Fulton Associates

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Getting RIMMed!

OK, I have to admit RIM was a bad call. I thought 2nd place in a growing smartphone market would be good enough (you know, the rising tides BS) but I totally missed the strength of Android phones and the lack of RIM's nimbleness. The smart phone game has moved from form factor (touchscreen vs keyboard) to apps and RIM is losing badly, or more accurately, lost. Iphone has 250,000 apps (billions of downloads), Android has about 100,000 apps; RIM has 1000.

I suppose they could solidify their corporate and government base. Oh wait, all the banana republics want access to RIM's network for "national intelligence". Sadly, what was once a RIM strength, their massive proprietary network, has turned against them. I suspect Hilary Clinton siding with RIM gives us a clue as to what's going on. They probably gave the CIA access to their networks, so now all gov'ts want the same access. These are poor management decisions, not just unfortunate circumstances.

But the good news is that all the bad news seems to be baked in, and there could be a short squeeze in the near future. I suggest we dump this dog at that time.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

We should rename as Lethargic Associates

I'm afraid I don't have many good ideas this summer. But this one came about by accident. I was checking Telus in NYSE is trading at $38.50 while on TSX it's at $42.00. The exchange is $.97 so doesn't that represent an arbitrage opportunity?
Please let me know if I'm missing something.