All posts by MyOrbit-Team

Citigroup Share Falls Below $1 – becomes penny stock

Shares of Citigroup Inc have fallen below $1 per share today touching 98 cents per share! From being the largest bank in the world to being a penny stock has been difficult for the employees (those who survive) and surely the investors.

Even a few months back, nobody could have thought of such low valuations, but today, it looks like the Citigroup stock could go further down. As the recession deepens, the problems facing Citigroup — souring loans and the impact of the recession — are only getting worse.

Now, the share price of an NYSE-listed company cannot remain below $1 for more than 30 consecutive days. If that happens, the company gets about 180 days to prove that it can boost its stock price.

One of the main questions we got is whether this price is makes the stock “cheap enough” to buy, and the answer is: we don’t know that!

We know how much money the US govt is pumping in the bank, and we know what assets Citigroup has worldwide, BUT we don’t know how big their liabilities are! And that’s taking the stock down.

Maybe some investors know more than others, and are selling while they can. But there is not much you can salvage with a penny stock.

Never could we imagine that one could not even buy a coffee with Citigroup share price. Today should serve us a warning of things to come ahead. We are in difficult times. Got to conserve cash.

Be Careful with “Double Your Sales” Guarantees

We came across a “double your sales, guarantee” today through an email newsletter and the presentation vs details of their offer demanded this quick post to show you why its really necessary to read the terms for any offer, especially when the offer comes with an attractive wording of guarantee.

Here’s the offer page  and here are the Terms and Conditions for their Money Back Guarantee.

We feel the offer page should have mentioned/clarified a couple of essential terms before asking a prospect to spend time in filling the form.  For example:

#4 of Terms: …Your refund request must be accompanied by a CPA-approved record of revenue for the prior 18 months, showing that you have not doubled your gross sales revenue for any comparable month from the prior year.

[Which means, the doubling of sales will not be assessed over the year or quarter (which is the accepted business growth comparison timeframe),  but any month of the year. This is not evident at all from the way the advertising is presented, and could face difficulty

#6 of Terms:  Only the set up and consulting fees previously paid by you to Infusionsoft are eligible for refund under this program. Your monthly subscription charges to the Infusionsoft service are not refundable.

[What the above term says is that that the various services you need to buy to qualify for money back guarantee are not part of the money back the guarantee! Not sure if this clause has been reviewed by their lawyers because it can’t stand in a court of law]

Therefore, always read the terms of a money back guarantee because its very rare in any services business, irrespective of how the offer is being shown. But if you do find a business partner who is willing to give a written money back guarantee on services, then that’s a thing, and worth going for. Hope you found this useful.

Sinovac Biotech

http://www.sinovac.com/images/logo.jpg

Sinovac Biotech is a biopharmaceutical company from China, which through its subsidiaries, engages in the research, development, production, and sale of vaccines that protect against human infectious diseases primarily in China.

Sinovac offers:

  • Healive, a vaccine for hepatitis A
  • Bilive, a combined hepatitis A and B vaccine, and
  • Anflu, a split virus influenza vaccine.

Sinovac also develops:

  • vaccines for the H5N1 strain of pandemic influenza virus that are in Phase I and Phase II clinical trials;
  • a vaccine for the Japanese encephalitis virus, which is in pre-clinical development stage; and
  • a vaccine for the SARS virus that has completed a Phase I clinical trial.

Sinovac Biotech markets and sells its vaccine products primarily through various provincial and municipal centers for disease control. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Beijing.

http://www.sinovac.com/pic/pipeline.jpg

Latest News:

Sinovac Enters Veterinary Vaccine Market with Inactivated Rabies Vaccine

Sinovac Announces that Government Investigation Rules Out Healive

Website: www.sinovac.com

Interview with Real Estate Coach – Peter Vekselman

We are happy to share this fast paced 30 minute interview with Peter Vekselman, who is based in Atlanta, USA and is a successful real estate investor with experience of 1000+ real estate deals across the USA. His real estate investing tips and coaching have helped dozens of real estate investors to achieve success in every possible market.

In this telecon/video, Peter shares his tips on how to avoid the wrong buying decisions, how to make the right buying decisions, and how to identify the best properties.

You can learn more about how to make successful real estate investments, in any market conditions, by visiting Peter’s website at: CoachingByPeter.com

Tags: real estate investing courses, real estate investing tips, real estate valuation

Temasek Holdings Reveals $39 Billion Loss

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YlvEjlIelzk/R-xvJCBdpJI/AAAAAAAAJ0Y/Q997dhiOFP0/s400/Temasek%2BHoldings.jpgTemasek Holdings, the Singapore state owned investment company, has revealed today that it has lost $39 billion, or 31 percent of its holdings, in eight months last year.Temasek Holdings portfolio went down from SG$ 185 billion to SG$ 127 billion Singapore dollars ($85 billion) as of November 30.

The revelation comes just days after Temasek said Chief Executive Ho Ching, the wife of Singapore’s premier Lee Hsien Loong, steps down to be replaced by former BHP Billiton CEO Charles Goodyear.

The fund made a number of wrong moves under Ho Ching, including a $5 billion investment in brokerage Merrill Lynch in late 2007. And as you may know already, Merrill’s shares fell 78 percent in 2008 amid the global financial turmoil and it was bought by Bank of America Corp. on 1st Jan in a lifesaving deal.

Temasek Holdings also has large stakes in other financial companies such as Standard Chartered Plc, DBS Group Holdings Ltd and Barclays Plc. So it looks like Temasek financed a good chunk of the toxic mortgage securities in the US.

This is a learning for all of us. Warren Buffet invested $5bn in Goldman Sachs, and Temasek in ML. And the difference in the quality of decision making is clear.