accounts of the Bank of Japan, the Japanese central bank. As of April 2004, average daily turnover of the Japanese yen in the foreign exchange market is the third-most-traded currency in the world, accounting for approximately 20% of global foreign exchange transactions. The USD/Japanese yen pair is the second-most-traded currency pair, accounting for approximately 17% of the global foreign exchange transactions.”
Source: Triennial Central Bank Survey, Bank for International Settlements, March 2005
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070216fxy30.png
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February 16, 2007
STIKFAS Kicks AssEvery time I go to Hong Kong I try to pick up an interesting new toy for baby. This trip I discovered something called are these about three inches high, cost about $10 each, and can be posed in a million different ways. The Alpha Male Samurai Warrior (one that I got, pictured below) has a nice variety of weapons. Highly recommended!
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/samblue.jpg
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/explodedalphamale.jpg
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Best & Worst Relative Performance — Week Ending February 9, 2007Gold and Utilities were the big winners, with MidCaps and SmallCaps also relatively strong…
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070209rpbest.png
… while Biotech, Big Pharma, and Tech saw outflows.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070209rpworst.png
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February 10, 2007
Nothing NEW about High-Risk LendingYou may recall my post from early last December, Subprime Mortgage Lenders’ Submerging Share Prices. I featured LEND’s chart then and mentioned NEW, and now I’m featuring NEW’s chart after its recent blow-up. (Go back and read the comments which a reader (and mortgage broker) emailed me at the time.)
No one strictly following the trend on the weekly chart could have been hurt in NEW since it turned down decisively last November — the market gave its verdict on these subprime mortgage lenders many months ago.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070209neww.png
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Eight Golden Rules for Shoe CareAccording to Salvatore Ferragamo:
[*]A new pair of shoes should never be worn for many consecutive hours. Once your feet are completely accustomed to the shoes, you can begin to wear them all day.[*]Never wear the same pair of shoes two days in a row. Let them rest for at least a day before wearing them again.[*]Always use a shoehorn when putting on your shoes.[*]Before removing a lace-up shoe, loosen the laces completely so the shoe slips off more easily.[*]Once you have taken off your shoes, insert the made-to-measure shoetrees.[*]Shoetrees should also be used when shoes are wet from rain or snow. In this case, the shoes should not be rested on the soles but on their sides, and left to dry for an entire day.[*]Each time you wear a pair of shoes the should be cleaned and polished, even when they still look shiny.[*]Should you not wear your shoes for some time, coat them with a thin layer of polish, put them in the cloth sack provided, and keep them soles down in a box. time saved
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February 8, 2007
When Value Investors Stray from their Circle of CompetenceI thought it was curious when Wally Weitz said he was short mid-cap and small-cap stocks; frankly I thought Wally was out of his depth making that call: shorting “over-valued” stocks is absolutely not just another form of value investing.
MDY hit a new all-time high and the inverse MidCap ETFs — MYY and MZZ — of course went to new lows.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070207midcaps.png
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February 6, 2007
Another Great Disconnect: Southern Copper Still Going NorthDr. Copper peaked around the middle of 2006 but Southern Copper (PCU) is now trading at all-time highs. What gives? Shouldn’t PCU track the price of the metal pretty darn closely? Both Peru Copper (CUP) and Encore Wire (WIRE) are behaving “properly” anyway. Any metallic gurus out there who can give me some insight?
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/cashcopper.png
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070205pcuw.png
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February 5, 2007
Domain Name MadnessGreat news. I was just reviewing expiring domain names and was thrilled to learn that this week I can finally buy this one:
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000.com
Don’t get any ideas about trying to outbid me!
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My Firefox Extensions
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/ffext.png
2,173 extensions available. Are there any must-have ones I’m missing? If so, please leave a comment.
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Cat:[*]Internet/Media | Time: 9:54 pm (utc+8) Comments (23)
A Hopeless Financial Morass?Good bit excerpted from an uneven (meaning occasionally brilliant but largely wrong) July 2005 essay by Bedlam Asset Management called, Remember Golmud (PDF):
“Guanxi (or connections) is not just having a Scottish Cabinet ruling England and Wales, or Enarques, all of whom attended the same two schools, running the French civil service. It is more subtle. It includes blood relatives and in-laws; it can extend to cousins of cousins, clans of the same name, people from your village or province and hopefully, senior politicians for whom one of your set once did a favour.
It has been around for hundreds of years. Neither the Manchu nor Mongol rulers understood it or could break it. Guanxi has its strengths; it provides a support net for the weak and dispossessed. Very large personal networks on a national level can make the creation of new businesses and raising capital a remarkably smooth operation. It also embeds corruption, deeply. Thus any attempt at reform becomes mired and compromised. Government regulators find themselves having to pull the plug on their own connections, including perhaps their bosses or even worse, senior army officers and politicians.
This is why so many of Hong Kong’s listed ‘red-chip’ companies, run by wholly unqualified children of senior officials, were able to get all the funding, licences and assets they wanted in record time.”
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Cat:[*]China[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 2:52 pm (utc+8) Comments (4)
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 11:31 am (utc+8) Comments Off
Best & Worst Relative Performance — Week Ending February 2, 2007Energies were strong with Crude’s big reversal this past week, and SmallCaps moved to new all-time highs…
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070202rpbest.png
… while Gold, Biotech, and Big Pharma were all relatively weak.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200702/20070202rpworst.png
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February 2, 2007
Alliterative HobermanI’ve mentioned before that Stephen Hunter is my favorite movie reviewer (I almost never disagree with him), but J. Hoberman is also very good… in part because he writes lines like this one:
“The Big Lebowski intermittently references The Big Sleep but this wacky series of L.A. adventures featuring a stoned slacker as a surrogate Philip Marlowe is pure pop rumination.”
The Big Lebowski is one of my favorite movies.
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 11:32 am (utc+8) Comments (7)
Vanguard’s VWO: A Cheaper Way to Get Emerging Markets ExposureI noticed that Vanguard’s Emerging Markets ETF (ticker symbol: VWO) is getting more and more actively traded. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (ticker symbol: EEM) is still the most active, but using Vanguard’s handy ETF comparison screen, you can see all the differences between the two… the most glaring being the expense ratio: 0.3% for Vanguard’s VWO compared with 0.77% for iShares’ EEM.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200701/20070201eemvwo.png
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February 1, 2007
The F*ckrs at Flickr
Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,
On March 15th we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based
Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will
have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.
…
95% of your fellow Flickrites already use this system and
their experience is just the same as yours is now, except
they sign in on a different page. It’s easy to switch: it
takes about a minute if you already have a Yahoo! ID and
about five minutes if you don’t.
…
http://flickr.com/account/associate/
Wrong. When I tried to associate my Yahoo ID to my old Flickr account I got this message:
“That Flickr account is already connected to a Yahoo! ID.”
Now what? I’ve sent them an email (no doubt like every other trapped “Old Skooler” (ain’t that cute?)) and will post their reply, assuming I get one.
UPDATE #1:
“Just a quick email from Team Flickr to let you know that we’ve successfully received your recent Help by Email query and we hope to respond within 10 days.
We’d also like to take an opportunity to remind you that one query is sufficient and multiple queries regarding the same issue make the Magic Donkey cry.”
Ain’t that cute (again)?
UPDATE #2
Hello,
Thanks for your question.
Your Yahoo! ID “——” is merged to your Flickr account
“——”. If you want, I can delete this Flickr account
for you, freeing the Yahoo! ID to merge with your “old
skool” account. Due to the current backlog, it may take
some time to process your request.
If you want to delete the account yourself, please follow
the directions in the link below:
http://www.flickr.com/help/account/#48
Please make sure you are signed in to the correct account
before deleting.
Regards,
Monish
UPDATE #3
Hello,
Thanks for your question.
As you requested, your Flickr account “——–” has been deleted. You can now merge your Yahoo! ID “——–” with your “old-skool” Flickr account.
Regards,
Monish
Hurray! Problem solved, accounts properly “merged.” Elapsed time: 23 days (30 Jan. to 22 Feb). Thanks, Monish.
Oh, those “Flickreenies” couldn’t help themselves and sent me one last cutesy note, and no I don’t enjoy the “sign-on-to-everything-in-one-place goodness”:
Hi C Maoxian!
This is just a little note to remind you that your C
Maoxian Flickr account has been merged in to your ——–
Yahoo! account.
Don’t forget these things:
- You will need to sign in to Flickr via Yahoo! with your
——– ID from now on.
Oh! And by the way, we’ll still send communication to your
chairman at maoxian.com address.
Thanks, and we hope you enjoy the
sign-on-to-everything-in-one-place goodness!
The Flickreenies
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Cat:[*]Internet/Media | Time: 3:29 pm (utc+8) Comments (4)
Last Dozen Books Read (I)More proof that I love lists. If I finish a book that means I liked it, and if I like a book that means I recommend it to others. Willeford is probably my favorite author. I also like Wambaugh, MacDonald, and Mortimer a lot.
[*]Rumpole of the Bailey, by John Mortimer[*]The Deep Blue Good-by, by John D. MacDonald[*]The Dogs of War, by Frederick Forsyth[*]On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, by Ian Fleming[*]Freakonomics, by Stephen Dubner & Steven Levitt[*]Cancel All Our Vows, by John D. MacDonald[*]Enough’s Enough, by Calvin Trillin[*]The New Centurions, by Joseph Wambaugh[*]The Onion Field, by Joseph Wambaugh[*]New Hope for the Dead, by Charles Willeford[*]The Way We Die Now, by Charles Willeford[*]Fortune’s Formula, by William Poundstonetime saved
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January 31, 2007
The True Pecking Order of Stock Market BlogsBarry wrote a post about the Top Twenty Finance Blogs according to something called “Valuewiki.” I thought it would be useful to adjust that list based on the age of the blog (authors, please correct me if I got a date wrong):
[*]Maoxian | First Post: September 23, 2001[*]The Big Picture (Barry Ritholtz) | First Post: September 18, 2002[*]Trader Mike | First Post: April 2nd, 2003[*]Footnoted | First Post: August 18, 2003[*]The Kirk Report | First Post: September 3, 2003[*]Fat Pitch Financials | First Post: August 12th, 2004[*]Random Roger’s Big Picture | First Post: September 29, 2004 [*]Bill Cara | First Post: December 22, 2004 [*]Jeff Matthews | First Post: January 11, 2005[*]Crossing Wall Street | First Post: July 11, 2005[*]InvestorGeeks | First Post: October 30, 2005[*]Ticker Sense | First Post: November 9, 2005[*]Gannon On Investing | First Post: December 24, 2005[*]Howard Lindzon | First Post: December 29th, 2005 [*]24/7 Wall St. | First Post: March 7, 2006[*]Stock Market Beat | First Post: March 8, 2006[*]Herb Greenberg’s Market Blog | First Post: June 18, 2006I threw out Seeking Alpha (David Jackson’s serf-driven content aggregator) and Blogging Stocks (a Calacanis Corporation “blog” ?) — neither of which is a blog as I define them.
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Cat:[*]Internet/Media | Time: 10:52 am (utc+8) Comments (27)
What It Will Look Like When the Chinese Stock Bubble BurstsI’ve lined up the price of the Shanghai Composite to correspond with the peak of the Internet bubble (as represented by the IIX). When bubbles burst it ain’t pretty, and people who are paying the wrong price for Chinese stocks are going to learn an expensive lesson.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200701/2007sseiix.png
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Cat:[*]China[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 7:24 am (utc+8) Comments (47)
January 30, 2007
No Margin, No ProblemBest bit from an A1 article in today’s WSJ: Stock Frenzy In China Stokes Official Concern:
Regulators say they are increasingly seeing signs that investors… are teaming up with merchants to, in effect, borrow from their credit cards, presumably hoping that stocks will rise enough before the bill comes due to pay off the debt.
The credit-card maneuver typically involves a merchant who agrees — in return for a commission — to process a transaction that allows the cardholder to get cash at a lower cost than a conventional cash advance.
(China still doesn’t permit brokers to offer margin trading, or investing with borrowed funds, to individuals.)
I haven’t heard of this but then again I haven’t been asking around. All the classic signs of a bubble are in place — manicurists giving stock tips, folks borrowing against credit cards to go long, day trading grannies, parabolic price moves, etc. It should get ugly but it’s impossible to short stocks (卖空) here so there’s no easy way for me to cash in on the coming crunch.
Related: How Do You Say Textbook Fibonacci Retracement in Chinese?
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January 29, 2007
UBS Securities’ Beijing Office to Open SoonFor some reason I couldn’t get to wsj.com since the beginning of the year, but today I got through and plowed through three weeks of headlines. I found about three stories that I was interested in reading closely. (I sorely regret re-subscribing to the WSJ for another year.) Here are the key bits from one of them:
“UBS Securities is ready to start business as China’s first full-service brokerage house run by a foreign firm. Their new Chinese venture is armed with a full set of licenses to trade, underwrite securities, manage assets and publish research, among other things. UBS won government approval to set up a securities firm in September 2005, just as China’s securities regulator was closing the door on new foreign ventures. UBS agreed to pay $210 million for a 20% stake in a new brokerage house formed out of the former Beijing Securities, a troubled broker owned by the Beijing municipal government. UBS will have control of the company’s 11-member board of directors without owning the largest slice of stock. UBS is one of six in the buying consortium. The Beijing government is the largest shareholder with 33%, three Chinese state companies each have stakes of 14% and International Finance Corp., the investment arm of the World Bank, has a 4.99% stake. UBS Securities doesn’t have an opening date, and the equity hasn’t yet changed hands. UBS expects it to happen in the first quarter.”
Amusing bit (in bold) from UBS:
“By September 2005, a strategic cooperation agreement had been signed with the Bank of China and Beijing SASAC (State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission), and UBS and The International Finance Corporation (IFC) had received State Council Approval of their plans to restructure Beijing Securities. What at first glance appears an unusually quick implementation of a high-level strategic decision is, in fact, the result of patient investment and a long-term approach.”
“Unusually quick implementation” — this phrase doesn’t even exist in Chinese. ;-)
Article from June 21, 2006: Ahead of rivals, UBS clears step to starting China brokerage
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Discount Airlines Based in Southeast AsiaGleaned from a recent Wall Street Journal article, supplemented with information found here:
[*]AirAsia | Hub: Kuala Lumpur[*]Jetstar Airways | Hub: Singapore[*]Oasis Hong Kong Airlines | Hub: Hong Kong[*]Orient Thai Airlines | Hub: Bangkok[*]Tiger Airways | Hub: Singapore[*]Valueair | Hub: Singaporetime saved
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 2:19 pm (utc+8) Comments (3)
The Net Present Value of Expected Future Cash FlowsBest bit from Part III of Barron’s 2007 Roundtable:
Meryl Witmer: For ‘07, Navistar say they will be operating-cash-flow positive. They might have break-even results or worse. The analogy I use in this case is, say, some woman is looking to marry a guy and he just got laid off from his job. Should she assume his earnings power over time is nothing? Or should she assume he will probably get a job in six months or a year?
Art Samberg: Has he started drinking yet?
Meryl Witmer: My point is, one year does not make the company. A company is worth the net present value of its future cash flows. So even if a year is zero, that doesn’t make it worth zero.
I’ve been making Witmer’s argument to my wife for many years now. ;-)
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February 2, 2007
Alliterative HobermanI’ve mentioned before that very good… in part because he writes lines like this one:
“The Big Lebowski intermittently references The Big Sleep but this wacky series of L.A. adventures featuring a stoned slacker as a surrogate Philip Marlowe is pure pop rumination.”
The Big Lebowski is one of my favorite movies.
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 11:32 am (utc+8) Comments (7)
Vanguard’s VWO: A Cheaper Way to Get Emerging Markets ExposureI noticed that Vanguard’s can see all the differences between the two… the most glaring being the expense ratio: 0.3% for Vanguard’s VWO compared with 0.77% for iShares’ EEM.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200701/20070201eemvwo.png
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 8:58 am (utc+8) Comments (0)
February 1, 2007
The F*ckrs at Flickr
Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,
On March 15th we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based
Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will
have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.
…
95% of your fellow Flickrites already use this system and
their experience is just the same as yours is now, except
they sign in on a different page. It’s easy to switch: it
takes about a minute if you already have a Yahoo! ID and
about five minutes if you don’t.
…
http://flickr.com/account/associate/
Wrong. When I tried to associate my Yahoo ID to my old Flickr account I got this message:
“That Flickr account is already connected to a Yahoo! ID.”
Now what? I’ve sent them an email (no doubt like every other trapped “Old Skooler” (ain’t that cute?)) and will post their reply, assuming I get one.
UPDATE #1:
“Just a quick email from Team Flickr to let you know that we’ve successfully received your recent Help by Email query and we hope to respond within 10 days.
We’d also like to take an opportunity to remind you that one query is sufficient and multiple queries regarding the same issue make the Magic Donkey cry.”
Ain’t that cute (again)?
UPDATE #2
Hello,
Thanks for your question.
Your Yahoo! ID “——” is merged to your Flickr account
“——”. If you want, I can delete this Flickr account
for you, freeing the Yahoo! ID to merge with your “old
skool” account. Due to the current backlog, it may take
some time to process your request.
If you want to delete the account yourself, please follow
the directions in the link below:
http://www.flickr.com/help/account/#48
Please make sure you are signed in to the correct account
before deleting.
Regards,
Monish
UPDATE #3
Hello,
Thanks for your question.
As you requested, your Flickr account “——–” has been deleted. You can now merge your Yahoo! ID “——–” with your “old-skool” Flickr account.
Regards,
Monish
Hurray! Problem solved, accounts properly “merged.” Elapsed time: 23 days (30 Jan. to 22 Feb). Thanks, Monish.
Oh, those “Flickreenies” couldn’t help themselves and sent me one last cutesy note, and no I don’t enjoy the “sign-on-to-everything-in-one-place goodness”:
Hi C Maoxian!
This is just a little note to remind you that your C
Maoxian Flickr account has been merged in to your ——–
Yahoo! account.
Don’t forget these things:
- You will need to sign in to Flickr via Yahoo! with your
——– ID from now on.
Oh! And by the way, we’ll still send communication to your
chairman at maoxian.com address.
Thanks, and we hope you enjoy the
sign-on-to-everything-in-one-place goodness!
The Flickreenies
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Cat:[*]Internet/Media | Time: 3:29 pm (utc+8) Comments (4)
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Cat:[*]Personal | Time: 2:39 pm (utc+8) Comments (14)
I threw out Seeking Alpha (David Jackson’s serf-driven content aggregator) and Blogging Stocks (a Calacanis Corporation “blog” ?) — neither of which is a blog as I define them.
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Cat:[*]Internet/Media | Time: 10:52 am (utc+8) Comments (27)
What It Will Look Like When the Chinese Stock Bubble BurstsI’ve lined up the price of the Shanghai Composite to correspond with the peak of the Internet bubble (as represented by the IIX). When bubbles burst it ain’t pretty, and people who are paying the wrong price for Chinese stocks are going to learn an expensive lesson.
http://www.maoxian.com/images/200701/2007sseiix.png
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Cat:[*]China[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 7:24 am (utc+8) Comments (47)
January 30, 2007
No Margin, No ProblemBest bit from an A1 article in today’s WSJ:
Regulators say they are increasingly seeing signs that investors… are teaming up with merchants to, in effect, borrow from their credit cards, presumably hoping that stocks will rise enough before the bill comes due to pay off the debt.
The credit-card maneuver typically involves a merchant who agrees — in return for a commission — to process a transaction that allows the cardholder to get cash at a lower cost than a conventional cash advance.
(China still doesn’t permit brokers to offer margin trading, or investing with borrowed funds, to individuals.)
I haven’t heard of this but then again I haven’t been asking around. All the classic signs of a bubble are in place — manicurists giving stock tips, folks borrowing against credit cards to go long, day trading grannies, parabolic price moves, etc. It should get ugly but it’s impossible to short stocks (卖空) here so there’s no easy way for me to cash in on the coming crunch.
Cat:[*]China[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 2:56 pm (utc+8) Comments (15)
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Cat:[*]China[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 2:47 pm (utc+8) Comments (2)
The Net Present Value of Expected Future Cash FlowsBest bit from Part III of Barron’s 2007 Roundtable:
Meryl Witmer: For ‘07, Navistar say they will be operating-cash-flow positive. They might have break-even results or worse. The analogy I use in this case is, say, some woman is looking to marry a guy and he just got laid off from his job. Should she assume his earnings power over time is nothing? Or should she assume he will probably get a job in six months or a year?
Art Samberg: Has he started drinking yet?
Meryl Witmer: My point is, one year does not make the company. A company is worth the net present value of its future cash flows. So even if a year is zero, that doesn’t make it worth zero.
I’ve been making Witmer’s argument to my wife for many years now. ;-)
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Cat:[*]Trading and Investing | Time: 12:14 pm (utc+8) Comments (6)
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