No Random Walking!

The highlights video at NFL.com 

FOX's announcers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on Romo's specatacular scramble: (DallasNews.com)

Buck: The snap's over the head of Romo, and now it’s a footrace … Romo can't get on top of it. … Finally does … Will try and make something happen … Tony Romo, doing his thing … First down, Dallas … Unbelievable

(Pause as crowd goes wild)
Aikman (during replay): Andre Gurode, the center, just snaps it clean over Tony Romo’s head. Initially, Romo can’t even pick it up clean. You’ve got two defenders there trying to go for the ball as opposed to Romo. And Romo with the awareness of knowing where he’s got to go for the first down. You don't think they'll be showing this one for years to come, do you?

Buck: The legend just grew.

Aikman: [Laughs] I mean, how embarrassed right now are the St. Louis Rams?

Buck: It was a 4-yard run taking the scenic route.

Link to Poster of recommended and forbidden words for Chinese store clerks - Boing Boing

It's going to $45, possibly today, i.e., only two days after I sold it for $30! (Just after I sold it, I predicted that it was going to $45, based on additional information and further research. See the post a couple of days ago).

My biggest problem in investing in stocks is still that I don't always follow my own time-tested trading rules. The consequence is that I've sold winners too early and kept losers for too long. 

I call this kind of risk "operational risk" or "execution risk", even though profit had been made in this case.

PS: The overall market is unbelievably strong!

[Update] JRJC reached $44.48 before crashing down to $35+ at the close: technically very negative. It might be a good strategy to short it if it goes above $40 again.

"Our prison system's nutritional requirements are much higher than our school system's..."

Link to Slate V - Conventional Wisdom: Prison Food Convention

[Updated 9/26] Finally sold my 3000 shares of China Finance Online(JRJC), at around $30, i.e., for almost 350% gain in 8 months (for the past 12 months, it's gone up 502%, see chart).  It's proven an excellent pick at the time as I thought the stock undervalued with the way mainlanders joined in the stock market frenzy, but I wish I had kept more shares. The best time to add shares was when it broke about $11 just 3 weeks ago. Now I am wondering whether I have made a mistake of having sold it too early.

Here is the news (AP) that triggered the surge today:

Chinese market information provider China Finance Online Co. on Tuesday raised its guidance for the quarter ended Sept. 30 due to stronger-than-expected growth in subscription services provided to retail clients.

The Beijing-based company now expects third-quarter revenue between $7.1 million and $7.5 million, compared to previous guidance of $6.7 million to $7.1 million.

China Finance Online also expects adjusted third-quarter earnings to be in the range of $2.6 million to $3 million.

The company also issued guidance for fiscal 2008, estimating adjusted earnings of $19 million to $23 million on sales of between $45 million and $51 million, excluding any potential acquisitions.

At a market cap of $500m, the stock doesn't seem too expensive even with the recent surge in price: forward P/E: 21~26.  So I may have sold it too early (and the gain will be taxed). Besides profit-taking, the reason for my selling JRJC was to free cash for other candidates that, at the moment, seem more centain to go up in near future. But I may regret the decision as JRJC could go to $45 very quickly. Why $45? Just my gut feeling: (1) At $45, JRJC's P/E will still be below 40 which is reasonable given the expected high growth rate ahead and high net margin (45%). and (2) $45 seems a magic price for a lot of tech stocks: SINA, SOHU, SNDA, UTSI and many others all reached about $45 several years ago, before they finally headed down! 

Diary of a third-grade student, who is addicted to online game TLBB. In the process he (or is it a she?) learnt what he couldn't in the classroom and ended getting his teacher becoming addicted to the game also!

Maybe it can be good for a kid to play online games .. 

Link to ????——????????????(??)-???? - ??BLOG

I visited a couple of internet bars in Shenzhen yesterday and noted that close to half of the young gamers are playing Sohu's TianLongBaBu (TLBB), just as I observed a couple of months ago in Beijing. The sampling may not be very scientific and I don't know how many of those players are actually paying, but the statistics made me more assured to continue to hold Sohu going forward.

I would be surprised if the company doesn't have other games in the pipeline. Any new future games should add to its bottom line in coming years.

NOTE: None of the available "authentic popularity lists" for online games in China that I have found can be trusted. They are so different from each other that all have to be considered cooked.

LAS has had a great run-up: +64% since I covered around $80. The driver for the most recent ascend has been the successful openning of its new casino in Macao. There are signs that it's poised for a retreat and, as a short-term play, I short it today around $131 with a relatively tide stop. [It isn't my trading style, but ocassionally I do this to have fun and to hedge agaist a possible market down-turn.]

I also shorted AMKR today on its relative weakness. 

Otherwise I've been enjoying the good market lately. Some of my holdings have had explosive growth, validating my models and as a result greatly reducing the loss I'd suffered in the first half of the year.

[Update 9/25] I covered both stocks with small losses.

A tiny company on the mainland (China Finance Online, Nasdaq:JRJC) is acquiring an equally-tiny one in Hong Kong (Daily Growth). Anticipating that people on the mainland will eventually be able to buy shares in Hong Kong, and 

... by acquiring and fully integrating Daily Growth Investment with our existing resources, particularly the vast investor base of our premium websites jrj.com and stockstar.com, our goal in the long run is to provide a diversified portfolio of brokerage and informational services to our users and improve the monetization rate of our website user base by capitalizing our users' growing interest in investing in Hong Kong-listed securities, thereby transforming our current business model and significantly increase our stockholders values," Mr. Zhiwei Zhao, CEO of China Finance Online, said. "With over 35 years of history and highly respected reputation, Daily Growth Investment can add tremendous value to us as we continue to realize our full potential to become a leading financial services provider in greater China."

Link to China Finance Online to Acquire Hong Kong Securities Brokerage Firm

JRJC went up 10% on the news. By the way, JRJC is the first stock that has seen its share price more than doubled among all the stocks that I've purchased this year.

... by the following web forgery. An e-mail message informed me of a purchase I supposedly made in the amount of $42.85 to someone I don't know via PayPal. To dispute the transaction, I clicked on a link that took me to a site that looked exactly like that of PayPal (see below). Fortunately Firefox alerted me of the forgery before I log on to the site with my password. Later I found that the web address was: http://ip171-73-58-81.adsl.versatel.nl/www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr=home=p/index.php instead of the official PayPal address. Just to be curious, I typed the same address in Microsoft Explorer, guess what? It didn't alert me of the forgery! Then I tried on Maxthon, no warning either!

Now I understand why people say that using Firefox is more secure! It has a feature called phishing protection built-in.