Liberty

Good numbers. Stock down -0.79 right now though.

I think that was a smart move by RIM because the alternative of not offering it was worse, but it's also a confirmation of Android's platform's position. Some problems with it are that they might have trouble making all the apps run well, unless they keep their hardware very close to Android phones. But following someone else's technical path can be limiting for a hardware maker like RIM. There can also be software problems; the Android apps' will use android UI metaphors, and that will clash with BB UI guidelines, making the apps often feel non-native. They can also be slower if they need to run software emulation, and there's always the possibility that the Android ecosystem will go in one direction hardware-wise and RIM will go in another, making it harder for some apps to run well. The Android-branded store will also serve as a nice Android advertisement to BB users. So it was a good move because they knew they couldn't create their own competitive app store, but it was a defensive move, not actually an offensive one. IMHO.

And it's not like the kind of default that is on the table right now would reduce debt obligations. The US would still pay its debts in most likely scenarios, but only after creating a crisis of confidence among its debtors. How is that good, I'm not sure...

Argentina or Greece defaulting isn't quite the same as the US defaulting, though, is it? When you're at the bottom and a relatively small economy, you can't go much lower, but when you're AAA and the biggest economy in the world, you have much more to lose and there's going to be a lot more uncertainty about how market will take it.

I hope I'm wrong about RIM, because I own some Fairfax, and Fairfax owns some RIM. But... People need to understand that by its very nature, a phone isn't just an enterprise product. It's always going to be at least an enterprise-consumer hybrid, because you don't leave your phone at work, you're expected to carry it with you, and nobody wants two phones (with having to duplicate contact lists, music, photos, bookmarks, apps (if possible), learn two user interfaces, etc). So what consumers prefer means something, especially since executives and IT people also have personal preferences and tend to push for those. There's a lot of inertia in the system, but what matters is directionality. It's orders of magnitude easier for Apple and Google to make enterprise management tools than for RIM to build a competing phone(s)+OS+developer network and get the user marketshare and mindshare. If RIM's strategy is for Google and Apple not to have enough engineering talent to build enterprise tools, it's pretty weak. Especially when there's an existing model that they can use as template to improve upon... RIM's new OS comes out next year. Let's say there's no delays and it comes out in the middle of 2012 rather than at the end. There's going to be about a million Android and iOS devices activated each day until then. Almost 400 million new Droids and iOSes, maybe more, with tens of thousands of brand new apps/games/tools... and those are moving targets that will have probably have improved significantly in a year (software and hardware). So a lot could happen between now and then, but just looking at what we know now, I don't put great faith in RIM's ability to catch up, and even less with its ability to leapfrog Google and Apple. On the other hand, I think Apple and Google are very capable of bridging the feature gap of whatever remains that RIM does and they don't do, and to keep improving their respective platforms very fast. If we were talking about mainframe computers in the 1970s, what the consumer thinks wouldn't matter. But phones are consumer products first and enterprise tools second...

Up 6% so far today. Mr. Market seems to like the earnings ;D

Thanks for sharing your experience. I think it probably depends a lot of how much you care about resolution/sound quality, and how much you've invested in a home theater setup. I know people who are the exact opposite and pretty much stream everything, and can't wait for the selection there to get better so they can drop DVDs altogether.

I'm 100% invested right now, and plowing new cash in as it comes in because there are at least 3 businesses that I like that are cheap (two of them being really cheap). I have no idea where macro will go, what matters to me is that whatever I'm buying is cheap and has good downside protection. Right now I feel more scared of letting some fat pitches pass and missing good opportunities than of seeing my portfolio go down for a while (I'm not planning to sell anytime soon, and most of the corps I invest in have little debt and have shown that they allocates capital very well in downturns, so they should come out strong on the other side).

They're out, and they're beautiful: http://www.rlicorp.com/RLINews/2011pdf/2Q11ER.pdf Combined ratio of 65% :o

Thanks for posting, I just watched it and it's a pretty good overview.

Harry, I know you like answering questions with questions, and sometimes that's very good to encourage people to do their homework.. But I'd love to hear your current thinking on RLI. Still like them as much as ever? I'm also curious to know if you've looked at WRB. Not quite as good CR as RLI, but they seem to be excellent defensive players and very good at springing into action when a hard market comes.

Out of curiosity, why is something like 6-7 bucks per month that big of a deal? Isn't the value provided by Netflix much more than that? I've heard many people threaten to cancel because of it, but I'm having trouble understanding why. I'm not a netflix subscriber, but if I was, the difference between 10 and 16$ for unlimited movies and TV series doesn't seem like that big a deal. I'm sure Reeds bundled stream for free with the other subscriptions to help it catch on (a kind of risk free trial -- or as drugs dealers say, the first hit is free but once you're hooked...) and because there were no doubt higher margins in streaming than in shipping DVDs, but I never though that it would stay "free" forever, especially as more people use it and they start paying more for content. The recent price increase is big as a %, but the total amounts are still pretty small compared to the value provided (rent all those movies and TV series separately and see how much it costs).

When you compare their combined ratios, what have you found? ;) Based on the ratios here: http://www.investis.com/lre_group/presentations/2011/q1_2011_investor_presentation1.pdf and here: http://www.rlicorp.com/AR2010/2010_11yrdata.pdf It seems like LRE has better CR than RLI, though they have a much shorter track record and aren't quite in the same sector, so their results could be lumpier over time and average out to something that is harder to predict.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/second-rim-executive-moves-to-samsung/article2103690/

I think Warren's point is that it doesn't make sense to threaten not to pay your bills and default every time there's an internal debate about the proper level of spending. Can you imagine if every country did things like that, potentially defaulting every time politicians are split?

From the FTP Stockhouse board: Not the smoking gun, but a good sign.

I think the most important insight is what this tells us about the commercial culture in China. That someone with enough resources to do this thought this was a good idea... Wow.

Walter Isaacson (a great biographer! but he doesn't get to say much here because Summers is a talking-machine) interviews Larry Summers: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/19/brainstorm-tech-video-larry-summers-transcript/

Ha! I'm exactly the same. Time to send a suggestion email to the Google guys..

Yahoo Finance is buggy. I trust Google Finance much more. I like the "key statistics" page on Yahoo finance, but for everything else I prefer Google Finance.

You see it down? I see it up 5.7% on Google Finance.

Very impressive indeed: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/07/19/apple-earnings-a-big-beat/?mod=e2tw

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59335.html

MSFT apparently dropping out of Hulu bidding: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-19/microsoft-is-said-to-drop-out-of-auction-for-hulu-online-streaming-service.html

Very smart of AAPL if true: http://alexblom.com/blog/2011/07/forget-acquisitions-apple-control-the-supply-lines/