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Posts Tagged ‘Variable Interest Entity’

China’s Top 10 Business Stories in 2011

Courtesy of Patrick Chovanec

As the year comes to a close, and we look forward to 2012, I continue the tradition I started last year and offer a brief look at the top stories that shaped China’s business and economic climate in 2011:

1. High-Speed Rail.  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times — China’s ambitious high-speed rail program embodied the highest highs and the lowest lows the country experienced this year.  In January, President Obama cited the planned 20,000km network in his annual State of the Union address as a prime example of how America need to catch up to the Chinese.  As if to prove his point, June saw the grand opening of the much-heralded Beijing-Shanghai line, timed to coincide with the Communist Party’s 90th anniversary celebrations.   But even before then, there were signs of trouble on the horizon, starting in February when the powerful head of China’s railway ministry — the project’s godfather — was abruptly fired as part of a massive corruption scandal.  Then a crash on a line near Wenzhou, in which at least 35 people were killed, unleashed a wave of fury on the Chinese internet, forcing the government to re-think the entire project amid charges of cover-up and sloppy construction.  By November, with high-speed trains running at chronically low capacity and construction debts piling up, the railway ministry was asking Beijing for a rumored RMB 800 billion (US$ 126 billion) bailout just to pay the money it owed suppliers.

2.  Inflation.  Few issues preoccupied the average Chinese citizen — or Chinese policymakers — this year as much as rapidly rising prices.   The consumer inflation rate, which began the year just shy of 5%,rose to 6.5% by July.  The increase was led by food prices, particularly pork – a staple part of the Chinese diet — which skyrocketed by more than 50%.  Keenly aware of the potential for popular unrest, Beijing made containing prices its top economic priority — even if that meant reining in growth.  Throughout the year, the central bank repeatedly raised interest rates and bank reserve requirements, in an effort to bring the pace of credit expansion back under control.  The powerful state planning bureau leaned heavily on Chinese companies not to raise prices, and even hit consumer goods giant Unilever with a stiff antitrust fine for publicly discussing possible price hikes.  While CPI did decline to 4.2% by…
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Zero Hedge

Bizarro Time As Better Data Sends Stocks Lower

Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.

Submitted by Tyler Durden.

As the accelerating global currency wars, global money printing and abdication of fiscal policy on behalf of monetary policy becomes a worldwide pandemic, increasingly more markets are now trading like pennystocks, case in the point the world's second "deepest" stock market, the Nikkei225 has moved nearly 2000 points from high to low in the past two days on no actual news, while last night in particular was a complete embarrassment for anyone who still claims central banks aren't the only thing that moves markets: from up 3% to down 3% (under 14,000) following some "unexpected" comments from Kuroda, and finally closing up just barely, the entire move was tracing every squiggle in the USDJPY.

Then on to Eu...



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Phil's Favorites

Another Look at Bernanke's Employment Recovery in Chart Form

Courtesy of Mish.

Reader Tim Wallace took note of Bernanke's testimony on jobs (see Bernanke's Semi-Annual Tap-Dance of Distortions, Half-truths, Lies, and Hypocrisy to U.S. Congress) and sent me the following chart.

April Employment vs. April Employment in Previous Years



click on chart for sharper image

Tim writes ...
Hello Mish

Bernanke was touting the direction of employment using the familiar "7.5%" numbers and pointing to all the improvement. While granting that more people are working now than in 2010, we recognize tha...



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Insider Scoop

Long Setup in Herbalife Still Attractive; Stock Breaks Out as New Auditor Hired

Courtesy of Benzinga.

Few stocks have attracted more news over the last six months than nutritional supplement maker Herbalife (NYSE: HLF).

Even casual market observers are aware of the circumstances surrounding the the initial bout of extreme volatility in the name back in December 2012. The shares went into free-fall at the end of the year after hedge fund manager Bill Ackman revealed in typical sanctimonious fashion that his firm Pershing Square Capital Management was short around $1 billion worth of the stock.

Amid much pomp and circumstance, Ackman laid out his short thesis at a New York investment conference and...



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Option Review

Weekly Options Constructive On Home Depot

Today’s tickers: HD, IMAX & DOV

HD - Home Depot – Shares in the home improvement retailer are trading lower on Thursday, off the lowest levels of the session but still down 1.25% at $78.69 as of 11:50 a.m. ET, amid a down day for U.S. stocks. Trading traffic in newly issued weekly options on Home Depot suggests some traders are taking advantage of the dip today and positioning for shares in the name to resume hitting record highs next week. The stock yesterday rallied as much as 3.6% to touch an all-time high of $81.56 after the company reported better-than-expected first...



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Chart School

S&P 500 Snapshot: Rethinking the Risk QE Tapering

Courtesy of Doug Short.

The pre-market anxieties were little changed by this morning's slightly better-than-expected unemployment claims. The eurozone indexes were all down 2% to 3% when the US markets opened. The S&P 500 promptly plunged to its -1.20 intraday low in the first nine minutes of trading. But the index trimmed its losses in an irregular trend to its afternoon intraday high at 2:50 PM, when the market was just a hundredth of a point from break even. This was in contrast to eurozone, where the STOXX 50 closed its session down 2.05%. The S&P 500 saw some selling in the final hour and finished the day at -0.29%, well off its morning low. Presumably the abated selling suggests generally reduced fears about the Fed tapering QE in the near term.

Here is a 15-minute loo...



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All About Trends

Mid-Day Update

Reminder: David is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

Click here for the full report.




To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...

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Market Montage

Japan's Nikkei Down 7%+, Chinese Flash PMI Contractionary, Thoughts on "Tapering"

Submitted by Mark Hanna

Courtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.

Some quick notes:

  • Futures down moderately after yesterday's outside day.   The extreme overbought conditions on the weekly and monthly index charts are finally relenting some.   Even uber bulls would prefer solid entry points on stocks rather than chasing constantly.   The S&P 500 had not touched the 10 day moving average since May 2nd, until yesterday – a not common situation.   In theory the S&P 500 could go all the way down to 1597 – which was its primary breakout level – and still be in decent condition, but surely dip buyers trai...


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Sabrient

Sector Detector: Fed tries to refill bulls’ fuel tank as cyclicals lead

Courtesy of Sabrient Systems and Gradient Analytics

The market went through some gyrations on Wednesday in reaction to Fed Chairman Bernanke’s testimony before the Joint Economic Committee. He first defended continued quant easing by warning, “A premature tightening of monetary policy could lead interest rates to rise temporarily but also would carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery.” Stocks dutifully rallied and all major indexes hit new intraday highs.

But alas, consensus is apparently not a given over the longer term. The minutes hinted that a tapering off could start sooner, “A number of participants expressed willingness to adjust the flow of purchases downward as early as the June meeting if the economic information received by that time showed evidence of sufficiently strong and sustained growth.” So …...



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OpTrader

Swing trading portfolio - week of May 20th, 2013

Reminder: OpTrader is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current  trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).

We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options. 

Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.

To learn more about the swing trading virtual portfolio (strategy, performance, FAQ, etc.), please click here

Optrader 

...

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Stock World Weekly

Stock World Weekly

NEW: Newsletter writers are available to chat with Members regarding topics presented in SWW, comments are found below each post.

Here's the latest Stock World Weekly! Just sign in with your PSW user name and password, or sign up to try it out. 

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IRA Strategy/Income Trader

The IRA portfolio

Reminder: Craigzooka is available to chat with Members regarding his virtual portfolio performance, comments are found below each post.

By Craigzooka

I am going to share with you how I manage my IRA and the power of reducing your cost basis.  My goal each year is a 20% return in my IRA.  Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don't, but I believe that all of my success is due to reducing my cost basis.  To illustrate the power of reducing your cost basis here are some trades we did last year.  These trades are taken from an educational portfolio we ran in a paper-trading account for a little more than a year.

  • We bought RIG on 5/15/2012 for $44.13, sold it on 1/18/2013 for $46 but booked a profit of $1,154.
  • We bought MT on 1/4/2012 for $19.24, sold it on 12/21/2012 for $15 but booked a profit of $454.
  • We bought CHK on 1/27/2012 for $21.93, sold it on 10/19/2012 for $18 b...


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ETF Selector

Stock Market Gets Big News After Friday’s Close

Courtesy of John Nyaradi.

Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.

Courtesy of NASA

The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.

For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...



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Pharmboy

Give Them an Inch, They Will Take a Mile

Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi.  Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward.  So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...



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About Phil:

Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...

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Ilene is editor and affiliate program coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site (blogroll, archives, more). Contact Ilene to learn about our affiliate and content sharing programs.

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