Free books from wallstraits!

I chanced upon the wallstraits website today while searching for celestial for my blog post. Happened to see this little pop quiz in their main website, with the teaser that you'll get a free book if you answered the not-so-simple quiz.Haha, they are not kidding, the quiz is so hard! (I suspect that some answers that are supposed to be correct are in fact wrong!) Nevertheless, I tried both of the quiz and managed to get 2 free books as they promised.Step...

Read More

Celestial

Was browsing through sgx announcement during lunch time when I saw that Celestial annual report is out, so curiously I took a look at it. Celestial is a leading manufacturer of soy protein-based food and beverage products in Heilongjiang.I wasn't going to look through the whole thing, just looking at the main figures which I thought was interesting.1. COGS as a % of revenue for 2006 is 55.7%. That for 2007 is 61.0%. That's not a good sign. Possibly Celestial is being held hostage by the rising soy bean prices. They mentioned that soybean prices...

Read More

I lie to statistics!

Didn't know that my post on 'Statistics lie!' generated quite a healthy discussion on what is fair and what is not.My aim of the post is to highlight the fact that statistics are used to show and highlight what the person intends to say - or to add weight to what had already been said. As such, there really is no fair way to represent statistic without the risk of misleading someone. Though I say that, there are plenty of ways to confuse and obfuscate...

Read More

Statistics lie!

I've always told my students - statistics lie.I'm amazed at how subtle little massages to the data or even to the way the data is presented can create an illusion that conveys to the reader what is intended. While reading the newspaper today, I came across this little notice on the straits times that the electricity tariffs are going to go up again. Usual suspect for the rise in tariffs - high fuel price. It then proceed to put a table, after which...

Read More

A rose by any other nicks would smell as sweet

There are a lot of nicknames out there. It's just out of randomness that I decided to classify them according to noun, verb, adjective and adverb. My English isn't that good, so I only know there are these 4 categories of words. Heck, the definition below might not even be encompassing. Of course, there are other connective words like 'the', 'and' and so on, but let's not worry about them. Haha, I'm just doing this for fun :)First of all, a brief description of each main category:1. Noun - these are words that describe an object. Cat, dogs, paper...

Read More

Synear - profit guidance

Synear released a profit guidance for its upcoming 1QFY08 results. It's good that they update investors of any news that crop up, so that expectations can be managed. Here are the key points:1. Sales is for 1Q08 is expected to be 10% lower than 1Q07, though higher than sales in 4Q07. This is due to the snowstorm in Jan 08 which had affected the transportation and sales of the Group's products to southern China.4Q07 revenue is 595,609,000 RMB1Q07 revenue is 719,923,000 RMBManagement is expecting 1Q08 sales to be between 595,609,000 RMB to 647,930,700...

Read More

Macro economics is interesting!

As you've probably noticed, I've started to post less and less in the blog. Why? I've simply got less and less time. Actually, there's nothing much to talk about from the daily fluctuations of the market anyway. I've been reading intensely (as always, since the start of this year) and I've learnt a lot of things. I'm just wondering why I didn't start this intensive reading program of mine earlier, so I can compound the knowledge soonerI started...

Read More

Self analysis of tuition business

I thought it'll be interesting to analyse the business that I am now in - tuition. Specifically, I wanted to do a little more thought on the risks and economic moats relating to a private tutor in Singapore.Here's the business risks about private tuition:1. Low entry - there is no regulation nor certification needed to be a private tutor. Some of the stories I heard even involved people faking degrees and certs to have a better chance for assignments. Basically, tuition is one of the main thing that students/working adults do part time to boost...

Read More

Oh....this and that

I had a few thoughts in my mind today.It had been raining profusely these couple of days. The rain comes with high intensity and long duration - the type of rain that carrying an umbrella will still get you 30-40% drenched. Since I had to travel on foot often, I thank god for my wonderful high cut boots (had a low cut shoe but haven't dry when I had to 'wade' through the rain on Tues). It is while having dinner in this wet weather that suddenly I thought of straits asia.I had this company once but had sold it long before it reaches the price that...

Read More

Yongnam clinched S$70 million contract in Delphi

Yongnam announced a contract stating that they won a S$70 million structural steel contract in Delphi. The contract is to build Delphi international airport terminal building and is expected to have favourable material impact on FY2008 earnings.This contract is significant not only because of its size, but more because of the significance of breaking into a new market - India.I mentioned in my last post on Yongnam that its order book as at 31 Dec 2007 amounted to $162 million compared to $147 million as at 31 Dec 2006. Without counting the writeback...

Read More

Chicken curry noodle

When I go the the hawker centre to eat, I never fail to notice that when a 'hot' stall is there, there are similar stalls selling the same thing near it. One particular stall is selling this chicken curry noodle.There are 2 stalls selling this item, each of them claiming they are the original one. Both have the food shows 'mark of approval' upon them, signifying that perhaps under a certain programme shown on TV, the host had rated their stall among the better food stalls. One of them even have photographs of famous celebrities pasted on the wall.This...

Read More

Rebirth of the Phoenix

It's becoming more and more apparent that we are entering a bear market. Volume starts to thin out, less buyers in the market, fall in prices more than rise in prices. I believe STI made a new low today...possibly going to find some reprieve around 2600 to 2700, as some had pointed out.I think this is going to be a test on me. I am not confident of my investing, because my results do not show it. I'm still making quite a loss, due to my previous trading on longcheer and warrants. All these effort to reduce the magnitude of my error...it's not...

Read More

Ecowise

Time to read more about Ecowise. Was quite disappointed with their investor relations since their website only provided 2 years worth of financial statements (which is the same for sgx announcement website) and one of the statements is actually truncated off. Looks like I have to rely on bits and pieces of information.Let’s take a look at a few figures first. FY04 and FY05 have net losses. We’ll just see the latest three years to take note of the trend in the metrics.-----------------------------------FY05-----------FY06-----------FY07COGS (%...

Read More

Reading this won't make you great

How many traits of a great investor do you have? A great article to see if you have the guts and mettle to be a good investor. I guess investing is equally relevant to life too. See how many you strike :)-----------------------------------------------------------------Reading this won't make you greatMark Sellers, founder of a Chicago-based hedge fund, argues that the best investors are born with particular psychological traits that others can never learn By TEH HOOI LINGSENIOR CORRESPONDENTWHAT makes someone a great investor? It's something you...

Read More

Synear

Since quite a lot of people are interested in Synear, especially the recent fall from heaven, and wondering if it’s a good bargain now, I thought I’ll be interesting to find out a little more about Synear. Synear doesn’t have a lot of history since it only IPO in SGX on August, 2006. I’m thankful for its investor friendly statements too – means that I don’t have to spend a lot of time reading fine print and such.--------------------------------2005--------------2006----------------2007--------COGS (% to revenue)------68.6%-------------66.4%--------------67.8%------Gross...

Read More

9 to 5? I don't think so

Today, I saw a very wonderful website that inspires me. For a change, this isn't about investment or the stock market, but rather, it's a website that talks about freelancers - people like me!Naturally I'm interested to see if other freelancers are facing the same problems as me :) I came upon this website as I was looking for a new wallpaper for my desktop. It's been quite a while since I last changed it, so I thought I'll go around looking for...

Read More