blog.thomaspan.com

Bye,Bye Oil Bubble?

Thomas — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:03:44 +0000

The latest Barron’s has run a good article against an obvious oil bubble, which is really worth reading. By reaching $135 a barrel from $20ish in 2000, just 8 years ago, the trajectory of oil prices looks very similar to the Nasdaq’s eight-year run to a peak of more than 5,000 in March 2000. Today, [...]

Feng Deng’s China Investement Strategies

Thomas — Thu, 29 May 2008 08:43:13 +0000

Feng Deng, co-founder of Northern Light Venture Captical, then co-founder of Netscreen, shared his China investment strategies with HYSTA audience in May 10th. Graduated from Tsinghua University, the No. 1 university in China, Feng has successfully transformed from a well known entrepreneur, achieving great successes in Netscreen, to a top-10 Venture Capitalist in China, enjoying [...]

Baidu: Riding The China Internet Dragon

Thomas — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:03:58 +0000

At the last Tuesday night, Robin Li, CEO of Baidu.com, came and shared with us the Baidu story. At the beginning of the event, led by Qi Lu, Executive Vice President of Yahoo! Inc. and President of HYSTA, we had a special moment dedicated for these deeply affected by China earthquake that devastated thousands of [...]

Uncover the CDS Myth

Thomas — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:19:04 +0000

CDS stands for Credit Default Swap, which became the center of the discussion recently because of the Bear Stearns debacle. Wikipedia has a very good explanation: A credit default swap (CDS) is an instrument to transfer the credit risk of fixed income products. Using technical terms, it is a bilateral contract, in which two counterparties agree [...]

Continue on the Bear Stearns Debacle

Thomas — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:43:00 +0000

In my last week’s post, I have cited the article, “On the brink of disaster”, from Fortune Bear had about $13 trillion of derivatives deals with counterparties, according to its most recent financial filings. If Bear had croaked, large parts of the world could have croaked. And the economic damage could have been catastrophic. Why is that? [...]

Decoding The Bernanke Fed’s Agenda

Thomas — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:01:51 +0000

Finally, Fortune magazine came up with a slew of articles, revealing the myth behind the recent moves from the Bernanke Fed regarding Bear Stearns bailout and providing in-depth analysis on this credit crunch. The first article, “The last days of Bear Stearns”, provides a timetable of the Bear Stearns meltdown in great details: In March 7 [...]

Economic Slowdown Is Inevitable

Thomas — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 01:58:40 +0000

The wrong doings from the financial system give us a perfect target to blame for. However, that’s only part of the story. The current economic booming is driven by both housing market and durable goods. In economics, a durable good or a hard good is a good which does not quickly wear out, or more specifically, [...]

One More Healthy Debate About Bear Stearns Bailout

Thomas — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:57:23 +0000

The Bear Stearns bailout has spurred a lot of healthy debates. One side believes that the Fed’s intervention is to bail out the Wall Street and is causing more troubles down the road, or, worse, is because of a century old conspiracy, while the other side believes that the Fed is not bailing out Bear [...]

Deep Diving Into The Real Estate Mess

Thomas — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 08:31:30 +0000

Economy bubbles start with a shining story and end with a tragedy, which keeps reminding people that nothing can be overdone. Surprisingly, bubbles are built on top of solid fundamentals. Once people believe in them, people start to over-leverage them until, of course, the situation becomes so extreme that everything is afloat, detached from their [...]

Continue on the R Word

Thomas — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:07:37 +0000

It has been a while before last time, I bubbled about recession and real estate bubble burst again. The reason is very simply: nobody wants to face bad news all the time, which might sink one’s spirit into depression. Today, we had the “wonderful” news, Bear Stearn, one of the top investment banks in US, agreed [...]

What’s Next For China?

Thomas — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 06:30:44 +0000

There have been a lot of spot light on China economy for the past several years. With US economy slowing down in Q4 last year, China seems to play a major role to prevent the whole world from dipping into a recession with 11.2% GDP growth in the same period. Notice that without Fed’s aggressive [...]

The Story Of Ctrip’s Success: Past, Present And Future

Thomas — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 01:53:18 +0000

Founded in 1999, Ctrip has experienced substantial growth and become the leading travel service provider in China. It enables consumers to make informed and cost-effective hotel and flight bookings by aggregating hotel and flight information. In the November edition of Fortune China magazine, Ctrip was named one of “Best Employers of 2007.” Yesterday, both James Liang, [...]

Summary Of The China Trip

Thomas — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 08:12:19 +0000

The whole trip was a great success. Though, we encountered strong air turbulence when our airplane left the Californian coast. We were one hour behind the schedule when the airplane landed in Shanghai. As the original plan, we visited Shanghai, Beijing, and Hangzhou within two weeks. In Shanghai, we explored the famous shopping district — Nanjing [...]

The Year End China Trip

Thomas — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 07:48:38 +0000

At the end of this year, or more specifically, the end of this week, I plan to visit China, which is a long overdue plan. The plan is to cover three cities: Shanghai, Beijing, and Hangzhou. Shanghai, as the biggest city, population wise, in China, roots its history back to Song Dynasty (AD 960 – 1279), [...]

A Demon of Our Own Design

Thomas — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 05:07:44 +0000

The author of the book, Richard Bookstaber, started as a quantitative specialist and a proprietary trader, has more than 3 decades of Wall Street experiences, from Morgan Stanley, Salomon Brothers, Citigroup, Moore Capital Management, to Ziff Brothers Investments. He was involved in the then popular financial product — portfolio insurance — that eventually caused the [...]

24 Essential Lessons for Investment Success

Thomas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:49:57 +0000

I got this book in early 2002 for free. I didn’t really read the book until this year, after subscribed to IBD. If I have read the book cover to cover 5 years ago, I might have retired by now. (Of course, that’s impossible given the fact that I was worth nothing at [...]

Thanksgiving Is Coming To Town

Thomas — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 07:05:30 +0000

The photo at right is called “Thanksgiving is many circles of love”. According to wikipedia, Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a traditional North American holiday to give thanks for the things that one has at the conclusion of the harvest season. Though, I am not a farmer, it is definitely a good time for me [...]

When Bernanke Speaks, Everyone Has To Listen

Thomas — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 08:48:47 +0000

In September 11, Fed Chief Bernanke said that “the global savings glut” has helped keep interest rates low, followed by a 50 base point cut in September 18. This time, our Fed Chairman sees period of slow growth. He said in last Thursday that economic growth will slow noticeably in coming months while surging oil [...]

Economy, Housing Bubble, Credit Crunch and Stock Market

Thomas — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 05:26:04 +0000

Last month, we experienced large number of mortgage resets. The foreclosure rate doubled year over year. All the major banks and financial institutions have reported bad earnings led by both Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, which have no less than $8 billion write-down. This is just the beginning. As Jim Cramer has pointed out A large group [...]

Cache Canyon Whitewater Rafting

Thomas — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 00:34:14 +0000

Cache Creek is a large stream in Lake County, California, Colusa County, California and Yolo County, California. It offers the only self-guided whitewater in the state. There is a facility near Cache Canyon providing the opportunity to raft on the Class 3 whitewater river. The official site is here. Cache canyon is 2 hours north [...]