Research in Motion (RIMM) – 09-25-2009
RIMM has been under attack from AAPL, GOOG, MSFT, and PALM in the smartphone market and it’s finally starting to show in their numbers. Their days of complete domination appear to be over, so now they need to come up with a way to keep their current user base or expand the market. Fortunately for them, the market is rapidly expanding, but they can’t afford to rest on their laurels or they’ll end up needing a huge comeback like AAPL in 2000 (completed successfully) or PALM right now (TBD).
The volume of the drop today outpaced the breakout that brought us here, so it will be interesting to see what happens. If the market follows through with its correction, RIMM may be a nice short play. If not, it should at least be interesting to day trade on some bounce back days. Either way, all of these stocks are interesting to watch if you like tech stuff for the long run too.
Stock Market Analysis – 07-29-2009
The market’s been resilient, holding its gains fairly well despite some turbulence. The big news of the day was MSFT making a deal with YHOO to serve their search results. It’s funny how not that long ago MSFT wanted to buy YHOO to strengthen their position in search, but they showed that there’s still enough talent in Redmond to be competitive. We’ll have to see how this partnership works out.
Stock Market Analysis – 07-23-2009
A strong price move with decent volume is bullish, but it definitely wasn’t breakout level volume. MSFT announced a weak quarter after the close though, so what the techs do tomorrow will be telling. MSFT is currently down almost 7% in the afterhours, and other techs are down in sympathy too. INTC is down a couple percent right now, even though they just had a breakout on a great earnings call a couple weeks ago. Expect the chances of a follow through day tomorrow to be a bit less than normal given the circumstances.
Palm Inc. (PALM) – 06-19-2009
The first stock screen beginning investors implicitly learn is to think about the products and services they really like in their lives and look up whether the companies are public. Palm happens to be one of those companies for me now after spending some time with a Palm Pre. If you want a phone that lets you play games and listen to music, the iPhone is probably the only thing you should be looking at. However, if you’re like me and you want something as a personal organizer, email, messaging, web browser, etc. device, I don’t see how you could live without the multitasking Palm Pre.
I know I’m abnormal, but I always have at least a few different web pages loading and a couple conversations going on at the same time, which the Pre allows me to do seamlessly. Surfing the internet on the iPhone feels like going back to pre tabbed browser days. Is the Pre going to take over the smartphone market? Probably not — at least not in the immediate future. As much as the AAPL fanboys will hate me making this comparison, the iPhone is essentially the Windows of cell phones, and the Pre is a little mix of Ubuntu and OS X. Each have their technical advantages and disadvantages, but if you aren’t leaps and bounds above the competition it’s tough getting people to switch, as Apple has found out in their PC war. Fortunately for Palm, the turn over on phones is a lot quicker than on computers.
If Apple decides to stay AT&T exclusive, look for this race to get a lot closer much quicker. Also, pay attention to GOOG’s big surge of Android phones coming later this year, MSFT’s WinMo 7, and RIMM who’s starting to become a bit of a dark horse after dominating the market for so long. Of these companies, as a trader I would selfishly prefer that PALM or RIMM win the war, since dominating the mobile phone market would make a much smaller impact percentagewise to the bottom lines of any of the other gorillas. Other companies that are interesting are ARM and Imagination Technologies, since they make the chips that all of the phones are using right now, so any expansion of the market would be good for them. However, they’re both on the London exchange (ARM has an ADR under ARMH though). Expect more posts on the subject in the future…
Stock Market Analysis – 10-16-2008
A late market rally sent the markets soaring. There was solid volume today, but the NYSE ended with slightly more down volume still (46% up vs 50% down). However, the Nasdaq was overwhelmingly up (87% up vs 13% down) as Ballmer sparked the YHOO merger rumors again, only to have MSFT issue an official statement that they have no interest in YHOO. After the market close GOOG also delivered an unexpectedly good earnings report that sent the stock up 10% after hours. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the bounce follow through tomorrow to close out the week, but once again, don’t expect it to last very long. Will it be enough to get another good short opportunity?
Stock Market Analysis – 07-18-2008
Friday was a day where the indexes greatly diverged. Led by GOOG and MSFT, techs tumbled across the board taking the Nasdaq down while the S&P 500 and Dow were mainly unphased. We’ve surpassed one of the lower highs, but we’ll have to start setting higher lows for it to mean anything. That means I’m ready to short on the next downswing, but a quick bounce before 125 will be the signal to wait longer.