It is frustrating working around foreign data protection systems on the internet, or dealing with lousy web or telephone connectivity when traveling. In Paris I used Skype but it was leaky with phishing and spam aimed at British anglophone retirees with French email, poor dears.

In London, where I have a BT system, Skype was blocked to stop competition. Telephoning to my broker turned out to be costly as E-trade has closed its European toll-free numbers. I had to phone to convert my Marine Harvest ordinaries to ADRs which were listed on the NYSE during my journey; and I was charged $40 in fees plus the costs of phoning. The broker required a voice order for the conversion, not accepted anything via the supposedly secure website communication system. You get what you pay for, folks.

I returned to the land of the free (or toll-free) with lots of ideas to follow up on, about everything from buying foreign fracking stocks to playing the official support of Chinese shopping therapy. I interviewed fund managers and picked their brains, but I have to back up their ideas with solid research. For whatever it is worth, I have more ideas for 3rd world countries than for Britain or France, which says something about the national mood in those places.

Reader JS discovered what I could not, that L'Occitane (in some ways a Chinese shopping therapy stock) is quoted on the pink sheets here as well as in Hong Kong. It did not show up at my brokers' or yahoo finance.

JS wonders if he should buy on the pinks; I have no idea what the liquidity might be vs the Hong Kong shares of the Luxembourg-based firm. I will follow up when I have a moment but it looks like the ADR, LCCTF, is inactive and trades at US$2.04. I bought in Hong Kong at HK$15.48 as HK:0973 but I haven't added it the charts lest it turns out there is a decent ADR we should have bought instead. The main reason I went for HK is that there is relatively no exchange risk there, with their dollar pegged to ours. Thanks JR!

There may be other HK shares coming among the tips I picked up. The first, which I will try to work up this week, is Anton Oilfield Services, ATONY on the pink sheets, an unsponsored ADR whose ordinaries trade in Hong Kong too. It is headquartered in Beijing and also operates in the Middle East but run out of Hong Kong. It is a private company, not a state sector behemoth but it is doing the bidding of Beijing and has no alternative if it wants to stay in business.

It is paying 1.11% in dividends but allegedly losing money according to E-trade. You don't want to believe E-trade. Each ADR equals 200 Hong Kong shares so it is hefty in price and of course with no alleged earnings, it would have an infinite PE ratio according to E-trade. But I know better.

When unsponsored ADRs trade, brokerages have to deposit shares with depositary banks, in this case Deutsche Bank, Citi, or BNY Mellon, and collect a rebate on trading from the depositaries. You should know that is an argument for the underlying security on the foreign market where institutional investors are more likely to be active. The rebate is NOT passed on to the brokerage customer.

Nor does E-trade feel any obligation to provide current data on the share of the ADR despite the goodies it gets. I am not sure if other brokers behave better.

I prefer to buy Anton in Hong Kong, to not pay $135/sh for a round lot, too big a chunk of my portfolio. And I want data; I don't want empty slots with no current quarterlies, as with E-trade.

Anton trades in Hong Kong as 3337 for HK$5.19/sh. Its forward p/e ratio is 22.5 because unlike the ADR the Hong Kong shares are shown by Dow Jones as having reported a profitable quarter ending Oct 31, 2013. It does business in Renminbi but the stock trades in HK$ linked to our greenback.

This is information you often cannot access from an E-trade brokerage account. That is disgraceful but at least they let you trade directly in HK.

In case you were wondering, Anton is buddies with Schlumberger which is a 20% shareholder in 3337. It also invested in Antonoil which does integrated project management onshore in Chinese oil and gas well development. Anton divides analysts with sell-side CLSA putting it in the dogpound with a sell but my buy-side source (and Sun Hung Kai) calling it a buy.

Comments welcome particularly from the Asia-hand subscribers who contacted me while I was in London with news about South Korea and Japan (via Singapore). "Should we buy in Hong Kong or the USA? Do we listen to CLSA or Sun Hung Kai? Do we listen to the sell side or the buy side? What do we do about China in general?"