I believe one of the keys to making money in the U.S. stock market in the future is to invest in companies that get a big chunk of their sales from outside the slow-growth U.S.A.
Like Nike, who gets more than 50% of its sales from outside North America. And I thought only spoiled American brats were wearing $100 tennis shoes.
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Think that the Dow Jones had a good week? The Chinese stock market did even better. The Shanghai Composite Index was up 7.2% last week.
Chinese basic metals and gold stocks were jumping like fleas.
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For all the criticism we hear about the U.S. health care system, our system compares pretty favorably toward socialized medicine. For example, a whopping 25% of Chinese have no health care coverage whatsoever and hundreds of millions have the barest bones of coverage.
The concept of socialized medicine is getting some pretty good political traction in the democrat-controlled Congress and I think it is a huge mistake.
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China Sunenergy (CSUN: 4.29 +0.07 +1.66%) reported a larger-than-expected quarterly loss today.
“China Sunergy has faced the same unprecedented and volatile environment as many of our peers across the solar sector, as a result of the ongoing global financial crisis.”
The global slowdown is a problem but not as much as $40 oil. I’ve repeatedly warned to stay away from solar power stocks because of that.
China Sunenergy, by the way, is down by more than 50% so far in 2009.
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The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is predicting that China will grow its economy by 6% to 7% in 2009.
That is one of the lowest forecasts I’ve seen but everybody other than the Chinese government itself keeps lower their growth forecasts. The OECD has previously for 8% to 9.2% growth back in November.
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If you’re an old fart like me, you’re probably not a giant sender/receiver of text messages on your cell phone. My kids send them like crazy.
The Chinese, however, send even more. In 2008, China Mobile (CHL: 49.47 -0.08 -0.16%) subscribers sent 607 BILLION text messages.
That is a mountain of text messages and a very lucrative piece of business for China Mobile.
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I would not buy them, but to give you an idea of how cheap some Chinese assets have become, the 2014 9.125% dollar-denominated bonds of China Properties are yielding 45%. Yup….a whopping 45%!
That’s a pretty clear message that Chinese investors don’t expect Chinese real estate prices to rebound enough to prevent Chinese developers from defaulting on their bonds. Most of the $586 billion stimulus is going to infrsstructure projects and not bailing out real estate developers.
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Coca Cola had struck a deal to buy Huiyan Juice, China’s largest juice company, for $2.4 billion. All it was waiting for was approval from Chinese regulators.
Nope! The Chinese government denied the takeover and told Coke to go pound sand.
The reason given was that it would give Coke too big of an advantage, but the reality is that China is sending a clear message to the Obama administration that they too can play the protectionist game. Many Democratic leaders have been screaming very publicly for trade sanctions and restrictions against China.
China has responded verbally to those threats but this is a clear message to Obama. DON’T MESS WITH CHINA.
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I think top Republican Senator Charles Grassley had a great idea. He suggested that the crooks and idiots running AIG (AIG: 35.10 -0.56 -1.57%)take a clue from my samurai ancestors for paying themselves $165 million in bonuses.
“The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them [is] if they would follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I’m sorry and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide,” said Grassley.
I couldn’t agree more.
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General Motors (GM: 0.00 N/A N/A) raised its sales growth forecast in China from 3% to 5%-10%.
How come? Auto sales jumped by 25% in February. The reason was a reduction in auto taxes.
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