Macau from the sky

Local Hong Kong time Saturday 10:56pm

Greetings from Hong Kong. When I was here last year I blogged about our visit to Macau, the gambling capital of China. I recognized it out the plane window last night as our Continental Boeing 777 was preparing its final descent into Hong Kong International Airport. Even though I have only been to Macau twice in my life, I recognized it from the bright lights of the casinos and the unmistakable sight of the three unique bridges that cross the bay.

Giving thanks

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. The President of the United States has a traditional Thanksgiving message to the nation; I have a traditional blog post where I give thanks to God Almighty for the progress (sometimes even lack of progress) in my life over the past year.

The past year has been extremely challenging and rewarding. I am grateful foremost for the religious faith which has helped sustained me throughout the challenging job search earlier this year. I am also grateful for the job that the search resulted in. While this is by no means the type of job I had envisioned when I quit my job for business school three years ago and thinking about the job makes it tempting to say that business school was a total waste of time and money, I am grateful that I have a job given the recent macroeconomic developments. It helps that almost every month I read about layoffs in a company that I have interviewed with and my current employer is relatively recession proof.

In addition to some of the fruitful relationships I have built in the Chapel Hill area over the past year, I am also thankful for a couple of exciting things that are happening in my life. One is I will be going to Hong Kong once again with my parents for two weeks. I am fortunate that I have enough vacation days for me to do this.

Me and my parents are leaving for the airport in about two hours. I will blog to you from the other side of the world.

Jack Bauer still has it

Listening to Rush Limbaugh during lunch today talking about 24 reminded me that I have yet to blog about Sunday night’s two hour movie. 24 Redemption gave us the classic Jack Bauer, a man willing to sacrifice his own personal interests for the benefit of those around him, and demonstrates that the 24 franchise (unlike James Bond) is alive and well.

The movie began in the middle of Africa where Bauer had been spending the past year hiding from a subpoena forcing him to appear before then American Congressional committee to answer for the complaints against him in his work at the Counter Terrorist Unit. There he found himself in the middle of a military coup and gave up his freedom to help a group of African children board one of the last helicopters leaving the American embassy.

In 24 Redemption, the writers changed certain things about the show but kept the main ingredients that made the show great. In the eighteen months since the last season ended, I became concerned about the future directions of the show because of criticism from liberals who object to its portrayal of torture. In the movie, the writers answered those critics by introducing issues that they care about such as genocide in Africa and children being forced into the military. Yet the rest of the show remained unchanged. The writers even embedded a “wink and nod” to conservatives by having Jack Bauer give a very clever response to a United Nations peacekeeper who was getting in the way of fighting the bad guys.

There was one scene, however, that I found totally absurd and I blame the product placement people and not the writers. When Jack’s friend discovered that a coup was underway and called to tell Jack to evacuate the children, both characters were speaking on cell phones with the Sprint Nextel logos displayed prominently. Somehow we are supposed to believe that these phones don’t work in major American cities and yet they work in the jungles in the middle of Africa.

For those of us who have spent more than a year waiting for Jack Bauer’s return, 24 Redemption was true redemption indeed.

A “Bourne again” James Bond

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS OF QUANTUM OF SOLACE

Last Friday I saw Quantum of Solace, the 22nd movie in the James Bond franchise and the second with Daniel Craig playing the MI6 spy. I am a huge James Bond fan and have looked forward to seeing this movie for almost an entire year.

The good news is that the first weekend’s $70 million box office opening means that James Bond will remain as the most profitable franchise in the history of the movie industry. The bad news is that for diehard fans like myself, Quantum of Solace continued the (in my opinion) downward trend started by Casino Royale with the movie becoming less like a James Bond movie and more like any of the other spy action movies you see in theaters today.

Having seen all the James Bond movies (with the exception of the recent ones staring Daniel Craig) multiple times, I consider myself qualified to comment on the evolution of this franchise. There are certain trends and themes that are consistent in many Bond movies yet absent from Quantum of Solace. Not once did I hear a sexual innuendo uttered against an unsuspecting woman and with the exception of a cell phone used to track a suspect, there was no display of the type of high tech gadgets you expect to see in a regular Bond movie. Gone are the Bond movies where the main character works in conjunction with the American Central Intelligence Agency. In this movie, the CIA is portrayed as an organization ripe with internal conflict that at some point works with the villains against Bond. This movie, taken at its entirety, resembles more Bourne Identity than James Bond.

Hopefully I will feel better tomorrow when Jack Bauer returns tomorrow in 24 Redemption.

Stocks for the long run

Recently, following the wreckage in the stock market has become a ritual every afternoon at “work.” It’s tough watching the market slide further and further everyday. I began the calendar year with six-figures in my 401k account and the account has gone down close to 50% year to date. To illustrate how bad it has gotten, if I had closed out the account on January 2 and paid all taxes and penalties involved, I would still have more money leftover than what I have now.

I am, however, reminded of something a professor (one who worked in investment banking) I had at UVA said more than ten years ago. He said that the greatest fortunes are often made by doing the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing – buying when everyone is selling and vice versa. Over the past ten years, following this maxim would have cautioned any investor from the speculative frenzy over technology equities in the late 1990s and the real estate craze in the mid 2000s.

It gives me hope today that with the S&P 500 having dropped to where they were in 1997, any investor buying the index today would have an entry point equivalent to having bought during my junior year in college. During my last semester in college and the following summer I invested significantly into Applied Materials, having bought close to 650 shares at a split adjusted price of $7.65. I sold all those shares over the next five years at profits no less than 120%. Applied Materials closed today at a price lower than what it was when I bought my first shares in 1998.

But I realize that getting into the market amidst such volatility is easier said than done. Over the past two months, I have made significant investments into various indexes and individual stocks only to see prices continue to sink. My advice for anyone who is risk adverse but interested in taking advantage of the current market level is to invest in an index mutual funds and to invest only funds that he does not need for at least five (maybe even seven) years. My believe in the efficient market theory and my experience tell me that even when you are right about timing the market, very rarely will your timing be so perfect that you will manage to buy at the very bottom (or sell a the very top).

I am not going to end by saying that me having an MBA makes me better at giving investment advice because recent developments on Wall Street cast doubts into the judgment of many of my fellow degree holders. I will simply point out that during my two years in business school and the ten months of unemployment that followed, I never had to worry about money. Hence proving that not only am I a follower of my own advice but am also a beneficiary of it.