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      02-10-2013, 11:24 AM   #1246
mact3333
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Quote:
Originally Posted by r0wr View Post
I've been cashing in on AAPL since it's low on the 5th. I hadn't even looked at this thread until recent. I'm glad you were on the same side. I agree that AAPL will have a pull back here and I also agree that we are due for a sizeable correction as well but I'm long some AAPL calls for next week for the hell of it.

Here are a couple of my last transactions. It's not showing my call options I bought on the 5th but I've made over 20k this week just on AAPL calls.


I like your analysis on BBRY but I'm still a little skeptical. I don't see too much upside nor do I see too much risk. If I wanted a slow play, I'd go with QCOM.


I dont love BBRY for the long run(i.e.-many yrs), I do like it for a IT trade(months to a year)...here are few excerpts from Seeking Alpha article that describes how I feel about this trade...its the 80M subscribers that will drive this stock as many of them will want to finally upgrade to a real smartphone even if it isnt any better than a iphone or android.

BTW, great trades on AAPL...20K, very nicely done.




79 Million Subscribers, A Solid Start

As I said above, I like BlackBerry (although confession: I've never owned a BlackBerry device), and it appears that a good number of other BlackBerry "die hards" do, too. In the most recent quarter, BlackBerry reported that it had 79 million subscribers. These folks stuck around, even as BlackBerry still had not put out anything interesting, so it's hard to imagine that they won't be able to find a BlackBerry 10-based phone that they would like to upgrade to.

Unlike Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Phone which, while I think is great, hasn't ever been popular, BlackBerry has a solid base of users that it can draw on to get the ball rolling. This is a very key advantage that, quite frankly, is worth a lot more than some of the BlackBerry bears seem to think.

Some People Just Like "New" Things

Let's face it: the iPhone is old hat, the Galaxy-Whatever's are still "cool" but are probably going to eventually be comically large, and the other vendors such as Motorola, Lenovo, and HTC put out good stuff but aren't exactly the flashiest names on the market (they will sell well, though). People are intrigued, excited, and attracted to "new" and "different" things. Right now, BlackBerry 10 is as "new" as it gets.

While the company has the plain vanillia-iPhone-clone that I showed above to please the folks who want something like an iPhone but not quite, it will also sell a successor to the traditional BlackBerry with the QWERTY keyboard:

(click to enlarge)

Quite frankly, I'm surprised that nobody else has actually tried to make a BlackBerry "successor" with the physical QWERTY keyboard. While everybody else was furiously copying Apple, this has led to a basically homogeneous landscape when it comes to input (although Swype is a very useful feature for Android phones that iOS doesn't have). Nobody (but apparently BlackBerry) seemed to think that the precision afforded by physical keyboards -- at least for some people -- could actually a huge differentiator.

But There Are Huge Risks...

The most obvious risk is that people may simply be "burned out" on the BlackBerry name. It was once a symbol of "cool", "bleeding edge", and "Barack Obama has one". Apple has had the spotlight, but that's fading too. There's also a very real risk that, as I suspect is the long-term endgame, that phones become just like PCs, toasters, refrigerators, and washing machines -- a tool that isn't particularly exciting and that people buy for as cheaply as possible. The BlackBerry 10 may very well emerge to be a tool that a nontrivial portion of the world's population want to use, but it will always be subject to fierce competition from other players.

In the long run, smartphones will be marginally profitable, and BlackBerry will need to ship high volumes in order to keep the lights on. Companies with other sources of income, such as Google/Motorola, Samsung (SSNLF.PK), Lenovo (LNVGY.PK), and even Sony (SNE) are the most protected from the fickle whims of the consumer.

So here's what I suggest doing...

The Trading Plan

You want to play the BlackBerry success story? I suspect that initial sales will be good, and I think that there will be additional momentum as the phone launches elsewhere in the world. The odds are, you will make money on this trade, especially if you can buy shares on a day when someone releases some "bad news" about BlackBerry 10. But the key is to not get greedy. Once BlackBerry starts reporting nice Y/Y revenue increases and strong profitability, scale out of the position. This growth will be, as it almost always is, ephemeral. However, that won't stop shares from entering a "hype bubble" as it did in the past, and it will ultimately allow you to profit (assuming BB10 actually sees initial popularity).

Don't get greedy, and don't fall into the "fear of missing out" trap. If you make money off of the hype that is being built here, then don't risk your gains by trying to catch that last drop. It's just not worth it.

Conclusion

I think BlackBerry 10 will see initial success, and I think the stock could go up 50-100% from here as the positives keep rolling in. But keep in mind that, despite the brand and the features, at the end of the day, smartphones are a commodity and it will be an eventual race to the bottom. Sell shares gradually into strength and don't get caught holding the bag when/if this stock goes exponential and then crashes again. Too many paper fortunes have been erased by real greed.

Additional disclosure: The AAPL position is a short term trade that I plan to exit opportunistically. I may initiate a position in LNVGY.PK at any time.

Last edited by mact3333; 02-10-2013 at 11:46 AM..
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