Getting an Education

Yesterday was a disaster (down about 2%) for my portfolio. My Chinese stocks were the culprit as they were pretty much down across the board. But the big one was CEU, which dropped like a stone by 25% odd percent. Their trading was halted in the morning (the third halt in the past two weeks) as they were holding a conference call to address investor concerns (CHINA EDUCATION ALLIANCE INC. Files SEC form 8-K, Other Events, Financial Statements and Exhibits). Not sure if they have trouble knowing what time it is in the US, because you typically hold such press conferences while the market is closed.

Clearly they did NOT address concerns as the stock sold off sharply post the call. I almost sold at $2.70 as I was unimpressed with the English version of the transcript. I may still have a trigger-happy finger on the sell-button.

It will be interesting to see how the "tax extension" impacts the markets going forward. I suspect it may not be all that favorable, especially for Value stocks. The signals I got yesterday was that the increased deficit may spark increases in borrowing costs. That will not be good for stocks of a fixed income nature, nor stocks that were going up in hopes of M&A activity. We'll see, I have been wrong many times before.