jtmuhn

Time to Hop Back Onboard the Asia Express?

interesting text-book rehash of technical investing. i have two comments. first, my guess is that if nothing disastrous happens during the olympics, the market will up. nerves are high now. second, i wish you added that there could be no value investing in China at this juncture. Chinese play the market like mahjong, so investor sentiment is not really investing sentiment here. as a matter of fact it is something like the opposite of investor sentiment. unlike many foreigners, Chinese know that without a judiciary or sec and with every Chinese company keeping two sets of books, the basis for value investing is absent. in markets here there is no transparency, and until the company p/e's reflect that risk (which they don't), every investment here is speculation. funny how no one on wallstreet blinked when sohu.com cooked their books this past quarter so their boss and others could dump stock. please don't use wording like "fundamental bargain" in the same sentence as "China". that said, insurance and one banking stock have almost hit my targets for a purchase - it is an event driven, yet technical purchase.

China’s Leaders Are Opening the Door for Profits

the picture in china is mixed with the federal government making the right economic noises while lacking chain of command. in beijing the job market is loose for qualified individuals, with most college graduates unable to find work above 1200rmb/mo. that said, the large companies inland find that after learning skills quickly, workers learn to defraud the company. this has forced foreign companies into outsourcing many activities because only Chinese companies can beat their workers. with a culture built for the last forty years on lying and swindles and violence, the pathological lack of transparency, and a generation gap unlike anything foreigners could imagine, investors do well to tread carefully in a booming authoritarian economy that has not yet seen its first economic contraction.