Last weekend I noticed an intriguing buying opportunity in Allied Irish Banks (NYSE: AIB). Right now, banks are cheap. For the most part, this is for good reason. Banks have made reckless loans, traded in derivatives for which they couldn’t possibly have had adequate margins of safety, and just generally been idiots. [...]

Recently, the market has been hammered as a whole. Unsurprisingly, small caps, Chinese tech stocks and many of the more volatile sectors have been punished to an even greater degree. Today, I made two additions to the Toshuo Portfolio.

Here’s the post-2007 update for my portfolio. All the quotes are from the close of December 31, 2007. As usual, I’m not posting my IRA investments.

In all honesty one of the factors that has led me to invest so much in Chinese companies is the undervaluation of the RMB. The explosive growth of the middle class and the economy as a whole is the main reason, but currency concerns definitely factor in. Yesterday, I stumbled on the most [...]

As I said a week and a half ago, Loop.net has been on a roll, and its stockprice hasn’t. At that time, I decided to buy more if the price went under 16. Today, I noticed it at under 15, so I did a quick check to verify that it isn’t due to [...]

I’ve been interested in the Vancouver-based startup D-Wave for over a year now. They make quantum computers. And, unlike any other company in the world, they’ve actually made working ones. This week they’re demoing a pattern recognition test that’s very difficult for traditional computers– scanning pictures and quickly identifying which ones are [...]

It hasn’t even been that long since the last time the sky fell, and once again the market is taking some dips. Over the past five days, with the S&P 500 down by 3.4%, the Nasdaq down by 6.2% and the Xinhua China 25 Index down by 11.4%, several of my holdings have taken [...]

The limit order I made last night filled after I went to bed and I’ve sold half my shares of Ctrip.

Symbol
Shares
Sale Price
Sale Value
Purchase Date
Cost
$ Gain
% Gain

CTRP
100
56
5,590
05/01/2006
2,279
3311
145.3

My reason for this isn’t due to any sort of material change in Ctrips business. I’m still convinced that it’s a wonderful company; it’s a top [...]

It looks like some fairly minor news has the analysts spooked about Buffalo Wings (BWLD), and the share prices have dropped by over 25% today.
NEW YORK (Associated Press) - Analysts said Wednesday that higher commodity costs are weighing on Buffalo Wild Wings Inc., after the restaurant operator’s third-quarter profit missed Wall Street expectations.
Buffalo [...]

I wasn’t joking yesterday when I wrote that Taiwan fabless semiconductor company Silicon Motion Technology Corp. was on my watch list. I’ve had my eye on the company for a while, and as of this writing, it’s taken a fortuitous 5% plunge today. What can I say? The price was right.
The Business
Silicon [...]