Investing in China: I

I have talked about investing in China many times in this blog. Recently a good friend of my wife asked this question: how to protect her parents retirement (life style) now that they are near retirement?

I think this is a very good question, also a very common one. Recently I read Charlie Munger’s book Poor Charile’s Almanac, and he said three stocks are enought (diversified) if they are good stocks and the person trully understands it. I agree.

So, let me apply this three stocks approach and run a hypertheoritical portfolio for my wife’s friend (‘s parents 🙂

The first stock comes to mind is 601628.SS, China Life Insurance (NYSE: LFC; HKSE: 2628.HK). I talked China Life couple times, during its Shanghai IPO (secondary offering to be precise), and “Got Yuan” post. I believe China Life is uniquely positioned to take advantage of weakened competitors (China Ping’An and AIG China subsidiary), and this down market.

ICBC released year 2007 results

ICBC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the largest bank in China (and arguably in the world), announced its year 2007 results recently. Here is the webcast (good stuff). And quote the Reuters news: ICBC earned 81.52 billion yuan ($11.56 billion) in net profit in 2007, compared with 49.3 billion yuan in 2006, a 64.9% increase.

Notes from webcast Q&A
1) Money management (fees) will not decrease as A share market goes down. There is potential in corporate customers; new products.

2) Subprime exposure was not significant. ICBC invested much more foreign currencies in US treasuries.

3) Credit risk, non-performing loan. Property dev loan 7%, personal mortgage 15%.