My thoughts on Bank of America (NYSE: BAC)

Bank of America is back in the news because they asked and got $20 billon from US govement, to back the loss from Merrill Lynch acquisition.

(Source: Yahoo Tech-ticker)

Personally I like Bank of America, ever since I became their customer serveral years ago. Two benefits of being BoA checking acct cosumer: 1) Their branch and ATMs are all over the country; 2) In addition to that, since I travel to China once a while, I like the fact I can withdrawl Chinese Yuan (RMB) from China Construciton Bank (CCB is BoA Chinese partner), without transaction fees. CCB is also a large bank in China and their ATMs can be found in many places.

Now to the investing of BoA (NYSE: BAC). Did I say investing? With the stock price of BoA approach to $7, it seems to me it’s more and more like speculating. I remember someone (Jim Cramer?) once said any bank stock traded under $5 is speculative.

Demystify the sale of CCB shares

Coule day a ago I came across this BoA (NYSE:BAC) bought CCB (China Construction Bank, Hongkong 0939) shares at dirt cheap price story from my Chinese friend StrengthTrader (English news here). After that I read this one original written by 21cbh, titled The Mystery of 70% Off of CCB Shares, here is a faster link from baidu finance. BTW, I always bought and liked 21cbh when I was in Shanghai last year.

Top 10 Chinese global brands

Financial Times did a Top 10 Chinese global brands survey recently. And here are the winners. Did you notice anything interesting?

I noticed BoC, Air China, China Mobile, China Telecom, Sinopec, CCB are state owned (majority owned); while Lenovo, Tsingtao beer, Haier and Baidu are public companies. I am a little puzzeled why ICBC and PetroChina did not make it to the list; and I was NOT surprised Baidu tops Sina, Sohu and Netease.

By the way, many of the top 10 brands are Beijing Olympics sponsor, such as BoC, Air China, China Mobile and Lenovo. If you watch NBA on TV, you will see Lenovo and Haier ad. from time to time.

(Full size pic is here).

New fairy tale

(Update Oct 14) I saw this “UBS analyst conference call” from trader168, it talked about “UBS analyst followed the momentum, not the fundamental analysis”. Some food for thought amid all the craziness in the China A share market, and its ripple effect on Hongkong and US markets.

(Original) The performance of recent Haigui stocks are spectacular, here are today’s closing prices of 3 big boys recently came back from Hongkong.

China Shenhua Coal, 中國神華: 1088.HK (54.00 HKD), 601088.SS (92.12 Yuan)

COSL, China Oilfield Service Ltd, 中海油服: 2883.HK (19.72 HKD), 601808.SS (51.65 Yuan)

China Construction Bank: 0939.HK (7.27 HKD), 601039.SS (10.06 Yuan)

For reference, one HKD is slightly less than one Yuan (CNY). Interestingly, Shenhua in Chinese also means fairy tale 🙂