WSJ NYU Fellowship Open For Applications
Posted on | November 21, 2009 | Comments Off
The WSJ NYU Fellowship for 2010-11 is now open for applications.
The fellowship is a program funded by The Wall Street Journal, in association with New York University, for one or two promising journalists from Asia to enroll in the three-semester masters program in business and economic reporting at the NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
Please explore the site and contact us if you have further questions. The deadline for applications is January 22 Feb 8.
Obama Loses His Star Power–in China – Deal Journal – WSJ
Posted on | November 11, 2009 | Comments Off
Alumnus Jody Xu reports on the less-than-stellar welcome President Obama received ahead of his China trip:
Despite the message intended by President Obama from his spending the longest time in China on his first trip to Asia next week, the Chinese people are nonplussed.
One person asked in People Forum, an online chat room of the Peoples Daily: “Mr. President, don’t you think this is a bad time to visit given your recent approval to increase tax on Chinese tires and the escalating trade war against us?”
China’s leading English-language weekly, Global Times, found in an online poll that, out of 8,100 respondents, 86% said they either “do not anticipate” or “do not care much” about the coming visit of the U.S. President.
Obama Loses His Star Power–in China – Deal Journal – WSJ
Filing Says Tipster Got Info From Ex-Moody’s Analyst – WSJ.com
Posted on | October 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Alumnus Shefali Anand on the Galleon insider trading case:
NEW DELHI — The tipster who investigators say touched off one of the largest insider-trading cases in recent years is the aunt of a friend of a former Moody’s Investors Service analyst who allegedly passed information to her, according to the analyst.
Prosecutors allege that an analyst at Moody’s gave Roomy Khan — identified by people familiar with the matter as the tipster — confidential information in 2007, before the announcement of Blackstone Group’s $26 billion takeover of Hilton Hotels. Ms. Khan and ..
Filing Says Tipster Got Info From Ex-Moody’s Analyst – WSJ.com
Finalists Selected
Posted on | March 18, 2009 | Comments Off
We’re pleased to report that finalists for the fellowship have been selected. Emails will be going out soon to everyone who applied. The winner will be announced in the next few days.
Applications Have Closed, But…
Posted on | January 25, 2009 | Comments Off
I’m afraid applications have now closed for the fellowship, and finalists will be notified by March.
Those who don’t get selected, or didn’t get their application together in time, will have a chance to submit next year. This website will be up, and updated, in the interim, so please continue to keep an eye out. Those of you who feel you don’t match the criteria now have plenty of time to fill in the gaps. Remember: initiative, ingenuity and a readiness to fill in the gaps of experience and knowledge are all highly regarded qualities, not just for this fellowship, but for journalism in general.
Channel Checkers
Posted on | January 4, 2009 | Comments Off
Here’s a piece written by one of the fellows, Serena Ng, written while she was an intern at The Wall Street Journal.
`Channel Checkers’ Sniff About for Trends
By Serena Ng
8 August 2005
(Copyright (c) 2005, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
A FEW WEEKS ago, nine recent business-school graduates and one retired businessman based in eight states set out on one big mouse hunt, collectively visiting more than 70 Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurants across the country.
Along the way they chatted with store managers, noted customer traffic, staff attitudes, and cleanliness of the restaurants, known for their kid parties and games presided over by the eponymous gray mouse. After each stop, the Pizza Ten sent detailed reports of their findings to J.P. Mark, president of Farmhouse Equity Research, in Newport, R.I. Mr. Mark studied their notes and concluded that the chain’s same-stores sales would be flat to slightly lower for the second quarter. He quickly relayed that hunch to his client, a hedge fund that had hired him to check out Chuck E. Cheese’s, owned by CEC Entertainment Inc.
Four days later, on July 26, CEC reported flat second-quarter earnings and a 2.1% drop in same-store sales, which compares business at locations open in the current year’s period to the same time a year earlier. That performance was below Wall Street’s consensus forecast, and it sparked a selloff in the New York Stock Exchange-listed shares of the Irving, Texas, company.
Mr. Mark doesn’t know whether his client acted. But it appears the hedge fund had a Street-beating view of the stock because of the “channel checks” performed by his foot soldiers, who earn $20 to $75 an hour, depending on experience. Mr. Mark hires locally so his researchers don’t need hotel rooms, but he also covers transportation, telephone and other sundries. (The Pizza Ten each also had a $12 per diem for dining at Chuck E. Cheese’s, but most declined that perk.)
Channel checks — collecting data from a company’s customers, suppliers, employees and even rivals to find out how a business is really doing — have always been part of a stock analyst’s duties. But with most Wall Street firms unable or unwilling to devote significant resources to this qualitative and often time-consuming process, a growing number of independent research outfits are making a living out of this niche. The work involves more networking and investigative reporting than analyzing balance sheets and income statements. The channel checkers go out and kick the tires, in the parlance, rather than staying in the office to scan securities filings or call investor relations departments. The idea is to spot a trend before it is widely known.
Money managers — and increasingly, venture-capital and private-equity firms — are turning to independent analysts who can provide such research, hoping for key “data points.” Demand has surged since the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2000 put in place its Regulation Fair Disclosure, which prohibits selective disclosure of material corporate news and led many companies to sharply curtail communications with Wall Street.
“Any Wall Street analyst can build a `discounted cash-flow model’ for valuing stocks, but not many can find massive amounts of raw data and turn that into metrics that can affect a stock’s price,” says Doug Atkin, chief executive of New York-based Majestic Research, a two-year-old independent research firm.
The classic channel checks are conducted on companies with a retail presence — where researchers can walk into stores and talk to employees about the business. While these checks don’t usually generate statistics, they are sometimes the most accurate indicator of a company’s performance.
At the Chuck E. Cheese’s outlets, Mr. Mark says, sentiment from restaurant managers made it clear there would be no upside for the group’s second quarter, and same-store sales would be flat at best. “We didn’t make any prediction or projection per se, but we garnered enough data to know directionally which way the quarter went,” he says. Mr. Mark, formerly director of research at Wells Fargo Securities before starting Farmhouse in 2002, recruits mainly graduate students, M.B.A. degree holders and industry veterans across the country to do his legwork.
Some channel checkers are more sedentary, but still do their jobs differently than their counterparts at the big banks and brokerage firms. They work the phones, but do so to tap into networks of industry contacts, including buyers, suppliers or other middlemen in a subject company’s supply chain. “We trade information with them and promise we won’t quote their names in our reports,” says Jon Gates, director of research of Off The Record Research, a California firm that employs more than 200 “reporters,” channel analysts and data gatherers around the world.
To be sure, channel checks don’t always work, and they are trickier for certain industries with diverse business segments or customer bases, like banks and utilities. And kicking the tires is more accurate than Web surfing, it seems: Earlier this year, an RBC Capital Markets analyst lowered his view on Google Inc. based on channel checks that suggested the Web company’s paid-search business had softened. That wasn’t the case, and the analyst had to revise his forecasts.
“It’s hard to rely solely on channel checks because you can end up with assessments that are way off if you don’t talk to enough people,” says Michael Mayhew, chief executive of Integrity Research Associates, a research consulting and advisory firm in Darien, Conn.
Peter Fenton, chief executive of Detwiler, Mitchell, Fenton & Graves, a technology research provider in Boston, calls channel checks “a piece of the puzzle.” That is why independent researchers often offer only their findings and let the client decide whether to buy or sell the stock, he adds.
There’s Still Time..
Posted on | January 4, 2009 | Comments Off
A reminder to those who haven’t submitted their application forms: There’s still time, but remember that the deadline of January 20 is for applications to be received. So give yourself plenty of time mailing it. The address, by the way, is
Cathy Panagoulias
Deputy Managing Editor
The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281
USA
One Month To Go
Posted on | December 19, 2008 | Comments Off
One more month to go until deadline for the fellowship. Here’s the timeline.
Covering Costs
Posted on | December 17, 2008 | Comments Off
Some of you have asked about what the fellowship covers, and what it doesn’t.
The fellowship will cover costs of two of the three semesters; those who have received the fellowship have found the resources themselves to cover the last semester, and none have regretted it.
But I should add that please don’t not apply because you’re worried about whether and how you might cover the last semester. In some cases we’ve only selected one winner, in which case all three semesters are covered.
If in doubt, apply anyway!
Application Form?
Posted on | December 11, 2008 | Comments Off
Some of you have asked whether there is an application form. There isn’t. All that is needed is listed here, although all applications should be accompanied by a cover letter.