The start of an adventure
April 19, 2008
Hello fellow readers,
I’d like to begin this first post by introducing myself. My name is Zan Zhang and I am a student headed towards post-secondary education, with hopes of a career in finance. I have won several investment competitions in the past, and continue to pursue more of such endevours for the future. A friend and I decided to start this website in order to provide all of north america’s business news under one roof, as well as a few feeds from Europe and Asia. This blog exists to recap all current events from each week, whether it is more credit foreclosures down in Wall Street, Silicon advances on the West coast, or other newsworthy events from across the continent. Now, it is our goal to continue developing and adding more to the site, so please be patient and forgiving during these testing sessions.
Over the past week (or weeks) we have seen Olympic boycotts, JP Morgan on the headlines, new multiple earnings reports, some shattered careers, and a new official king of Wall Street. Speaking of TheStreet, recently they have been constantly sending out annoying emails - or the more commonly used term, "spam". I wonder if it has anything to do with Jim Cramer’s comment to buy BearStearns right before it crashed, and his following attempts to rebuild trust from the public. Well, just as his career took a hit, I recently read that a hedge fund manager, John Paulson, took one heck of a climb. In fact, his gains this year set a record high in history- $3.5 billion - and he did it simply by betting against the housing industry. I won an investing competition the same way by shorting subprime companies last year. If only I was so fortunate to gain $3.5 billion…
Last Wednesday, JP Morgan posted above expectations and regained confidence from some investors. IBM and Intel also managed to surge ahead, while Mannie Mae lost big. So, I wonder how long it will take for all this financial mess to clear up. Some banks predict that in late 2008 the US economy will pick up, and judging by some good news, it most likely can. However, if Bear Stearns messed up so bad, what about all those other financial players? What are they hiding? It begs one to question the validity of all of Wall Street.
Also, a hilarious article I read the other day touched base as to why Warren Buffet would buy Google stocks. I think it was by someone at an affiliate like Motley Fool. The article was quite old, but I was in disbelief; it seems everyone is up on the tech hype, yet again. I agree that Google is a very good company, but I doubt their stock is as good as their service. Last year, their stock was highly overpriced at $800+ per share, their P/E was somewhere in the 60s and they had a declining ad revenue due to economic turmoils. Now their P/E is in the 30s, and around $400 per share, but the tech boom this week seemed to hype up things once again (including companies such as IBM, Intel, and Ebay). Ebay rose a good 22% on profit expectations, but still has P/E’s of 130+! I have never seen P/E’s like that since Yahoo, before it plummeted at the beginning of this century. Well, I did not literally see it drop, but many families still feel the pains from the bursting of the Tech bubble. One astounding thing I saw this week on b2logs , in the finance section, was out of all those stocks, only Toyota stood its ground. Good dividend stocks pay off - end of story. Maybe if Google created a dividend, they could be considered for purchase (probably not). I have a gut feeling that Ebay is seriously overvalued right now, unless their profit boost increases earnings about 10 times, but otherwise, the tech sector should be dropping soon. Well, by the books and basic investing indicators, it should be.
Anyways, finally I want to mention the Olympics. The opening ceremony boycott, and the international human rights watch looming over China. This is certainly creating economic instability. Although I am not a firm supporter of their government, I somewhat agree with the idea that the media is refusing to show both sides of the conflict. I have also seen some crazy pro-Tibet peace movements going on. Although I support peace very much, I think some people are going too far. I have even heard teachers recommend students boycott Chinese goods. Well, I don’t know about you guys, but most kids up here in Toronto can’t even afford breakfast, and some teachers are saying to buy more expensive stuff. A hilarious saying I heard this week was "people follow the law of demand". The public is definitely going to keep buying Chinese goods, and if a recession hits, it will be inevitable. Looking at history, this has never really worked, and it could be unfair for many athletes. Western media self-consciously always points at others, but really, we really cause the problems. Carbon dioxide emission of the world is like a fraction compared to the US and up here in Canada, we have some of the largest ecological footprints. Our corporations violate human rights all the time, all day, all week, but nothing is said. You guys should all watch an old school Micheal Moore classic, "The corporation" - very insightful. Anyways, I am going to stop ranting now, and say that hopefully the conflicts will be resolved peacefully, so that travel, tourism, and all that other greatstuff from an Olympics can maybe create some more economic bulls to tug us out of our misery.
To end off, make sure you keep reading our blog for an update of the latest in financial news every week, Fridays and Sundays. To make things a bit easier, why don’t you sign up for our weekly financial newsletter, visit the bottom of our financial section .
To peace, and a rising economy,
logging out.
