Who Predicted This?
To quote the perhaps apocryphal Yogi Berra, ''never predict, particularly not about the future.''
Who would have thought a year ago that the trend in the global valuation of the renminbi would be down, and that Chinese would be busily doing fake shopping deals in Hong Kong plus fake casino chip buying in Macao to get their money out of China?
And who would have expected that we would still be getting excited about an 8.3% unemployment rate this far into the supposed recovery?
Who would have thought that rather than driving tourists away, the supposed end of the world under the Mayan calendar is bringing curious vacationers to Mexico?
Who could have forecast that my nephew's movie invention (in Attack the Block, a marijuana plantation-factory in a British housing project) would have a real counterpart in the slummy East Bronx where the cops bust a multimillion dollar Bronx Pot-anical Garden like what Joe Cornish's movie featured?
Who would have thought that to build a railway between Tel Aviv and Eilat, the Israelis would be bringing in a Chinese contractor?
Who could have predicted that the Greek crisis would continue into yet another year and yet another month as the euro-bloc leaders continue to kick the can down the road?
Who ever predicted the dire collapse of natural gas prices in the USA, throwing strategies for alternative energy into disarray?
Which pundit forecast that smoked salmon would be so widely produced that its price would fall from the luxury levels of my childhood and that apart from the Nordic world and Nova Scotia, there would be salmon farms producing tasty lox in places like Morocco?
Who could have foreseen that my outside consultant for marketing would be cutting back on work in order to study to become a rabbi?
Why is Farcebook which I consider the worst 21st century investion yet turning out to be viewed as worth a fortune? I am a prisoner of Zuckerberg. I cannot stop messages coming from readers who have my e-mail on their systems. And they cannot stop sending stuff to me. So when Facebook claims that every 6th person in the world is a customer, take it with a grain of salt. I do not like Farcebook as it is
a waste of time (which I lack) with useless trivia;
insidious with ads telling me where to shop;
a way for readers to seek investment advice I am not allowed to give them non-publicly and individually under SEC rules.
WSP Holdings of China, with ADRs listed on the NYSE as WH, is having to reverse split to raise its stock price. The new ratio will make each ADR equal 10 rather than 2 Chinese shares. By Feb. 15, holders will get a new share worth 10 ordinary whares for every 2 they hold. No new WH ADRs will be issued. The exchange is being done by JPMorgan Chase, but there is no guarantee that after the split e the ADR will trade at the new ratio to ordinary shares. The theory is that institutions banned from ''penny stocks'' will be able to buy the weightier shares and will want to do so.
We sold this baby when it became clear that Chinese seamless drilling pipes were subject to US countervailing duty because of subsidies at home.
The same thing could happen to Chinese solar shares which may also collapse. Or, to quote Yogi, which may not collapse. Or to rare earths. Or not.
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