Hi Jay, Some posts from parties past … 1999 Christmas season
Message 12292529
“Imagination gets pretty inspiring when the sun is out, weather warm, surf up, and beer cold, and pretty terrifying when staring into the abyss.”
Message 12355669
“partying in the office at 1:15pm. Just released bonus packs to staff. I still remember quite vividly my champaign and caviar boat trip right before Thailand collapsed …
There are simply money everywhere for the picking, and we are drunk with fantastic visions of Maui. The operative valuation out here appears to be US$ 5 million for a good idea, and projects are valued at $15 million for having three good ideas. Food processing portal. Textile portal. Hotel portal. Traditional Chinese Medicine Portal. Etc. Old intermediaries I know in energy projects are now pawning i-net ideas.
Cornfeld's (1960s scamster) street level window in HK (where he displayed a tree with money clipped to it - the money tree) on Duddell Street in Central now has a new logo inside "Web Bank". Cornfeld's motto tag line used to be "Do you truly want to be rich?"
This is tremendously enjoyable and funnier than "It's a mad mad mad world".
Today I received a querry on a i-net business plan. The guy asked "Jay, the writing style looks like yours on the B-plan; is this the deal you guys sold to _____". He was concerned that a business was being re-packaged and sold again. As I was suppose to vet projects for him, he thought one of my plans had found its way back to me. Turns out to be a competing idea in traditional chinese medicine, not as good, but looks similar.
Care to be exercised. Survivors will be the quick-footed.
…
I am worried about a Bre-X type of situation in i-net (as if some one sneazes on the buffet table of Gold Mining) that ruins the fun for the rest of us.
Back to the party.”
Message 12403144
“No rationale, logic, valuation. Just speculation in its purest and most daring form. A sand castle built on a deck of cards, supported by a shimmering mirage of riches that can be.
Just like Tricom (a/k/a PCCLF after Li's takeover), the big boys decide to buy a small listed company - in this case Golden Power, sell off it substantive but unnecessary innards (battery making), and then inject assets (in the form of convertible debt) and investments (nay, i-net projects, visions, mirages, and dreams) into the almost empty shell, operate the newly puffed up but already listed company. These 'backdoor' listings dispense with the inconvenience of waiting around for IPO opportunity, in case the liquidity train does not manage to cross the bridge of Credibility and crashes into the South Sea.”
Message 12404275
“Edwin-san, you are, however, correct in detecting my overall bearish bias …
January does not concern me much, March does. We all become technicians first, science fiction writers later, soothsayers next, then, finally, astrologers. February is a month to start shorting until we feel margin poor, and August is for going long until we feel cash poor.”
Message 12412861
“Our Son designed 9984 (Softbank) investment machine is powering onward like a dependable Swiss watch powered by uranium, tick by thermonuclear tick.”
Message 12414549
“Golden Power (603) power strokes to 13.5 noon time today, a reasonable 48% rise in 24 hours. Sold half, and buying 1049 (Celestial Securities) at 0.95 as it will be the first publicly traded brokerage w/ i-net trading of HK shares. The Boom.com and others are not public. With the US based experience, this is, so far, indeed like reading tomorrow's Wall Street Journal today. Son is right about his Time Machine, just on a much more glorious scale.
Richard Li of PCCLF is throwing a 20 million party with Whitney Houston and other megastars for the Millenium night. I guess the man has cause to celebrate. This is the 1920s all over again. 1925 or 1929?”
Message 12414778
“Like I mentioned before, there is no need to investigate the share trading in HK. If it goes up like a rocket, it is being manipulated, being readied for a cash call. Hong Kong is a wonderful place where capitalism in its origin 1920s form co-exist with 60+% cellular phone penetration (kids included).
Macao is nice too. The Macao Club just sent me a flyer to sign up for free cruises all weekends during 2000, food included. The ship, complete with swimming pool and all, leaves HK for open sea and the gambling starts. As my wife and I do not gamble, we figure we will just watch the action and read a good book, maybe check out a few movies. Wife will accompany as there appears to be quite a few single girls on board.
Communist China is never so in danger as when they embraced these two tiny specs of islands. Imagine what an embrace of Taiwan can do!”
Message 12423716
“Not bad that Soros turned a year-on-year loss to a 30+% gain in 60 days.
We in Asia had a run-in with Soros and friends, and the ASian crisis had very little to do with non-transparency, cronyism, or lack of democracy. The storm was caused by high hard currency denominated leverage, speculation, and triggered by Soros and friends doing a hedge job on the over-valued (fixed to US$) currencies. Had you been an Indonesian billionaire, had all your assets in Indonesia, in local currency, you would have been worth no more than US$ 2 million (yes, two million) at the low point. Sort of a life style changing event in my judgement.
Hong Kong was lucky, in that we followed Malaysia's lead (turn off the light during a bar brawl and gang up on the foreigners) did not follow the Wall Street Journal rule book, defended ourselves, and taught Soros humility with a one day US$ 10 billion government intervention, and then the Russians immediately followed up with a lesson on prudence on foreign lending, and the Japanese then reminded Soros who the capital supplier to the US was. Longterm Capital nearly folds, Greenspan and Ruben panics, turns on the liquidity tap, and the rest of the story we know.
Watch out below when these famous people and the 'IPO lock-up period' expired i-net insiders starts selling, and worse, starts shorting. Asia, more particularly Japan, is a good place to ride out the storm due to its
(1) 10+ year recession/depression,
(2) high savings,
(3) megascale government sponsored liquidity,
(4) early i-net days, and
(5) low stock ownership rate.
When and if you want to run, run silently and quickly, into the night side of the world when NYSE is open, run to the CSCO, ORCL, EMC, MSFT, QCOM(?) and other shares with high international i-net potential and Japanese/Asian shares such as SFTBF, Sony, China Telecom ...
My guess for 2000 is that Soros will be testifying in the Senate in 2001.”
Message 12424137
“Yesterday, the taxi driver did ask for and accept stock tips from me. Earlier, my 70 year old mom visiting now tried to understand from me what EMC's business was (she does e-mail and surf for info), and my father in-law (who does not use i-net) had bought and mis-sold MYPT, in at 13, out at 25, leaving US$ 500k+ on the table, and he still could not tell me what the company does, nor could he tell me what the closing price is. My office administrator is following my trades, my broker is passing around my trades as his own ideas (ever since my initial lucky (nay, studied) 9984 buy in November of 1998). My neighbor and I talked Golden Power while putting out the garbage, speculated on a joint purchase of the apartment on the third floor of our 3 storey building, and discussed his Malaysian friends wanting to place money with him to speculate with in Hong Kong (free capital movement is so very important to the continued prosperity of our little island). And finally, other asset classes are being talked about in the press as follow-ons to i-net frenzy (recent spat of biotech buzz, etc), and this is inevitable as the maniac fever runs its course, affecting other assets.
I am on page 69 of "Devil Take the Hindmost" by Edward Chancellor (purchaseable at Amazon, of course), and at the bottom of the page, from the year 1720, by an anonymous pamphleteer, in great clarity ...
"The additional rise of this stock above the true capital will be only imaginary; one added to one, by any rules of vulgar arithmetic, will never make three and half; consequently, all the fictitious value must be a loss to some persons or other, first or last. The only way to prevent it to oneself must be to sell out betimes, and so let the Devil take the hindmost."
The earlier part of the book described speculative events since the Roman empire days, and I observe that if one were to replace the nouns (i-net for gold, biotech for tulips, diving engines for cellular phone, treasure in South Seas for WTO in China, etc) and change the dates (1999 for 1720, etc), the resulting words can be published in Wall Street Journal and Barrons, with no loss of sense or education value.
I do (intellectually, at least) realize that 95% of i-net companies will no longer be around by half time, but I believe it would be criminal (not to mention irresponsible to imaginary offsprings) not to play this game out and gather assets for an eventual retreat to a quiet sunny cove in Maui. Our education, experiences, and sense of historic and social relevance and duty dictate that we must contribute to the progress of i-net globalism, and as in all progressive moves, someone must eventually pay a price, even as we ourselves edge towards the emergency fire exit.
We are living in historically significant time and feeling invincible and vigorous. I felt this way once before, during 1990-1991 in Manila/Borocay, immediated after the 1989 TianAnmen event having diminished my consulting business in China, renovating (nay, flipping, in English, or stir frying in Chinese) buildings. My two Aussie partners and I started with risk capital of US$ 100k, got our NAV to US$ 7 million, and back down to US$ 100k, all in 18 short months. I learnt that bankers do use four letter words, and that "we successfully crossed the rickety suspension bridge over the deep gorge, after making proper judgement of the risks involved; and a hungry mountain lion stepped out from the rocks ...".
We got sunk in Manila by 45% per annum interest rate when Saddam invaded Kuwait, causing oil price to go up, toureism to dry up and 500k filipinos to return to Manila from the Middle East, all looking for jobs”
Message 12432932
“Read the "Devil take Hindmost". The parallels are uncanny. All the signs are there. We are living in 'living history'. We probably have a good 12 months to go (I almost think 9984 will reach 800k in 2000 or not ever get there at all), and I believe the proper way to play this is no longer diversification, but massive bets on a few names of different maturity (9984 vs dotcom.com), take profit out as we go. Diversification is only good against quakes in a few names, not in a market cataclysm. I feel more energized than ever, as if my whole life was spent preparing for this one glorious trip out of the harbour.
On this basis, Golden Power is cheap and MSFT is dirt cheap, and Reuters is free.
Being scared is healthy, but it must not paralyze us. In the game of Quake, the guy who stops moving and the guy moving slowly are dead. The guy who moves fast and the guy hiding like a girl (I do no mean that all girls hide, so no offense meant) are alive, but rewarded differently.
Some one asked some one about IDC and the reply gotten back was ...
QUOTE
I know nothing about IDC. Generally speaking, my rule is: a sudden rise or spike in the price of a stock;on very high volume, will correct the entire gain when "cooler heads prevail", if the move was a baseless rumor or deliberate hype, but if the rise had some sound or logical reason, it will correct half its gain. The speed of correction does not suggest the correction must be immediate.
Informed buying is usually patient and persistent, a slow accumulation; there is no spike. Today most spikes seem foolish, there's so much impatient behavior, that I believe the spike rule is going to apply to the entire high-tech sector. Internet and software spikes are suspect under any sane method of evaluation I have ever known. Thank God I have not yet moved out just because I am out of step with current trends.
If you want to use your time judiciously, you should find overpriced industries where overpriced companies are about to "disappoint" with downward earnings revisions. I think there are already hundreds of examples to draw on.
UNQUOTE
Thus I have started to track some of the 'overpriced' and 'weak' plays, in view that they will be viciously shorted at the opportune moment (moment of massive frenzy), such as that may be indicated when the police is called out in force to keep order at IPO lotteries. There was a cover photo on Far Eastern Economic Review back in 1996, a few short months before THE ASIAN CONTAGION, where a crowd of cowering China IPO wanters in Shenzhen were kept in order by policemen wielding bamboo canes. The same month saw Taiwan stock exchange volume higher than NYSE, and tales of Taiwan punters transported to Bangkok each Sunday night to ramp stock, drink, eat, do the girlie bars and back to home on Friday afternoon.
The good events are still further down the program flyer, as we have not yet had a Bre-X situation.”
Message 12438033
“Jonas, I am guessing (nope, actually counting on) that NASDAQ SFTBF will ...
(1) allow 9984 to prospect for pre-IPO investments for its funds, compare business plans
(2) shop for alliances amongst the IPO applicants
(3) source IPO candidates for E*Trade Japan/USA
(4) lists its own IPOs
(5) make markets via subsidiaries and invested companies
(6) earn an exchange fee
(7) affect government policy
(8) ride the biggest liquidity bubble in all times
and
(9) get us to Yen 800k
Mr. Milken and KKR did not have a clue in the 1980s.”
Message 12438115
“I am curious at times and, gad, look what I found ... message 7289 on Bre-x thread ... the party for that stock fell apart around message 7370. So, let us not get into an argument and concentrate on our basket(s) of eggs. If I am right, I do not have to argue, and if I am wrong, I can not afford to argue.”
Message 12442393
“Update on 603. Now I am like a critter caught in the headlights, recognizing substantial gains on Golden Power (603) for one day trade (in at 18, out at 23).
It is now 11:23am local time and I have only sold what 603 I bought today at open. Rolling part of proceeds into China Overseas Land (688) at HK$ 1.10/share, and awaiting rumored broadband announcement. Caveat Emptor.
No work is being done in the office at all. Danger, danger. All signs of mania present. Can not get through to HK Telecom 2288 (real time stock quote) line at all. Flying blind, but flying.
China Strategic (235) holds substantial PCCLF and sells at HK$ 0.45. The head of China Strategic is a master flipper when times are hot. I am not buying 235 as I draw the line somewhere. Red-chip plus Cyber-chip plus debt could prove too potent and toxic a mixture even for fast paced HK.”
Message 12443500
“#688 is supported by its property portfolio that will stop making losses in 2001 and will be announcing deals in broadband based on existing profit-making fibre assets and co-invested assets with Xinhua. Timing is a bit long still as packaging not decided as yet (could be 6 months, an eternity in i-net time). Speculation for adults only. I hope the US does not fall apart and let me trade out of all these baby dotcoms whole.”
and … the awakening …
Message 12452804
“Thank you Linda, update, but this time literally final update ... liquidated all positions in Founder (418), Celestial (1049), and all of massive position established yesterday in China Overseas (688), and another 25% of Golden Power (603, now only 25% of original stake left). Taking home a modest Maui home due to 688, but probably left a few more on the table. It's OK, I measure myself in absolute numbers, not relative to the Dow Jones'. Like I said, in mania, a few massive but extremely short term bets.
Main motivation on a swooping sale (instead of staggered sales) is that I will be travelling to four locations within 9 days, starting today, and I can not be at the rudder.
Now I I got left in HK is HSBC, a smattering of Golden Power, and some Tracker Fund (index mutual fund established by HK Government from their anti-Soros intervention hoard).” |
