Reading Roundup (VIII)

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

WEITZ EQUITY FUNDS - June 30, 2005 - QUARTERLY REPORT, by Wally Weitz.
[via Vinvesting.com ... "We added ten new stocks to one or more of the Funds. Tyco, AIG, and Wal-Mart are the three most significant additions. Hudson City is also an interesting special situation." I read Weitz very closely and you should too.]

Who's Afraid of China Inc.?, by Steve Lohr.
["Oil is the ultimate geopolitical commodity - it is 'The Prize,' as Daniel Yergin titled his epic history of petroleum and international politics ... China is hunting for oil and gas assets around the world as a national priority." The Chinese would like to buy some real assets with their "basically useless pile of dollars," and they don't want Rockefeller Center, if you get my drift.]

Jim Rogers on China's Currency Revaluation
[via UglyChart "...whether {the renminbi} goes up or down in the beginning, I don't care. I'm going to be buying more of it myself. Because longer term, the renminbi's going to be a big currency, a great currency." He says hopefully.... (I happen to agree with Jimmy.)]

China's Opaque Currency Policy, by Keith Bradsher:
["...Liang Hong, an economist in the Hong Kong office of Goldman Sachs, predicted that China would allow the yuan to rise gradually against the dollar. She compared the new policy to China's currency policy in late 1994, when Beijing first pegged the yuan to the dollar and then allowed it to crawl upward by a small fraction of 1 percent each trading day. This resulted in a total increase of 3 percent in 1994 and smaller increases thereafter." She's on the right track....]

China Unpegs Itself, by Paul Krugman:
["...the free ride China has been giving America, in which the world's richest economy has been getting cheap loans from a country that is dynamic but still quite poor, may be coming to an end ... China, which is still a poor country, is devoting a lot of resources to the accumulation of a basically useless pile of dollars instead of to higher living standards ... Right now America is a superpower living on credit - something I don't think has happened since Philip II ruled Spain. What will happen to our stature if and when China takes away our credit card? ... one of these days Chinese dollar purchases will trail off, and we'll find ourselves living in interesting times." Good stuff from Krugman; he has the right perspective.]

$1M a year in Google Adsense, by Jason Calacanis:
["I think we can get {our AdSense revenue} to a $3,000 to $5,000 per day average by the end of the year." The trick to running one of these blogger-based publishing empires is finding enough suckers, er writers, willing to work for peanuts. This isn't hard because most bloggers are already working like crazy for nothing.]

Yesterday I went over to the property development where we're buying a place to do some paperwork. The office was so busy that at times the roar of the crowd reached that special pitch where I'm able to tune everything out and focus on the documents right in front of me. Do you know what I mean? If there's just a bit of noise or racket in the background, then I'm distracted, but if the clamour is just the right volume, I'm totally undisturbed. What I'm trying to say here is that the property market is as nuts as ever. ;-)

CGC: Small Cap Pick-O-The-Wick

Cascade Natural Gas showed up in my weekend scan for small-cap stocks that are moving to new highs on unusual volume after going sideways for a longish time. It's a nice looking "breakout" from an "ascending triangle," so folks should keep an eye on this one.

CGC, Monthly Chart