Reading Roundup (VI)

Articles I've recently read with my comments in brackets and other miscellany:

Automated Trading Tools (I) and (II), by Michael Taylor. [TaylorTree wrote a couple of useful posts about automated trading tools. Oddly he didn't mention DynaOrder, which is something many folks use.]

Hansen is this market's poster child, by Herb Greenberg. [Careful, this article is posted on the dreaded MarketWatch site, which is filled with pop-ups and pop-unders... idiots! Anyway, Herbie is bitching and moaning because HANS is up 60% since he bashed it in his $250/year newsletter. "If Hansen's was priced for perfection at $60, it's for valued for invincibility today." Just quit trying to pick tops, Herbie.]

The New Power Brokers, by David Barboza. ["... the new power brokers are on the rise. They are mostly in their 40's, born in China and educated in the United States ... Nearly every Wall Street firm privately acknowledges hiring some bankers for their connections - in the past, they were the 'princelings,' or the sons, daughters or relatives of high-ranking Communist Party officials - to help smooth deal making ... Part of their edge, these bankers say, is that they have gained access and can meet regularly with high-level government officials and the heads of major corporations." There's not a word in the article about whether the featured bankers: Fang Fenglei, Erhfei Liu, Jonathan Zhu, Charles Li, and Wei Christianson are in fact "gaogan zidi" (children of high officials).]

We've moved into a duplex in a place called Sunshine 100 until our apartment gets finished (early next year). The power went out in our apartment yesterday so I called the management office and said come fix it. They said we don't have the keys to the utility closet. I asked who does. They said the old management company. I said call the old management company and have them come and fix it. They said that would be awkward. I asked why. They said because we won the new contract to manage this place and the old management has kept all the keys out of spite, and they know it's us calling when we ask for something to get fixed, so you have to call them. (This is the point where I can't help but break into a smile -- in many ways, I love living here.) This gave me the opportunity to call the old management company and launch into one of my high-speed and volume screaming fits (the angrier I get the more fluent my Chinese becomes). It took a couple of hours, but it got fixed.

I'm bullish on Coke (KO) because I'll be damned if I can find a bottle of Vanilla Coke in this city. They recently introduced it and it's selling out everywhere before I can get my hands on it. The soft drink guys have such brilliant marketing that they got the Chinese hooked on Coke... my old college friend Wang Min told me that the first time he tasted Coke he spit it out because he thought it was kerosene.

A quick promise to my readers: I will never ever write a bullshit CNBC-style word like "actionable" on this site.

Until Fizzy HANS Goes Pop

I first featured HANS back in March when it was $50-something. Yes, it may blow up at some point (see Herbie above), but until it does you have to assume that the trend is your friend.

HANS, Monthly Chart