Reading Time: < 1 minute Not endorsing Obama, but it’s interesting to hear a voice from a regular Joe who attended the event. Here is a link if the player below does not work. It is estimated 100,000 people attended the event.

Reading Time: < 1 minute Company web page; Google Finance; Yahoo Finance; quick facts on Trane unit. 2Q 2008 results (Bloomberg), released on Aug 1. ====== Ingersoll-Rand Co., the maker of Thermo King and Hussmann refrigeration equipment, said second- quarter profit rose 26 percent after acquiring air conditioner- maker Trane Inc. Profit from continuing operations climbed to $262.5 million, or

Reading Time: 2 minutes Ten years ago I did a bit research on the imbalance of China US trade, for a speech to be given in Public Speech class. The imbalance (US deficit, China surplus) grew significantly in last 10 years, with the American manufacturing jobs moving to China, this is again a hot topic in the election season.

Reading Time: < 1 minute According to cnanalyst: only two were up YTD: VisionChina (VISN) and NetEase (NTES, found by the fellow from my hometown Ningbo). Here is the list of top 5 and bottom 5. The first percentage number is the percentage change of Year to date. Your truely managed to picked up SPRD from the bottom 5. Rank

Reading Time: < 1 minute Well, I am not going to short. Two reasons: 1) In order to short a stock, I need to open a margin account, which I dislike. Margin account means I have to borrow from the broker, which increased the risk quite a lot, and increases the “anxiety factor” which is something I dislike. A good

Reading Time: 2 minutes Macro environment This morning on my way to work, I found the regular unleaded gas is sold for $2.88 at Shell station near my home. The oil is coming down, amid the slow down of US economy, the No. 1 consumer of the light sweet crude: American consumes 25% of world crude production. Natural gas

Reading Time: < 1 minute Saw this from Yahoo Tech-ticker. While I would not necessarily compare Amazon/Bezos to Apple/Jobs, I admire Amazon the company and Bezos as a business leader. That being said, the stock (Nasdaq: AMZN) is still not cheap, with a PE (ttm) about 40. As a customer, some of the features I like about Amazon over the

Reading Time: < 1 minute A while back I bought some Chesapeak Energy stock (NYSE:CHK) after it dropped from high of $75 to around $50, I knew its Q2 2008 results are not good because of its hedging loss. The following was an interview of its CEO McClendon on CNBC on Aug 19.

Reading Time: < 1 minute NOT TO DO list first 1) Watch CNBC and other financial news and got confused, and worse got panic. Same goes to checking your brokerage acct or 401k acct every day; 2) Try to be the hero: pick up “cheap” financials, commodities, technology stocks simply because you think they are “cheap” compared to 2 weeks

Reading Time: < 1 minute I am a big fan of CBS 60 minutes. This weekend it explains the Credit Default Swap (CDO) market, and how it backfired and brought down the Bear, Lehman, and AIG. One nice thing about this CBS video (link here), is one does not need formal finance education to understand it. The video lasts 12