Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Who benefit from Hong Kong's success

Initially during the late 40s, Chinese from Shanghai made good money by forming textile factories in Hong Kong. They bought with them their expertise in management, money and skills. They exploited the cheap labor of the desperate refugees escaping from the communists and desperately they wanted to be exploited. Many of these products were exported to the US (to provide cheap stuffs for the poor) and also drove some US factories out-of-business.

After the takeover, Hong Kongese moved the factories to Southern China under Deng's special economical zone policy. Some factory area became ghost town for a short while. From then on, most big money are made in real estate in Hong Kong due to a supply and demand reality.

The Brits made good money by governing HK. The street sweepers in London could get high official jobs in HK, plus many 'loots' were sent to Britain. All the big projects including the then new airport hired British firms to make big money. There is a general misunderstanding why the slave's GDP per capita passed the master as written by the Stanford professor. It is not the colonial governance but the proximity to China.

Americans never made big money in HK except the Hollywood movies initially; it provided vacation destination for the army during the Vietnam War (remember Suzy Wong). However, it is the HK connection (and Taiwan too) to make China the global factory for American companies. Wal-Mart benefit itself, its customers and the Chinese factories. Now, the growing Chinese middle class is making Americans rich and actually had saved some American companies such as GM.

China benefits a lot. However, the status of HK will decrease when Shanghai takes over.

Prostitue, Programmer and Rocket Scientist

Guess who can get a job easier and one that you can hide all the incomes.

My classmate and also a good friend works in that division of Boeing. Most likely he will retire from today's Boeing announcement. There are only one or two places in the USA that would hire him. 

A programmer or an accountant is easier to get a decent job than a PhD in space study unless you count elevator operator as a fighter pilot. When NASA is raped to me, the dreams of many students on science evaporate too. Are we still encouraging science and maths? It will not if scientists can only get jobs paid the same as the minimum wage.

I did not compare these jobs with the prostitute's, our oldest professional profession. It is always in demand, always paid in cash and always giving the best entertainment value. 

Before you select your major, ensure the job is well-paid and plentiful. I did not suggest to pursue a job in prostitution. However, many did part-time in college and turned into full time when comparing the compensations. :)---

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Unemployment IS rising

There are many reasons we will continue the jobless recovery.

1. Many give up looking for jobs and they're not counted.
2. Our median salary is not improving.
3. Outsourcing.
4. Our education cannot compete.
5. Generous welfare.
7. Too much 'help' and regulations for the worker (such as min. wage of 15).
8. High cost of doing businesses (regulations and taxes). 
...
as illustrated in my book The Art of Investing.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LKUHTW6

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

New article

 Dear friends and colleagues,
 
Here is the second article at Seeking Alpha in 10 days. When the market is risky, I do not want to research stocks to buy. If you have one of my books, you can replace the The Mysteries of P/E article with the update one below.
Seeking Alpha article:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2516005-the-mysteries-of-p-e
 
The older article is: 
My new book The Art of Investing (Myths + its sequel).
Write a review if you have it or the book Debunk the Myths in Investing.
Best,
Tony Pow

P.S. So far, I do not know any reviewers on my books. I did see a lot of other reviews that most likely were written by friends and family members. I wasted money on one book I bought based on 'great' reviews. Your fair reviews, good or bad, would help potential buyers. TP

Monday, September 22, 2014

Believe it or not: I was Shakepear in my last life

For proof, here are my titles of my articles in Seeking Alpha.

1. The Tale of Two Portfolios.

2. Six Signs of a Correction, or known as "To correct, or not correct".

3. Amazing Return, similar to "Outrageous Fortune".

The naive Chinese and their bad public behavior

Chinese tourists are robbed in Paris unproportionally high. If you carry a lot of cash and expensive stuffs, you're the target (I believe you guys are smarter than your look, or obviously not). 

About 1/3 of the line filling orders for the new phone are Asians. That's their class discrimination as they many do not have racial discrimination. Discrimination is a bad but REQUIRED human nature. If everyone is the same, we're communists and do not want to work harder. :)

Bad public behaviors. Please do not talk too loud in the public. Do not cut line as you are in China. Do not pick you nose. When you're in a foreign country,  you represent a nation. This generation of Chinese are the children of the 'Cultural' Revolution who did not go to school. That's why. Remember you do not gain respect by how rich you're, but by what you behave.

My social standing in the USA must be dragged down by these barbarians. Excuse me for being so blunt. I love my countrymen. If we do not learn, we never be a first-class and respected country.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

The Art of War



The spider depicts how we buy stocks: Time, Find and Score. For the spider, it is Wait, Aim and Bite in the cover of my book The Art of Investing.
Actually its availability from the free clip arts is the sole reason for my choice and the above is makeup. :)
 
The Art of War
The title of this book was inspired by the above book that was written about 2500 years ago. I was surprised that no one uses the title The Art of Investing.
With some minor interpretation (such as the titles of the officials, the capital names...), Chinese text can be understood even from that long ago. I believe they're craved on bamboo. It has 13 chapters. I believe there were more books from this author and got lost from the long history. This book could be the official recording from the emperor, a usual practice in Chinese history.

Japanese business men use this book and the Romance of Three Kingdoms a lot. The US army adopted this book as the required reading for their officers. I do not think it would be useful in today's warfare except the urban wars that we lose most of the time. Maybe the other side studied harder than us. I will try to see what and how this book is relevant to investing. Initially none except some for day traders.

The story
The emperor asked that author to demonstrate his technique of training an army. He asked the emperor's ladies to learn how to drill. After several laughs, two leaders of the drill were beheaded and then everyone was serious and then he had trained successfully the most beautiful army in world's history.
http://tonyp4idea.blogspot.com/2014/05/on-wars.html

Sunday, September 14, 2014

The Art of Investing



Dear friends and colleagues,

You may have one of my books. Here is an article at Seeking Alpha that will be a review of what I’ve mentioned in my book. You will be a great help to write a review or click on the “Like” button of a current review.

Seeking Alpha article:

My new book The Art of Investing (Myths + its sequel).

Best,
Tony Pow

P.S. So far, I do not know any reviewers on my books. I did see a lot of other reviews that most likely were written by friends and family members. I wasted money on one book I bought based on 'great' reviews. Your fair reviews, good or bad, would help potential buyers. TP.

Friday, September 12, 2014

How to balance the deficit

We should have a 0% (ok I hear you and will settle for 10%) corporate tax and a 3% VAT and extra 2% for luxury goods.

Advantages:
- All the corporate golden geese will flock back.
- Our dividends will not be taxed twice.
- Corporations will plow back the money for investment and hence ignite employment.
- VAT discourages unnecessary consumption and spending. The 2% surcharge for the rich is fair and simple.

The above numbers are arbitrary. We need to set up a budget and require the government to enforce it.

You may say we do not have money to run the government. It is simpler than expected.

- A small and efficient government. 
If you're one of the lazy government employees surfing the net and waiting for the 4 pm stampede (after the two-hours lunch followed by your nice afternoon lap), you know exactly what I'm talking.

- Why the government employees can retire at almost full pension at the early age (comparing to corporate employees) is just beyond my comprehension.

- Stop being the world police. We've more problems to solve at home.

- Cut down the generous welfare and ask the able to get off the couch. Watching TV all day long for the rest of your life is boring and not good for your health. Remember when we run out of money to give you, the host and the parasite will die together.

- Prosecute the welfare and disability cheaters.

- Prevent illegals to come in by prosecuting employers. If there are no jobs, they will not come. We do not need all those fences and patrols.

-----------------------
If we have enough income, we may abolish the income tax. Bad for Turbo Tax but good for us (at least wasting one day in preparing the tax).

No income tax encourages working.
VAT encourages less spending.

A win-win situation.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Genius and dummy are words over-used



My six-year old grandson called the library about the availability of the book Mine Craft. The lady told him that only Mine Craft for Dummies was available. He told her it was not for him as he was not a dummy.

My dumb thoughts after a few laughs over his honesty:

From the eyes of a dummy (that’s me), the dummy thinks he is not a dummy most likely is no dummy. However, if the dummy argues he is not a dummy solely due to his young age and naively dumb is a dummy (arguable).

I feel the word dummy has just been over-used by dummies like me. Right?

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Gone August

There are about 30 posts copied from Seeking Alpha. Most were posted in Wall Street Breakfast.

Took a brief vacation to TN.

The market is still risky, so I spent more time on my writing than investing. The major tasks are:

Marketing the Art of Investing. Sent out several review copies and I saw one review at amazon.com. 4-star rating. I do not expect 5-stars as there is no perfect rating in "arts". :)

Wrote another book Top-Down Investing in record time. This topic is widely discussed but there is only one book I found in amazon.com and it is expensive. I wrote about 5 pages (may be 2 pages in words) and copied appropriate chapters from The Art of Investing.

I have a lot of borrowed books from the new program Kindle Unlimited. It paid $1.80 per borrow. The trend is we will have more books borrowed instead of bought. It is fine with me as book publishing is fun for me. How ironic is you cannot support your basic living by writing investing books to teach others to make money!

From this month on, the first post is the introduction post like this one instead of being the last one in the past.

Honorable mentioning. This post on "Product Innovation" received the most read in last month.
http://tonyp4idea.blogspot.com/2014/08/product-innovation.html

USA vs. ISIS

The USA's jets and missiles are predominant in desert, but the final stage of the war is won by foot soldiers. The ideas from the ancient book The Art of War (I stole it for the title of my book The Art of Investing) are still valid in guerrilla warfare.

Modifying Newton's Action and Reaction, every reaction has another reaction, and so on. It is similar to a Kung Fu movie on how a disciple revenges for his parents and/or master and the next sequel continues.


We have to respect others' religion and culture even they do not meet our standards. However, murder in the name of the religion is just against any religion. Hope we will have world peace. If not, isolate the wars in the Middle East.

HSBC

HSBC, Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corp, is the largest or second largest bank depending on how you stack them up. It used to prosper by the deposits from the rich Chinese (most were from Shanghai) to escape communists decades ago and the Chinese in SE Asia (unstable countries who are always angry with Chinese to control the local economies without thanking them to prosper their economies) for safe keeping. Before the takeover of HK, they moved the headquarter to London.

Break up of Soviet Union and now some European countries

* I have to take back all the nice things I talked about Putin such as master chess player... It would be smart to let the dumb nationalism to cover his eyes for a short time and manipulate the market (can the rule in insider trading applies to leaders?).

Today, he is obviously losing billions of his own money. Only stupid people will do such stupid things under his full control.

-----------------

Europe is on fire. Scots may be independent by next month. So are many countries soon. Why? Some folks want to be kings and queens. Some are due to religion, wealth and culture (including language) reasons. Why so many this year? It could be due to Europe is not doing good in economy. When folks do not have jobs, they want to protect and change for a better life (usually it turns out to a worse life).

The myth of "Made in USA"

Are we cheating ourselves or redefining "Made In America" when we find out the assembled car here has more foreign parts than made here?

It is similar to one time that the entire shirt was made in China except two buttons and the label of "Made in Hong Kong" to get away from American embargo on China.

Defending China again (or fixing the wrong attitude towards China

1. China's product quality is improving as it is moving up the value chain (that has been gone thru by Japan, Korea and briefly the US in the colonial period). Today a lot of goods that requires cheap labor are assembled (via China's outsource) in other countries such as Vietnam and Lao.

2. The quality of these foreign products are checked by the outsourcees. Does Apple have quality problems from China?

3. As long as the US corporations want higher profits and do not spare the time in checking quality, product problems will be here no matter they are from China or any foreign country.

----
Many of us prefer good quality products at higher prices (good for the environment too). However, it is hard to identify the degree of quality and we always are bargainers.

China saved GM from out-of-business and also the tourist industry (ask any luxury retailer in NYC). So, there are always two sides of a story.

Globalization and China

Yes, globalization and free trade are both good if the participants play them fairly. We have to ensure no product dumping (to drive out competition and then raise prices as Microsoft did).

It tells us sth when China can import some goods to the USA over Mexico who has no tariff and is just next door.

Let the best importer win! Otherwise, we have to enjoy a $50 toaster and dump all the chicken feet to the ocean.

Bank, CVS and Atlantic City

They're not related but they're today's news.

* Without enforcing, the bank regulations cannot compete with the bonus money that the bankers are counting with their filthy hands in their mansions instead in the big house. The most stupidest action is giving these criminals bonus money from our taxes. Who said crimes do not pay?

* I will have a chain named CVS Unhealth. Besides selling the regular stuffs CVS carries I include the most profitable items: the new legalized drugs. I expect to double the profit than a regular CVS store. Who said we do not have new opportunities in our generation?

* All casinos in Atlantic City are burning. One new casino in NYC area made back all the money in less than a month with slot machines only. Slot machine gambling (wrong term?) is a fool's game. They may tell you that for 100 quarters you put in, you can 95 (most likely 80 if they do not advertise) quarters back if you do it 1,000 times. Too bad simple maths is not taught in school.

A tale of two losers


* EU is burning. It must be in a W-shaped recession that we rarely see.

* Is Japan a dead cat bouncing? I guess it is. The government is repeating the tools they have been used without success in the last two decades. Why you think it will work this time?


Both use the same tool: Printing more money and lower the interest rate.

Cloud computing

Cloud is still too cloudy. Corporations have to solve: (1) how to make money and (2) how to make it secure. No easy tasks.

The myth of improving employment

Employment still does not look good if you consider the declining median income. When your friend finds a job that pays only half of his previous salary, he will not spend recklessly like our government. But the government says the unemployment is decreased by 1.

Unemployment will stay the same for years due to the side effect of globalization as corporations can find the cheapest and best employees any where in this planet.

Anatomny of a joke

A church-goer told me that my jokes were not funny in front of many of my friends. My readers including fund managers, business owners and professionals told me otherwise. My conclusion is that you need an education to understand my jokes, so I do not blame her. An open mind helps but it is not required.

As defined by me, the anatomy of a joke is something that is unusual unless you’re 10 year old or younger. It has one or all of the criteria below.

- Ridiculously exaggerated.
- Body (female and male) parts we do not discuss/show normally unless you have something extraordinary.
- Words with double meaning.

So, about 30% of the jokes are about sex. If you do not believe me, turn on the cable TV tonight, count and classify the jokes.

Here is one good example of a good joke (not written by me) to satisfy most criteria described above. It is brief and effective. It is a classical joke written many years ago and was widely distributed. The writer should get a Nobel Prize (exaggerated) to make so many folks laugh in just a short time without costing anything. Here it is:

We were supposed to have 8″ of snow in Boston, but there was no snow. The beautiful but naive anchor lady asked the weather man, “Hi Tony, what happened to the 8″ (double meaning, sex and exaggerated) you promised me last night?” The whole staff in the set laughed so loudly that they’ve to go on commercial for the next hour.

Yell Yelp

Not a single comment on YELP today when there is news on this stock.

I do not believe it will be a good stock from my own experiences. I went to a Thai restaurant recently based on the many good recommendations. It is outrageously lousy and cannot compete with similar restaurants in the area. Most comments must be written by the friends and family members of the owners. Never depend on YELP again unless they can control their commentators.

Lucky Tesla stock owners

For the lucky stock owners of this stock, use stop orders to protect your profit. As Newton said, what goes up must come down. It usually comes down faster than it climbs up. It is not fundamentally sound. Watch out for the institution investors. The new technology of battery could change the entire world to make all current car batteries obsolete; it is under development at MIT.

I prefer "Buy low and sell high" instead of "Buy high and sell higher". It is only me.