Plain facts that anybody who is not an idiot can understand:

• Ebay bought fast growing Skype at $3.1 B bargain price.
• Skype continued to grow its user base, revenues and earning because it offers great services.
• Today Microsoft wants to buy  Skype for $8.5B

Symbol RENN Quantity 50 Shares
Date of Order0 5/04/2011 Time of Order 12:54 PM
Executed Price $19.33 Commission $4.95
Total for this Execution $-971.45

I did it this crazy bet for several reasons:

1. Creative Maths… If  Baidu : Google = RenRen : Facebook , then $51B : $173B = x : $50B and x = $14.7B. If Renren reaches a Market Cap of $ 14 B, it means the stock has gone 10 times up
2.  Facebook will never be able to operate in China. If they try, then China will want details about Facebook connections of dissidents. Such information could yield death sentences.
3. I’ve heard form Chinese teachers that Renren is very well known by Chinese students… very much Facebooklike
4.  Baidu went up 1000% in three years. I can take risks hoping Renren may do the same

Potash mine

This is how I ended up on Potash (POT):

1. At first I looked at tractors. John Deere looked like a nice bet. They just raised their dividends and it yields nice
2. Then I did wonder… do Chinese want John Deere Tractors? Not only I found out they don’t. I even discovered many American farmers are turning to Jimna Chinese junk. Jimna tractors are less expensive. I see John Deer in some potential competition trouble. I also fond out John Dere has debts equal to a yer worth of sales. So I decided to loo further.
3. As I usually do  when I want to invest in a certain industry, I looked how ETFs are composed. I found MOO Agriculture ETF. P0tash (POT) is their first holding, second is John Deere. Potash composes 10% of MOO ETF.
4. I was on the right track. Potash is mined into the Earth and put into fertilizers. Chinese can manufacture just about anything, but they can’t dig mines in Canada.
5. Potash is a bit expensive (P/E= , but growing fast. I’m jumping into that wagon!

Here is my order, executed on infamous Etrade:

I am now an happy owner of 5 free MCD shares.

One Way to go is AWAY FROM Etrade: Etrade is the only online broker that charges international customers DOUBLE COMMISSIONS ($19.99)

It is official: Etrade lies on their commissions. On http://www.etrade.com they say commissions is $9.99. They don’t say anything about double commissions ($19.99)  for international customers for the same trades that cost US customers $9.99 This is the official statement by Etrade staff of their ripoff:

Sent: 10/18/2010 04:18 PM
Subject: Trading & Investing
Topic: Trade Inquiry
Account: XXXX-8555
Reference Number: 1217999

Message: Dear Customer,

Thank you for your message regarding commission fee.

This commission fee schedule applies to your account.

E*TRADE Securities Trading Fees and Commissions

International Customers (non-US customers on the US-International Site):

1.)All stock orders of 2000 or fewer shares (in linked accounts)
$19.99

2.)All foreign stock orders
$19.99

3.)Broker-assisted trades
$45.00 + regular commission

4.)ECN Fee
$0.005 per share + applicable commission

5.)Option orders
(complex orders are only subject to one base fee, but the per-contract fee will apply to all legs)
$19.99 + $1.75 per contract

6.)Option Exercise/Assignments
$19.99

Thank you for doing business with E*TRADE!

Sincerely,
Glenda D. Velasco
8:30am-5:30pm EST Monday-Friday
1-800-ETRADE-1 (1-800-387-2331)
Financial Service Representative
E*TRADE Securities, LLC

This horrible mail was sent as a reply to my yesterday inquiry.

fake transparent showcase for a company that lies to its customers

Something strange in the neighborhood. On Etrade website, they advertise $9.99 flat commission for stock trades. Unfortunately they charged me twice as much on this simple buy order:

And here again on this sell order:

I wrote them this nice message:

I don’t understand why you charged $19.99 commissions fee on this order.
On your website it says standard commission is $9.99.
I executed two orders this fall. You charged me 19.99 for each order, twice as much as I expected.
Please let me know if it was a mistake, or if you plan to continue charging me twice as much as you avertise. In that case my next inquiry will be about how to move all securities to another platform.
I blogged on this incident and I’ll be happy to publish your kind answer

http://deminvest.wordpress.com/2010/10/18/is-etrades-real-commission-19-99-do-they-lie-when-they-promise-9-99-on-their-homepage/

Sincerely

Deminvest

Chinese growing business community will need to travel and sleep out. So I chose HMIN, a large chain of economy hotels in China. This was my order on Etrade:

Thu Sep 30 11:55:36 2010 Buy 30 HMIN Executed @ $49.13

not very inviting Hotel by our standards, probably extremely cheap

What made me chose this hotel chain are its good growth numbers:

Qtrly Revenue Growth (yoy): 25.70%

Qtrly Earnings Growth (yoy): 35.30%

The company has more cash (136 M) than debt ( 26M).

The stock is extremely expensive:

If the company keeps its growth rate the stock will fly. Otherwise it will bust.

I wanted to compare HMIN to other hotel chains. I found out it is not very easy. IHG, Intercontinental Hotel Group, owns great brands like Holiday Inn, but is just a lean Franchisee. As I compare it to HMIN, I have to notice IHG has less direct employees (4000 compared to 15000).

I also like to compare HMIN to westner hotlel chians like Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. (HOT)  and Marriott International, Inc. (MAR). Marriot has losses and is supposed to go back into black P/E=27 next year. Starwood has P/E around 129, expected to reach P/E=37 next year. Doth companies are hardly growing and have debt.

It maybe less risky to bet on HMIN continuing its growth than betting HOT or MAR will recover.

It took 10 years, but eventually I got there. My 222 RHAT shares are 46.9% up! I just placed this interesting order on ETRADE 5 minutes ago: