Liberty

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/07/rim-mighty-are-falling/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/business/bing-becomes-a-costly-distraction-for-microsoft-breakingviews.html?_r=1&src=rechp Haven't read it all yet, so not agreeing or disagreeing with it. Just posting because I figure others might be interested.

Q2 numbers are out: http://ir.wrberkley.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=593885

I agree with Dazel. The beauty here is that the Alderon shares and the royalty complement each other. The royalty is worth more because they can push for a more advantageous sale because of their stock. I added to my position this morning :)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-25/research-in-motion-to-cut-10-of-jobs-as-blackberry-loses-share-to-iphone.html

I'm curious to know how many hours per week the people here spend on their investments on average. This can include reading Ks and Qs, financial news, interviews, conf calls, thinking about ideas, polishing investment theses, reading this forum and posting, etc. I'm also curious to know - if you want to share it - what your routine is. Have you developed a particularly effective way to do things? Personally, I'd estimate that for the past 6 months I've probably spent an average of about 25-30 hours/week on my investments. Lots of reading on weekdays between 9 PM and 1 AM, and more on some weekend days. I'm probably not nearly as time-efficient as some investors (Buffett in 1 hour can probably do more than I do in a month), but I'm still learning a lot so I feel the time is well spent. Update: I guess I should have added that this is different for people who manage money for a living than for those who do something else. If you post with more details, please mention if this is your day job or not (I'll add an option to the poll).

Welcome to the forum! Hope you have a pleasant stay :)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-22/obama-says-republicans-walking-away-from-fair-deal-in-debt-ceiling-talks.html

Very interesting. Not sure it'll make money, but the social benefits (if the houses are safe and well made) could be huge.

I hate that my little comment about this has been misunderstood. I'm sure it's my fault and I should have phrased it better. Mea culpa. I only meant that I'm sure that if there were convincing counter-arguments to the main points in my thesis (the kind you read and go "oh, that makes sense, I should probably reconsider my position"), someone would probably have posted them. I haven't seen those so far. There's a lot of small pieces of good news about RIM, but from my point of view, the big forces pressuring the company are still overwhelmingly negative and unlikely to turn positive for a while, and even if that happens it might be too late by then. I could totally be wrong about all this. It's not like I'm shorting RIM or anything (I don't do shorts), so I haven't spent as much time on this as on a stock that I own a position in. I'm just trying to share my thoughts and hopefully they can be useful to some here. Cheers.

Could it be that the CDSes are so expensive because people are fighting the last war? Everybody saw how much money Paulson & co made, so they now jump on CDS contracts as soon as something could be on the horizon? Just guessing.

;D

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14258888

Out of curiosity, how can you predict that it is the bottom or near it just by looking at a graph of past trades? If that actually worked, wouldn't technical analysts be the best-performing investors?

Thanks for posting. This is a good reminder: "Home equity loans enabling owners to drain off any equity in their homes. Fifty years ago these were called second mortgages, and people who had them were considered by their neighbors to be in financial trouble." Crazy how renaming something can totally change how people see it.

I haven't seen any counterpoints to the main ideas in comments like this one:

Not sure if you're addressing this to me, but I didn't say they're dead, just that they seem to be headed for decline and that I'm not quite seeing how they'll be able to reverse it any time soon. I even said earlier today that there might be money to be made in RIM, but that if I was picking a longer term holding, I would stay away from them, however cheap they appear right now.

For some reason there's been a radio silence about WDC in the past few months. We used to hear more about them in the past.. Myth, do you still have your position? Here's their Q4: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wd-announces-q4-revenue-of-24-billion-and-net-income-of-158-million-or-067-per-share-125973023.html

Yeah, sure. I'm not reading that much into it. I'm just saying that publicly sharing your thesis is often a good way to get useful feedback and put your logic to the test. If your stuff is BS, you have a better chance of being called up on it than if you never tell anyone. That's part of the point of a discussion forum.

http://www.gurufocus.com/news/139373/prem-watsa-reduces-holdings-in-sandridge-energy

I'm not using that to make investment decisions. In fact, I had already bought GOOG at 482 when I was having those discussions. But isn't it strange that the people discussing a topic will write many long posts, and then I write mine, and then it stops or it continues without a direct reply to my arguments? I don't take that as confirmation of my thesis, but I would take strong counter arguments as a sign to re-evaluate it, and so far I haven't really seen those strong arguments. So it's like sending something for peer review and the reviewers don't point out any major flaws (and you know they would, even if it was just in a one-liner). It doesn't mean you're right, but it reduces the chances you're wrong IMO. There are many things that aren't in my circle of competence, and I try to learn from others about those. This board has so many smart people, I've learned a lot. But I consider this area of tech part of what I know, so I'm more ready to share my thoughts.

To be clear, I'm not saying there's no money to be made on RIM. It's entirely possible that the market will oversell it and that on some future good news the stock will rise enough to provide a nice trading profit. Or maybe there's some way to play it with options (I don't know much about that). But I'm more of a buy & hold guy. I only buy stuff I'm comfortable holding for at least 3-5 years, and when I sell it's usually because I find something else that is better/cheaper. I don't think RIM is positioned to be either a short-term or a long-term winner. They could still be a decently profitable second-tier player, though. We'll see.

I don't know, I think people tend to lose perspective about RIM and grab onto any small bit of good news and forget the big picture. Also, every time I end up explaining my positions in details about this market (about RIM, GOOG, MSFT), people tend not to reply to the main points of my thesis, which I take as a good sign that they're not finding obvious flaws in the logic. I'm sure that if they found counter-arguments they would be more than happy to share them.

It's certainly good for them, but Apple and Google can get it later, and in the meantime they can grow in lots of other places. It's not like it provides a very deep moat..

Good for them. Now let's see if it results in orders and cash flow.