Reasons to Open a Chinese Bank Account • Hacker News Board

Re: Reasons to Open a Chinese Bank Account

#111

Post by MikeCapone » Sat, Jan 15, 2011, 5:24 AM UTC

EliRivers wrote: post #51

maukdaddy wrote: post #12

Much like the tech bubble and housing bubble, by the time you read these articles in the mainstream press, it is FAR too late to invest. You've already missed 10-15 years of explosive growth in the Chinese economy.

Simply not true. Laughably so. Listen to yourself. You're telling people not to invest because they'll only do well out of it rather than doing very well out of it. People were saying the same thing about gold two years ago and one year ago.

Usually when "everybody knows" that something is going to happen a certain way on the market, that's a very bad sign...

Re: Reasons to Open a Chinese Bank Account

#112

Post by mnordhoff » Sat, Jan 15, 2011, 6:23 AM UTC

grandalf wrote: post #98

jhamburger wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No stock will outperform the market over the long term. So all stocks are below average...Sort of a reverse Lake Wobegon effect?

I suppose it's possible for a company to exist indefinitely, but how many companies that existed 1000 years ago exist today?

Eleven!

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_oldes...

Re: Reasons to Open a Chinese Bank Account

#113

Post by ericd » Sat, Jan 15, 2011, 7:19 AM UTC

uxp wrote: post #108

ericd wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*trillion

You might want to look that statistic up before you try and correct someone again.

Oops, I misread that as cash on hand, but looking at it again, I don't know how I could have mistaken it. Definitely not 1.3 trillion people...

Re: Reasons to Open a Chinese Bank Account

#114

Post by Stormbringer » Sat, Jan 15, 2011, 8:25 AM UTC

iwwr wrote: post #64

fleitz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to the United States, except here your house gets seized to build a factory for Pfizer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

Or when the local town planner adds extra restrictions to your property, so the value goes down and they can snap it up for a bargain.

Saw this the other day and it seems applicable:

Proverbs 13:8 "A person’s riches may ransom their life, but the poor cannot respond to threatening rebukes."

I was thinking about it in relation to the US legal system, but it applies to politics as well. If some local politician tries to screw you over, the appropriate response is to throw money at the court of local opinion and whoever will run against them and destroy them at the next election.

After all, if they abuse politics as a means of enriching themselves, they are unworthy to hold office.

Kick up a stink, force a by-election, start taking out ads against them in the papers etc.

Accuse them of corrupting the youth of Athens (worked for Socrates opponents).

Re: Reasons to Open a Chinese Bank Account

#115

Post by StavrosK » Sat, Jan 15, 2011, 11:35 AM UTC

jarek wrote: post #110

StavrosK wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greek banks are less than reliable at the moment...

German. Probably as stable as they get on the continent these days. I've no idea if there are any residency requirements though.

Oh, very true. There shouldn't be any, as there are uniting laws for EU banks, thanks.

Re: Reasons to Open a Chinese Bank Account

#116

Post by bumbledraven » Sat, Jan 15, 2011, 1:34 PM UTC

Buy gold instead, for the same reasons: (1) it's very unlikely to go down; (2) it's very likely to go up; (3) you won't miss out on a lot of interest elsewhere; (4) it diversifies your portfolio; and (5) it's a hedge against the decline of the U.S. economy.

Re: Reasons to Open a Chinese Bank Account

#117

Post by Nick_C » Sat, Jan 15, 2011, 3:27 PM UTC

16s wrote: post #39

I know this won't be popular, but the whole idea of "diversification" has always struck me as a lame attempt by rich people (Stock brokers) to get more money from poor people. So I roll my eyes whenever a guy with a Rolex and a Porsche is telling me I need to "diversify"

It's because of covariance of returns. You can construct a portfolio with the same expected return as a single stock, but with much lower expected risk, defined as variance of return. Or a portfolio with higher returns for the same risk. And so on.

Anticipating your next question, yes, in general, historical risk has a high R2 with actual risk, where risk is defined as being normalised to an index.

Re: Reasons to Open a Chinese Bank Account

#118

Post by mturmon » Sat, Jan 15, 2011, 9:26 PM UTC

brianobush wrote: post #86

poutine wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well run? You've obviously never been to China.

Why would you need to visit China to have an opinion that could be arrived at by looking at financials - a common practice in measuring success. Just look at a portfolio of large Chinese companies - they are doing well, thus I would also hypothesize that they are well-run companies.

Chinese firms are riding a huge wave of growth driven by wage differentials. In this macro context, it's easy to make a lot of money with poor management.