收盘价

The primary message for people who are interested to invest in the stock market is that they should ignore market timing and buy stocks for the long term. This strategy is simple and yet effective because stocks give good returns over a long period of time.The simplest strategy is the Buy—&—Hold strategy. One does not need to do anything no matter what happens after the initial investment is made. For example, you have $100 and you then decide to keep $60 in savings and use the remaining $40 to buy stocks. Whether the stock market goes up or down, you do not use your savings to buy more stocks or sell stocks to put money back into savings.

The transition of China from an agricultural nation to an industrial country will be very slow and difficult.

The low cost labor force enabled China to have a great competitive edge over some of its Asian neighbors.

Though China’s economic boom started in Guangdong Province, it has far-reaching influence on the other parts of the country.

The word “shoulders” in “Migrant workers crowd the narrow shoulders” means “streets”.

Passage 2

If there is a road to China’s future, Highway 204 out of Shanghai is it. Along its two dusty lanes, local tracks and buses jockey with Cadillacs driven by financiers from Taiwan and Hong Kong investors. Migrant workers crowd the narrow shoulders. Factories line the highway, producing sneakers, toys, plastics, clothes, aircraft components and medical equipment. Eventually industry gives way to ricefields, which is being dug up to build still more factories. Cranes turn overhead as dump trucks and cement mixers nose onto the road. Outside the town of Jiading, one tractor-trailer leaves Asia’s largest container plant every three minutes, carrying goods bound for the Shanghai docks. The traffic on Highway 204 is so thick that the trip from Shanghai to Zhangjiagang—only 115 kilometers away—takes five hours.Zhangjiagang is a commercial hub of Jiangsu, the fastest-growing province in China. China has the most dynamic economy in the world today. Its boom radiates from Guangdong, its richest province, but it has spread as far west as Xinjiang, where foreign investors are searching for oil and other natural resources. It is creeping inland, from Jiangsu to the cities of Chongqing and Wuhan, where businessmen from Hong Kong and Taiwan are starting to spend billions of dollars to build factories. And it has penetrated the northeast, where the city of Shenyang, long a moribund center of state industry, is bustling with new private business, from trading companies to prostitution. Back in Beijing, officials at China’s state council, or cabinet, are giddy with excitement—and exhaustion. “We don’t have people, we don’t have time,” says one. “Things are moving too fast.”Former World Bank chief economist Larry Summers recently argued that China could surpass both Japan and the United States to become the world’s largest economy by 2020.A farfetched prediction? U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman said China may replace Japan in importance to the U.S. as an economic partner. Japan recognizes the rise of China. As a warning shot in an intensifying rivalry, Tokyo last week put punitive import tariffs on Chinese steel.Expansion has transformed places like Jiangsu Province, where GDP grew 26 percent last year. Six years ago Zhangjiagang was part of another town and did not even have its own name. Now it’s China’s seventh largest port and a tumultuous construction zone of half-built office buildings and hotels.For China’s newly-rising enterprises, profits are up throughout the region—thanks largely to low wages. Last year the BeiBei Company in Zhangjiagang cleared $14 million on exports of 10 million pairs of shoes to U.S. department stores. At the BeiBei plant, women huddle over a conveyor belt in frigid temperatures, gluing rubber sneakers together. Typically, Chinese workers in a plant like this make about 34 cents an hour, compared with $3.50 for Korean workers, according to South Korean estimates. That gives China a huge competitive advantage.

The traffic on Highway 204 is very slow according to the author.

The Chairman of Ford thinks that Ford is in a better strategic position than GM and Chrysler.

There is not any drawback for GM and Chrysler to ask for Government’s financial support.

Passage 1

Ford Motor Co., despite losing more than $26 billion over the last two years, still has no intention of asking for government assistance but will instead draw down 10.1 billion in existing credit lines. “It’s a very volatile market,” says Ford Chairman Alan Mulally. “It’s not in our plan at all to access federal funds,” he said even though “business conditions have deteriorated around the world more rapidly than expected.”Ford reported it lost $5.9 billion, or $2.46 per share, in the fourth quarter of 2007 due to declining domestic demand, restructuring charges and losses at its overseas subsidiaries. For the full year Ford lost $14.6 billion as it revenues shrank by 36 percent. The latest losses, Ford’s already steep mountain of debt—some $26 billion —and the industry’s shaky financial condition are all stirring anxiety among investors, lenders, and potential car buyers. Yet Mulally stresses that Ford is in a better strategic position than its struggling rivals.GM and Chrysler are expected to present preliminary plans to the Treasury by Feb. 17 demonstrating their viability, and final plans in March, if either of those plans fails to convince the federal government, a bankruptcy filing could follow. Such a huge negative event might prompt Ford to reconsider its position, says Mulally, but otherwise it expects to avoid asking for emergency federal aid.

Ford is trying to tide through the economic downturn without asking for government’s assistance.

Investors, lenders, and potential car buyers are quite confident in Ford.