The Wall Street Journal published a “special report” yesterday listing the top and bottom 50 performers (total return to shareholders) over the last one-, three-, five-, and ten-year periods. I love studying reports like these, especially the five- and ten-year data, and was thrilled to see that the WSJ even provided a downloadable Excel file of all the lists.

The irony here is that Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, is on the top 50 list of worst performers over the last 10 years, with an average annual return (including dividends) of 1.0%.

Interesting bits from an article on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in today’s WSJ by James Areddy:

Handling volume isn’t a problem at the Shanghai exchange. Its current system is robust enough to handle 16,000 trades a second. That is even more than the 13,000 the New York Stock Exchange says its systems can handle over a sustained period, even after a more than tripling of capacity in the past three years. With the Shanghai Composite Index down 42% from its high of 2237.49 in June 2001 and amid a halt in initial public offerings while China works through overhauls on its nontradable, government-owned shares, the exchange easily handled last year’s average daily transaction value of $257 million. Trading value in Shanghai was down 35% last year but remained about 1.5 times more than the country’s other exchange in Shenzhen.

In addition to a new system to handle trades, the exchange has also built one of the world’s biggest electronic vaults of trading information. In December, NCR Corp’s Teradata division finished a project called a data-storage “warehouse.” Packed with 14 terabites (one terabite is 1,000 gigabites) of capacity and every single trade ever done in Shanghai, the database gives the exchange capacity to run high-level simulations of how a new product might impact trading.

14 terabites (and counting)… Cool. (But right now I don’t think the Shanghai Stock Exchange does 16,000 trades a day let alone a second.)

I’m crazy busy this week and will be in Hong Kong most of next week, so I’ll be away from my main computer and won’t be able to post the Notable New Highs lists or any charts for awhile. Sorry about that.

From an article in today’s Wall Street Journal on the localization of managers at foreign companies in China:

Local Chinese account for 100% of Wal-Mart China’s middle managers, and 99% of its senior managers.

Little wonder considering that:

A Chinese manager, on average, has a total compensation package that is only 20% to 25% of that of a hire from a Western country.

Deutsche Bank is holding their Access China Conference in Beijing this week. Here’s a handy list of company write-ups (from alibaba.com to Zhejiang Expressway). Each PDF document includes tables of financial data for all the listed companies. This is a nice resource for folks who are interested in learning more about various Chinese companies.

Freer cash flow: Moving money without banks, by Thomas Crampton

Travelex and Custom House both have advantages over banks. To start with, they both allow individuals to transfer large amounts of money at exchange rates that are very attractive relative to banks. The companies say their lower overhead as specialized foreign-exchange companies operating few branch offices allows them to offer more competitive rates and flexible service.

I’ll have to look into this, but the exchange rates I’ve seen Travelex quote in the airport would make the old money changers outside the temple turn green with envy, so I have my doubts.

India’s nouveau riche eager to flaunt status symbols, by Somini Sengupta

For the upwardly mobile, nothing signals arrival like luxury brands. What the jet-setting rich once had to procure on shopping trips to Dubai and Singapore can now be bought here, from Chanel slingbacks to Rolex watches.

It makes me wonder when the have-nots in India are going to lash out.

Professional blogger throws in the towel, by Graeme Wearden

Jason Kottke, a Web designer who quit his job to run his blog full-time, has abandoned his plan to make a living through blogging after exactly one year … Kottke revealed that he had raised a total of $39,900 from 1,450 donors.

If Kottke lived in Beijing instead of Brooklyn, he could survive for many years on forty grand. When he started the micropayment campaign I thought, yeah, he might be able to raise enough money to survive one year, but the real trick will be raising enough money to survive the next year.

CPRT moved to a new high on about twice average volume. Pulling back and looking at the monthly chart, you can see that it has broken out of a large “symmetrical triangle.” Keep an eye on it to see how it acts at its old all-time high.

Copart, Inc. provides salvage vehicle sale services in the United States. It offers vehicle suppliers, primarily insurance companies, with a range of services to process and sell salvage vehicles over the Internet through its virtual bidding Internet auction-style sales technology. Copart was founded by Willis J. Johnson in 1982 and is headquartered in Fairfield, California.

Still lots of biotech… there are a few good ways to get exposure to biotech without taking on company-specific risk. You can buy the Biotech HOLDR (BBH), but that’s a bit of a pain because you have to buy lots of 100. Next there’s the iShares Nasdaq Biotech (IBB). Finally there are these two new ETFs: State Street Biotech (XBI), and the PowerShares Dynamic Biotechnology & Genome Portfolio (PBE).