Reading Roundup - Enviro-Spies, CME Magazine, American Entrepreneurs in China, etc.

Articles I've recently read with my comments in italics, and other miscellany:

Taiwan's amateur enviro-spies, by Matt Kovac.
["Deputizing volunteers to be enviro-snoops is just the latest effort by Taiwan to curb the pollution that has accompanied its rapid development over the past 50 years. It's also indicative of an emerging civic activism in this young democracy." There's no need for enviro-spies on the Mainland because the toxins are spewed out here openly and with abandon.]

CME Magazine, Premier Issue
["James" kindly pointed out this new magazine during the Monday night chat. (You can download it and read it offline).]

The Problem With Indexes, by David Dreman.
["... both the S&P 500/Barra and the Russell 1000 give distorted pictures of performance of value and growth over time. The reason: They each divide their investment universes into half value and half growth. That's absurd. In the real world most value and growth managers stick with the companies showing pure value or pure growth characteristics, eliminating the 60% in the middle. Managers use the top or bottom 20% ranked by price/earnings, price to book or price to cash flow. When you compare those extremes, value clearly outpaces growth." Stock indexes may be "flawed bogeys," but you've got to measure your performace against something. {via vinvesting.com}]

Scripophily.com - Buyer and Seller of Stock and Bond Certificates
[Old stock and bond certificates do make great gifts. Make sure you check out their dot com dustbin.]

At Dow Jones, It's All About Family, by Joe Nocera.
["For any Bancroft to criticize the way Dow Jones was run - even to other family members, much less to outsiders - was viewed as an act of disloyalty ... Dow Jones... remains a small newspaper company - its market capitalization is only $3.2 billion - almost entirely focused on one segment: financial and business news. It is extremely vulnerable to the vagaries of its narrow advertising niche, a niche many analysts believe will never fully come back ... the company has made two major moves recently: it bought the Internet financial site, MarketWatch, for $519 million. And, in an effort to broaden its advertising base, it will begin publishing a Saturday edition, starting next month. Both are high-risk measures, but at least Dow Jones is trying something." I think the Saturday edition is a dumb idea and that they vastly overpaid for MarketWatch, but maybe I'm wrong on both counts. {via Dan Gross}]

Making It in China, by Pascal Zachary.
["The Chinese are masters at rapidly mimicking almost any newly established service or product and using guanxi -- connections and cronyism -- to basically steal away customers. That problem confronts almost every American in China at some point, regardless of industry or niche." Interesting article profiling a handful of young American entrepreneurs who have made it in China. {via TraderMike}]

This sort of relates to the "Making It in China" article above. I was in a Notary office yesterday getting some paperwork done for the apartment we're buying, and had a nice chat with the women working there. (I speak fluent Mandarin and know the Chinese culture inside and out, if you didn't know that already.) Anyway, they told me a story about a foreigner who came in with some papers that needed notarizing, but he didn't speak any Chinese and could only make a chopping or stamping gesture with his hand, which he apparently did violently and repeatedly. Of course they laughed at him and sent him away with none of his papers notarized. We all had a good chuckle about that stupid foreigner.

What to Watch for in Toll Brothers

During yesterday's chat on the homebuilders, we talked about the importance of watching how the Holy Grail trade works out in Toll Brothers. (If you're unfamiliar with the Holy Grail technique, read this chat transcript.) Here's a chart to help you know what we were talking about. If price goes up from here triggering a buy, but then fails to reach the target, we'll know that $58+ level marks an important high. Keep an eye on it.

TOL, Weekly Chart