Liberty

It's not a bad decision per se, but I don't think it can be spun as a victory. Plan A was definitely to stay a dominant hardware maker and to only provide software & services for that platform to lock people in and give one more reason to pick RIM over competitors. That didn't work out so well, so now Plan B seems to be to support other devices. I'm sure there's a market there, but without total control of the hardware platform, the moat will be a lot smaller, and this means that there's now fewer reasons to buy RIM hardware. One possible scenario is for the company to shrink a lot and turn into a small software/service player, probably acquired by someone else. But I doubt, even in that form, that they could compete with the big integrated hardware+software makers because they can easily be undercut (if Google or Apple packages in RIM-like features for free into their devices, they'll still make money on the hardware and other services, but RIM will be screwed).

Thanks, jjsto. By "how recommended", I meant, "would you guys recommend it?" :)

I had a chance to play with a Playbook recently. A friend of mine who's a software engineer was given one at a conference (for free! Guess it's a way to go through inventory). He wasn't impressed and I wasn't either. It takes forever to cold boot, and feels surprisingly thick in your hand even though it's smaller than the iPad. OS looks decent, but lack of native apps is a problem.

How recommended is his book (Applied Value Investing)? Can anyone comment on the content and how valuable his insights are? Thanks.

Here's what I had originally before he posted his archive: http://i.imgur.com/SZJnl.png

Interesting stuff. And I like how it's the raw transcript. Where did you find it?

I agree, but I prefer a ridiculous steal ;)

It was up almost 5% at one point. Could be the beginning of a short squeeze, but we'll have to wait and see. Things seem to have gotten more positive on the secondary market after their recent acquisition. Personally, I would have liked it if the share price had stayed depressed longer so they could keep buying back at ridiculously low prices. Maybe year-end tax loss selling will bring it back down and offer the opportunity to mop up more shares...

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/11/rim-to-offer-its-mobile-device-management-software-on-andriod-ios.ars

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20111129080612204

Any idea how much of the company is held by insiders?

Some of the Gannon on Investing podcasts can be found by looking at his site through the Archive.org wayback machine.

http://www.gannononinvesting.com/blog/investor-questions-podcast-episodes.html I've asked Geoff (and I'm sure others have too) to compile his old podcast in one place because I'm pretty sure that some episodes were not available anywhere anymore. For those who don't know him, the style is a bit dry and he puts a bunch of announcements at the beginning of the episodes rather than at the end (so it slows things down -- feel free to skip ahead), but the content is IMHO very good. Lots of value investing basic principles, nothing super advanced, but the most important things in investing are simple. update: I've just realized that those are not all of the original Gannon on Investing podcasts (I think), so that means that those are more answers to reader questions rather than the more general "investing basics" GOI podcasts. They should still be interesting, though..

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20111128-711394.html

I'm having trouble seeing the logic here. Many devices that are running Android would probably be iPhones if Android didn't exist. To say that this doesn't matter to Apple is nonsense. Of course they make a lot more money per phone than anyone, so even with a small market share they can have a large fraction of the profits (they're kind of like luxury car makers), but they'd do even better with a larger market share, no doubt about it. As for Google, they probably make about as much from each iPhone as from each Android phone, so the equation is different. A lot of the value that Android has for Google is defensive; they'd rather have all this influence on the smartphone market rather than let Apple and Microsoft take it all and leave them at their mercy. I'm sure Android will be monetized better over time as mobile advertising technologies become better and more advertisers become familiar with geo-targeting and such, but these technologies will no doubt also run on non-android phones since google is the 800lbs gorilla of online advertising.

All right, I've finished it. Worth reading, IMO. The library version didn't have the extra chapters from the 2010 version. Are those available anywhere online? Can anyone give a brief summary of what they contain? Should I track down a more recent version of the book or they not worth the trouble? Thanks.

Awesome. First Klarman and now this! Thanks for posting!

Still reading this, about 4/5 into it. I got to the part about Pat Byrne's crazy conference call. Do people around here really own Overstock? After that performance (if it really was as described by Einhorn, and he does quote a lot of it verbatim), I'd stay very far away from any business that he's in charge of. I really hope he has other good qualities, because a public conspiracy-theories-paranoid-rant-with-made-up-stuff is enough to put someone off my list of people I would trust with my hard-earned capital...

Thanks, very interesting!

Could you elaborate a bit on why you think TD is different? It's not a sector I know much about, but I'm always trying to learn :)

It would be entirely dependent on what they decide to add. The question is more: Is management capable of recognizing good businesses with durable competitive advantages and acquiring them at good prices. Most managements can't do that, and so it ends up being diworsification. It's the difference between Buffett adding varied businesses to Berkshire, and Coca-Cola going into the movie business or whatever they did back in the day...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-24/s-p-says-may-be-right-it-s-closer-to-japan-downgrade-as-finances-worsen.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-23/china-central-bank-lowers-reserve-ratio-for-some-banks-by-50-basis-points.html

Excellent, thank you! I also loved the podcast about Henry Singleton from a while back.

I'm just curious to know what's the size of the companies most of us are investing in. There seems to be lots of discussion about large caps lately, but I don't know if it's representative. Not that there aren't great deals to be had all over the size continuum, but I'm still curious. I'll start: 100% of what I own is sub-1-billion in market cap. In fact, 2/3 of those are sub-500m in mkt cap. What about you? What's your ratio between small-mid-large? Edit: I expect most people to have all kinds, but if you could provide a rough ratio, that would satiate my curiosity better than "all over the place". Thanks :)