Reading Time: 2 minutes A Chinese version of the story can be read here (thanks to Shanzi for translation). You can read story (in English) from Buffett’s 2007 annual shareholder letter. Why do I emphasize this story? Too many times I fall into some growth stories (hint: next Microsoft or Google), value traps (hint: Heelys and maybe Crocs), etc.

Reading Time: 2 minutes Mindray (NYSE:MR) continued its US market expansion today, as it agreed to buy the Patient Monitoring business of DataScope (Nasdaq: DSCP) for $202 m (see this Reuters news). My gut feeling is this is a fair deal. Mindray paid about 1.25 times sales revenue for the unit. According to Reuters: “The (DataScope) unit had total

Reading Time: 2 minutes (Update) I started this article a few months ago. Just as I complete it today, I heard the Elliot Spitzer’s scandal (possibly criminal prosecution) regarding his involvement in prostitution ring. How ironic. I hope people don’t discount Elliot’s relentless effort to clean up the Street, no matter what comes out of his case. (Original) When

Reading Time: 2 minutes Did you hear about HiPhone? It’s a knockoff iPhone made in China, here is one I found through Google Product search. Since US consumers are in recession (as wisely pointed out by Buffett and Bill Gross lately), this is not a bad choice if a person wants to impress his/her friends but don’t have the

Reading Time: 2 minutes I sold the remaing few CROX shares today. Not because I was scared of the bad news from mortgage and banking industries, and general worsening US economy. It’s because I think the Crocs story is over, for now. Lessons learned (this is related to my previous Stock Lessons series…) 1) When someone claims some new

Reading Time: 2 minutes First a bit background. Re-org of China telecom industry All the big players: China Mobile 中国移动 (CHL), China Netcom (CN), China Telecom 中国电信(CHA) and China Unicom 中国联通 (CHU), are majority owned by the state. In the widely anticipated re-org plan, the goverment will try to create more competition in wireless arena (right now CHL is

Reading Time: 2 minutes Last week one of the news in wireless arena is Sprint Nextel wrote down all the book values for the Nextel acquisition (about $29.5 billion, see Bloomberg). Put it in perspective, this is one of the largest fiascos of corporate merger&acquisition in recent history. The magnitude is in the league of AOL and Time Warner

Reading Time: 2 minutes (Update Mar 05) My wife Shanzi had a nice write up (and pics) about yesterday’s snow. In Chinese. (Original) We had a 10 inch snow (huge by St. Louis standard) today. It took me more than 1 hour to drive from my work place to home, which usually takes 15 minutes. Of course I took

Reading Time: < 1 minute Here is some interesting stuff I read (auditor’s opinion): “We have also audited, in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States), the consolidated financial statements as of and for the year ended December 31, 2007 of the Company and our report dated February 29, 2008 expressed an unqualified opinion

Reading Time: < 1 minute Buffett released his annual letter to shareholder last Friday, which I will discuss in next few days. First let me lay out my 5 year observations about Buffett and many other money managers. 1) Buffett will tell you his stock Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A and BRK.B) is expensive all the time (don’t buy it); while money