No Random Walking!

Days after hitting a record high, a new record is set today: this time is the largest single-day loss incurred to me for the last six years, erasing almost all of the gains of this year.

This should make me seriously think of hedging (by shorting the underlining indices for the long positions I own), no matter how much I like these stocks.

On the other hand, this is what happens in stock markets. Sharp selloffs are actually expected, for three or four times every year. Hate to lose a lot of money, but it's no panic time yet.

Whole Foods said it would pay $18.50 in cash per share for Wild Oats and assume the rival's debt, reported to be $106 million as of Sept. 30.

Wild Oats' shares gained 17.5% to $18.47 per share.

Not everyone was cheering. Standard & Poor's equity analyst Joseph Agnese downgraded Wild Oats to hold from buy.

What's the point of downgrading a stock after the all-cash buyout announcement?

Source: A Hearty Reception for Whole Foods-Wild Oats Deal

New 52-week high for DJI, SPX and Nasdaq. I believe my own portfolio hit an all-time high also.

Incidentally I've seen a record high traffic to my blog sites, for no obvious reasons!

That's a headline on USAToday.com: Link .

As I've commented several months ago, California has one of the most absurdly high home price/income ratio. According to the US Census Bureau, the state has a median household income of only $51,312 in 2005. The median home price there? $567,690 (see chart on the right)!

The median household income in the state actually went down a bit from 2004.

For home prices in other states, see the "Heat map" at trulia.com. (Nice satellite image also).

$latex i\hbar\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\left|\Psi(t)\right>=H\left|\Psi(t)\right>&s=2$

$latex \sum_{i=1}^{n} {\lambda_i C_{ij}} + \mu = C_{j0}, \ \ \ j=1, ..., n&s=2$

$latex \sum_i^n \lambda_i = 1 &s=2$

$latex \begin{equation} \begin{cases}

a+b=1, & j=1,...,n \\

\sum_i^n \lambda_i = 1 &

\end{cases) \end{equation} $

As you can tell, I still cannot make the multiline equation work.

Link to Math for the Masses « WordPress.com

... the year of pig. Herding piglets (and water buffalos) was one of my favorite things to do when I was a little boy.

Very significant event for SYNM. I am still puzzled though. As far as I am aware of Sinopec does not have any major straded gas field, yet they are talking about building a commercial scale GTL plant!

1. Over the last couple of years Syntroleum has been hoping for CTL projects only in China. Like in US, China has no extra natural gas for GTL. Both countries have a lot of coals. 
2. Is the planned commercial-scale GTL plant the same one as in PNG? How involved is Sinopec in PNG?

In any case, it is quite a positive development for Syntroleum even though nothing is guarenteed at this early stage. However when Chinese national companies decide to do something, they usually do it. Cost is not an issue in most cases.

Besides, the market cap of Syntroleum is below $200m, less than half of its nearest competitor Rentech.

The deal would see the construction of a commercial-scale Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) plant and the development of a demonstration-scale Coal-to-Liquids plant in China. The non-binding agreement calls for Sinopec to provide $20 million a year over the next five years to Syntroleum to support its Fischer-Tropsch technology.

Both plants would be fully capitalized by Sinopec, while Syntroleum will provide the technology. The results from the projects, according to Holmes, will form the basis to jointly market the FT technology to third parties in China.

The two companies will next negotiate a definitive agreement.

Sinopec also indicated its commitment to become the main engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor for Syntroleum’s planned 50,000 barrel per day GTL facility in Papua New Guinea (PNG), said Holmes. In December, Syntroleum Corporation signed a Joint Development Agreement with Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company, K.S.C. (KUFPEC) for that facility.

 ... on a clear day.

“??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????”Max Levchin???????????

Cannot agree more! Those are also exactly the reasons that I enjoy stock investing - and the reasons that I enjoy walking on the streets of Shenzhen.

Levchin is the guy who co-created Paypal and YouTube and sold them to Ebay and Google, respectively. He was in China recently, supposedly looking for investment opportunities.

There are about 66 such companies in total. A few of them are legally US companies, but are included here because most of their business is based in China.

[Compiled from Yahoo! Finance data, as of today.]