Corp info: China Life Dec 08

Dec premium up 16% vs prior year (better than industry +5.5%), 2008 total premium up 50.3% (slightly better than industry 48.3%).

2008 market shares stay at 40.3% (pretty strong).

It sent out an earning alert that 2008's earning fall more than 50% compare to 2007.

Which is great & awesome news, cuz that means it did not even have a loss in such bad economy and bad stock market environment.

Google 2008 results

Despite the fact of weak economy, it's 4Q result once again beat expectation.
4Q08 revenue up 18%, EPS down 68%, excluded the fact that the company write off almost the entire value of its AOL & Clearwire investment, EPS is in fact up $5.1 or up 15%.

2008 revenue up 31%, EPS looks flat (due to equity write off mentioned above).

Cash and short term financial assets position getting even stronger, once again with no long term debt.

So all the analysts whose originally adjusted the growth down will have to adjust it back again, which may trigger a change of their consensus target price from $500 to say $550.

To me, Google should worth $1,000 in 6 years time by the end of 2014.

General Electric 2008 results

4Q08 revenue down 5%, EPS down 47%, but even its finance sector manage to have profit in tough time, I will say it meet the low range of my expectation.

2008 revenue up 6% EPS down 19% (drop mainly due to Finance segment, if I exclude Finance, GE's revenue & profit up 8.8% & 5.3%), thanks to high growth in its infrastructure segments.
The company will keep its dividend at $1.24 and it still has a AAA credit rating.

Cash position remain strong, debt to equity ratio looks high just cuz it has the Finance segment, by split the Finance & non-Finance segment, debt equity ratio actually looks great.

Wal-Mart 2008 results

4q08 sales up only 1.7%, net income down 7.7% and EPS down 6.8%.
2008 sales up 7.2%, net income up 3% and EPS up 6% Sales were strong in 2008 if exclude foreign exchange impact on international sales.

Current price is reasonable, but not that attractive unless it fall another 5-10%.

Econ data: 09 week 3

• US Nov trade balance improve to -$40.4B (better than expect, -$51.0B), prior -56.7B
• US Dec M/M retail sales - 2.7% (worse, -1.2%), prior -2.1%
• US Dec M/M retail sales ex-auto - 3.1% (worse, -1.4%), prior -2.5%
• Core PPI Dec +0.2% (better, 0.1%), prior 0.1%
• Core CPI Dec 0.0% (worse, 0.1%), prior 0.0%
• Weekly Initial claims +524k (worse, +503k), prior 470k
• Industrial production Dec -2.0%, (worse, -1.0%), prior 1.3%

Worse economic data is kind of an expected fact, so I won't be too worry about it at this moment.
Also, ppl concern & become so worry about 2009 USA government will run to a huge deficit year (more than $1T for sure), because they don't understand accounting.

This time the deficit is being used to buy assets instead of spending them.
If T-bill interest rate is only 1% while the government will get a return of at least 5% in return on the preferred shares and bad bonds it purchased.

So u can treat the high deficit as leverage instead of expenses.
But for an non-profit organization financial statement, that's how they always present.
That's the reason why ppl still willing to lent $$ to USA government, because those bonds in certain degree back-up by assets.

Econ data: 09 week 1 & 2

- Dec US unemployment rate rise to 7.2% (worse than expect, 7.0%), prior mth 6.7%
- Dec US job cut 524k (same, cut 525k), prior cut 584k
- 09/01/03 US initial jobless claim down to 467k (better, 545k), prior 491k
- Dec US hourly earnings up 0.3% (better, 0.2%), prior 0.4%
- Dec Canada unemployment rate rise to 6.6% (worse, 6.4%), prior mth 6.3%

To me, the data is slightly better than my expectation, my personally estimate 7.2% unemployment rate and 650k job cut.

Corp info: Wal-Mart Dec 08

Wal Mart Dec sales up 1.7% but lower than expect. It also lower its 4Q earning forecast by around 10%. Regardless, Wal-Mart's business remain and still the strongest among all retailers.