Reading Time: < 1 minute I bought air ticket for my late July trip back to Shanghai. It cost me $1260, American Airlines, STL to PVG (via ORD). Compared to $1090 I paid for my March trip (UA), it’s a little more expensive. The main reason is of course the soaring oil price lately.

Reading Time: < 1 minute This sounds like a deal (dealsea), $129 for a refurbished iPod nano. If you want more discount, you can click through fatwallet. You need to register at fatwallet to get the cashback. For those iPhone junkie, here is an opportunity to win an iPhone, by participating in the stock picks contest hosted by WR Hambrecht and

Reading Time: < 1 minute 1) Don’t jump into an IPO on its first day. Do some research if you really want to jump. 2) A controlling shareholder is also the CEO: usually not good for small shareholders. 3) One customer (Chinese goverment), one product (custome declaring software), be very worried.

Reading Time: < 1 minute Obviously the new Vista is creating problems for competitors’ product, such as Google Desktop Search. See this news. I remember four or Five years ago the US justice department ruled to split Microsoft into two companies, because of its monopoly practice. That rule was over turned. I don’t know all legal issues but I am

Reading Time: < 1 minute Here is the Yahoo Finance experts’ blogs. Among them I like Ben Stein the best, because of his wit and humor, Laura Rowley and Jeremy Siegel are also my favorites. Laura talked about “happiness and money”, as you may know there is a balance between those two. Her background in theology makes her talk more interesting too.

Reading Time: < 1 minute The split day is June 14, Thursday. It has a nice run since last week. I will wait it calm down a bit before adding my postions. Obviously, I missed the buying opportunity about two weeks ago when there were some insiders sellings. It pulled back to 76~78 at that time. Oh well, no rear mirror view for stocks.

Reading Time: < 1 minute Went to a newly opened Starbucks at Olive and Price yesterday. This is a very nice place, compared to the one at Olive and Craig (much older). The traffic there was OK consider this was Sunday morning. A lot things are against Starbucks business lately, according to a guest at CNBC this morning.

Reading Time: < 1 minute Bill Gates got Harvard degree finally, 30 years after drop out from Harvard; Dell announced to sell laptop at Sam’s Club (Major’s comment: too little, too late); Andy Xie, former chief economist of Morgan Stanley Asia, says the odds of making money in Chinese stock market is lower than casinos (40% vs. 48%); 

Reading Time: 2 minutes I received an email from a friend asking me whether New Oriental Eudcation (EDU) will be a good investment or not. I was not warm to it initially, changed my mind and bought it in Jan., sold it in Feb., because I did not know how to evaluate it.   First I want to say EDU is in a very

Reading Time: < 1 minute (Update June 10) Today when I visited Galleria Mall, I saw Walk ‘N Roll, a knockoff of Heelys. Unlike Crocs, I think knockoff will take a toll at Heelys’ sale. (Original June 8 ) Here is the S1 prospectus from SEC web site. It appears the selling shareholders (mostly venture capital) filed on June 7 to unload 8 m