感激人生（人生啊谢谢）OST

柳好贞，金有锡
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潘石屹 London Trip Blogs

Some excertps from PangShiYi London Trip blogs, click here to view more....

"在诺丁山的街道上，最引起我注意的事情是，几乎每家咖啡厅和餐馆的门口都贴着一张黄色纸张，上面说明室内提供免费无线上网服务。无线宽带上网的确把我们从 空间和时间的约束中解放了出来，这可能就是近十年来最大的变化。几年前，我们还在争论办公空间和居住空间能不能融合在一起，而今天我们的办公空间已经发展 到可以是室内，也可以是室外，可以是任意的地方，随时随地，在这样的工作环境中，形式主义的打卡，按时上班都成为过去式。在今天，评价一个人的工作业绩主 要看你工作的结果，工作的质量，有没有效率，有没有创造力，至于你在什么地方工作，你在什么地点工作已经变得不重要，地点不再成为工作的约束。"
"这篇博客是我在五台山去往佛光寺的路上在笔记本电脑上写的。"



"在短时期之内北京的CBD取得如此大的成功的原因是什么？只有一条，那就是：市场的选择。市场需要什么，开发商就建什么，多家房地产开发公司共同开发，才 形成了今天多样化的建筑生态环境。对于城市建筑的规划来说，最可怕的事情就是单一，如果十年前北京CBD建设规划之初出现了一位伟大的人物，这位伟大的人 物要么是有足够大的权力，要么是有足够多的金钱，而他头脑中又有一个坚定不移的幻想，按照他的意志想当然地去规划和建设一个北京的CBD，今天可能就不是 这样的情况了，很可能会将CBD建成他心目中好看的，但一定是不好用的城市区域和建筑，而这种好看不好用的城市区域和建筑最终也是丑陋的，是这个社会和城 市的负担。"

"安静地思考的环境和精神状态，对做任何事情都很重要，我想，无论在何种状况下，我们都要保持这种做事情的状态：聚精会神地，一心一意地，这样才能把干扰减少，把事情做好。"



"在伦敦交易一所房子只需要三天的时间，三天之内所有法律手续、过户手续都会办好，而且没有任何限制。当我们问到伦敦的房价为什么这样高，比巴黎高出将近一 倍时。他说，在撒切尔时代，政府就决定不允许在城区内再建新房子，就这样房价一路不断在上升，带来的好处是城市的交通得到了很好的解决。其实就在前几年， 因为伦敦城市车辆的增加，交通也出现了问题，他们就在城市最核心的区域画了一个控制范围，白天车辆一驶入就要交8英镑，相当于100多元人民币，就这样城 区的交通问题得到了缓解。"

Woodstock for Capitalists

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Limitations of Financial Reporting

The excerpts from "Sense and Nonsense in Corporate Finance" by Louis Lowenstein, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University:

The freedom to mark assets to market brings to mind the remark by Mark Twain that "a mine is a hole in the ground with a liar on top." Twain could as well have been speaking of land appraisals of all types.

In the best of worlds, financial statements would produce numbers that are truly comparable, both across companies and for the same company across time. Did General Motors' earnings increase from 1985 to 1989? According to the company, they did, rising slightly, even though GM sold only 7.9 million cars and trucks in 1989 com­pared to 9.3 million in 1985. There were a number of reasons, in­cluding a turnaround in GM's European operations, but an important reason was that in the interim, the company had rearranged some of the estimates and assumptions on which its financial statements were based. In addition to the already mentioned 1987 change in the esti­mated life of its auto plants, in 1986 the company raised the ex­pected rate of return on its pension funds, which increased that year's net profit by $195 million. By 1989 the annual report no longer contained sufficiently detailed information from which to cal­culate precisely the continuing effects of these and other revisions. One estimate is that, in all, they added over $1 billion of after-tax earnings for 1989. Without that $1 billion, there would have been no increase in earnings since 1985. Yes, GM was able to find that $1 billion without breaking any of the rules. The rules are very flexible.

Do words and numbers mean only what management says they mean, or is there some consistency? It's a problem of credibility in the marketplace, but it also threatens to dis­tort management's own analysis and the internal discipline. In other words, numbers that are no longer comparable from year to year or company to company are a problem not just for investors trying to make portfolio decisions but for creditors and for management itself.

When I first became involved in the supermarket industry in the 1960s, it was commonplace for the smaller public companies in the industry-typically those that were growing rapidly but had weak balance sheets-not to buy anything larger than a cash register if it meant putting debt on the balance sheet. Instead of borrowing money to build and own, say, a store, these companies would lease the finished store from the developer or pursuant to a so-called finan­cial lease from a lender, such as an insurance company. These lease financings were always more expensive than borrowing the money to own the store outright, but neither the companies nor the financial community seemed to care, so long as the company could keep the obligation off the face of the balance sheet, disclosing it only in the footnotes. This is the kind of seemingly pointless paper shuffling that economists find incredible. But that was how the world was. It's easy to say that this was foolishness, but it was conventional foolishness.

In the 1970s the FASB adopted an accounting standard that suc­ceeded in pushing a large part of this off-balance-sheet financing back onto the balance sheet, but it did not succeed entirely. Many compa­nies still arranged their leases to avoid capitalizing them. They were even willing to give away renewal options and other significant eco­nomic values to do so. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, these companies had adopted the philosophy that you are what you pretend to be.

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Mulan OST (Korean Version)

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Woman Scent by See-Ya MV

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Bill Miller Interview

The interview of Bill Miller....

Dr. Gang OST

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N2N

In investing, generally there could be divided into 2 groups of people. The first group is invest based on fundamentals and rationality and the second group invest/speculate based on “Insiders’ news”…etc. While choosing which type of investment method is personal preference, one should always aware of the pros and cons of the method.

In the blog of Malaysian Finance dated 6^th April 2007, the writer indicates that he/she personally would not sell N2N shares if not passing RM 3 per share mark. (“I personally won't be selling till it goes past RM3.00.”)

Let’s do some examinations before you decide to put your hard-earned monies into N2N shares:

Market cap as at 6^th April 2007: Share price (RM) P/E

N2N at RM 667 million 2.24 66.08

MEMS at RM 451 million 0.69 32.24

EBWorx at RM 138 million 0.60 18.63

MQTech at RM 60 million 0.315 8.36

Microlink at RM 57 million 0.45 8.89

SMRTech at RM 34 million. 0.34 5.82

N2N, EBWorx and Microlink involve in similar industry, ie: financial solutions to financial institutions.

Gearing for N2N, MEMS, EBWorx and Microlink is 0 or near 0, while their ROE is double digits.

P/E for Yahoo is 61.46, Google at 47.44.

Once upon a time, there was a lady attending the party. She got to rush back to home before clock reach at 12 midnight otherwise a pretty clothes would turn back to ugly and old clothes. She is lucky enough because she left a pair of glass shoes that lead a prince to find her and lastly she becomes a princess. Will an investor/speculator of N2N has a luck like this lady? While a lady has a clock to tell her when the time is reaching, the one who attend the party of N2N do not have this privilege.

With P/E of 66.08, do a valuation of N2N at RM 2.24 per share justifies for you to invest on it? You decide……

The Vineyard Man MV

Nice korean drama OST MV......
Part I
Part II

A Tale From Dr. Marc Faber

It was autumn, and the Red Indians on the remote reservation asked their new chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a Red Indian chief in a modern society, he couldn’t tell what the weather was going to be. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he told his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared.

But, being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, “Is the coming winter going to be cold?”

“It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed,” the meteorologist at the weather service responded.

So the chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood.

A week later, he called the National Weather Service again.

“Is it going to be a very cold winter?”

“Yes,” the man at the National Weather Service again replied, “It’s definitely going to be a very cold winter.”

The chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find.

Two weeks later, he called the National Weather Service again.

“Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?”

“Absolutely,” the man replied.

“It’s going to be one of the coldest winters ever.”

“How can you be so sure?” the chief asked.

The weatherman replied, “The Red Indians are collecting wood like crazy.”

Taipei Night

Taipei Night MV, click here...

Spring Waltz OST

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Another MV...
and more...

Chairman's Letter 2006 6

"We’ve found that if you advertise an interest in buying collies, a lot of people will call hoping to sell you their cocker spaniels."

Chairman's Letter 2006 5

"Let me end this section by telling you about one of the good guys of Wall Street, my long-time friend Walter Schloss, who last year turned 90. From 1956 to 2002, Walter managed a remarkably successful investment partnership, from which he took not a dime unless his investors made money. My admiration for Walter, it should be noted, is not based on hindsight. A full fifty years ago, Walter was my sole recommendation to a St. Louis family who wanted an honest and able investment manager. Walter did not go to business school, or for that matter, college. His office contained one file cabinet in 1956; the number mushroomed to four by 2002. Walter worked without a secretary, clerk or bookkeeper, his only associate being his son, Edwin, a graduate of the North Carolina School Of the Arts.

Walter and Edwin never came within a mile of inside information. Indeed, they used “outside” information only sparingly, generally selecting securities by certain simple statistical methods Walter learned while working for Ben Graham. When Walter and Edwin were asked in 1989 by Outstanding Investors Digest,

“How would you summarize your approach?” Edwin replied, “We try to buy stocks cheap.” So much for

Modern Portfolio Theory, technical analysis, macroeconomic thoughts and complex algorithms.

Following a strategy that involved no real risk – defined as permanent loss of capital – Walter produced results over his 47 partnership years that dramatically surpassed those of the S&P 500. It’s particularly noteworthy that he built this record by investing in about 1,000 securities, mostly of a lackluster type. A few big winners did not account for his success. It’s safe to say that had millions of investment managers made trades by a) drawing stock names from a hat; b) purchasing these stocks in comparable amounts when Walter made a purchase; and then c) selling when Walter sold his pick, the luckiest of them would not have come close to equaling his record. There is simply no possibility that what Walter achieved over 47 years was due to chance.

I first publicly discussed Walter’s remarkable record in 1984. At that time “efficient market theory” (EMT) was the centerpiece of investment instruction at most major business schools. This theory, as then most commonly taught, held that the price of any stock at any moment is not demonstrably mispriced, which means that no investor can be expected to overperform the stock market averages using only publicly-available information (though some will do so by luck). When I talked about Walter 23 years ago, his record forcefully contradicted this dogma.

And what did members of the academic community do when they were exposed to this new and important evidence? Unfortunately, they reacted in all-too-human fashion: Rather than opening their minds, they closed their eyes. To my knowledge no business school teaching EMT made any attempt to study Walter’s performance and what it meant for the school’s cherished theory. Instead, the faculties of the schools went merrily on their way presenting EMT as having the certainty of scripture. Typically, a finance instructor who had the nerve to question EMT had about as much chance of major promotion as Galileo had of being named Pope.

Tens of thousands of students were therefore sent out into life believing that on every day the price of every stock was “right” (or, more accurately, not demonstrably wrong) and that attempts to evaluate businesses – that is, stocks – were useless. Walter meanwhile went on overperforming, his job made easier by the misguided instructions that had been given to those young minds. After all, if you are in the shipping business, it’s helpful to have all of your potential competitors be taught that the earth is flat. Maybe it was a good thing for his investors that Walter didn’t go to college."

Chairman's Letter 2006 4

"When someone with experience proposes a deal to someone with money, too often the fellow with money ends up with the experience, and the fellow with experience ends up with the money."

Chairman's Letter 2006 3

"Corporate bigwigs often complain about government spending, criticizing bureaucrats who they say spend taxpayers’ money differently from how they would if it were their own. But sometimes the financial behavior of executives will also vary based on whose wallet is getting depleted. Here’s an illustrative tale from my days at Salomon. In the 1980s the company had a barber, Jimmy by name, who came in weekly to give free haircuts to the top brass. A manicurist was also on tap. Then, because of a cost-cutting drive, patrons were told to pay their own way. One top executive (not the CEO) who had previously visited Jimmy weekly went immediately to a once-every-three-weeks schedule."

Chairman's Letter 2006 2

"Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful."

"Temperament is also important. Independent thinking, emotional stability, and a keen understanding of both human and institutional behavior is vital to long-term investment success. I’ve seen a lot of very smart people who have lacked these virtues."

Chairman's Letter 2006 1

"Size seems to make many organizations slow-thinking, resistant to change and smug. In Churchill’s words: “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Here’s a telling fact: Of the ten non-oil companies having the largest market capitalization in 1965 – titans such as General Motors, Sears, DuPont and Eastman Kodak – only one made the 2006 list." -- Warren Buffet, Chairman's Letter 2006

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Dialog between an author of "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying", Sogyal Rinpoche and Zen Master, Sheng Yen.

"西藏有句谚语说，如果你愈想走得快反而更慢到达，慢慢走反而还会快点到。"
(There is a Tibetan proverb: You would be reach destination later if you wish to walk faster; you would reach there earlier if you walk slowly.)

"有两件事是人最大的敌人，那就是太多期望和太多的恐惧，"
(There are 2 biggest enemies of us -- too much hopes and too much fears.)

“没有一个东西是禅宗的心要，这就是禅宗的心要."
(There is no core value of Zen, That is a core value of Zen.)

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