Uccmal

Looks like they might take it private.

Anyone understand how these work?

So, can someone walk me through an example of how these work for FFH?

Nor do I. Strikes me the overhang is more from possible EU exposures now, rather than mortgage liability. All banks are trading down on perception, rather than reality. Litigation can be spread over years if one chooses to fight it, rather than settle. They have converted a couple of billion of tier 2 to teir one common this past week in private deals with Institutions. They have sold most of CCB for cash which removes most direct China property exposure. Not a fan of headcount reductions having been victim to them but that has been ongoing and will reduce non-interest expense. The recent spate of equity and bond issuances should bode well for ML - social media ipos come to mind. Must say I like investing alongside BB rather than with him. He bought at double my average prices.

Biaggio, maybe you sold your losers, because they were losers? That is what I normally do. A better measure would be to estimate the success rate off all of the investments excluding time held, or better yet, total returns. There is ,ore than one way to skin a cat. On topic, I saw that John Paulson has added to his Bac position as well during q3. The really exciting thing for me is that all of them paid much more than I did, especially Berkowitz.

You mean the service that crashes for days on end? Yeah, people love that. That sort of proves my point. Power goes out everywhere in the world from time to time and people dont go apoplectic. The reason it gets front page news is because rimm has been so integral to government and business development. You aren't going to hear about Apple or Android secure systems crashing because they dont exist. People who need to 99.99%assurance of uptime use other systems anyway and always have (military comes to mind).

Well, i'll decline on commenting on anything related to rim directly, since I presented a thesis on part of the mobile busines that might be a moat using rim as an example. Obviously, i cannot predict Apple's decline except that their closed style of operating will turn people off. They aren't exactly growing market share on a wolrdwide basis. The commodity side of the business is eroding that side at the moment as evidenced by the thread title. I dont know if they are entering new businesses. However, they have lost their guiding light, and whatever plans he had in place will be over ruled within a short time period. At the same time they are building the digital wallet, the Icloud, sIri referrals they are competing with everyone else who is doing the same. Rimm is further advanced in the nfc wallet. They have nfc in place on new devices, and systems in place with Visa, Mastercard, and are working with Assa Abloy on entrance secuirty technology. The Icloud is only conceptual and The competition is brutal with Google, Amazon, and others certainly in the running. I will give you that the OS side for PCs has not been commoditized. I would suggest, however that Apple is way behind android now. And android is nearly a commodity. Google makes moeny from the licensing but no where near what msft made on Dos/windows. When/ if Google brings out their own hardware that may kill the Android business overnight. Other device makers may well evacuate the android system at that point. Their are other operating systems with wide usage right now that are as nearly as widely used as Windows so I dont buy the one player argument. An Oligopoly such as what exists right now is a more likely result. Rimm's advantages versus apple. Apple doesn't posses a secure system at the moment. Rimm does. You dont see governments going after Apple to provide access to their system because there is no system. Right now anyone can access the networks that apple or android or msft operate on so you dont need to negotiate to gain access. Newscorps recent phone jacking scandal is a prime example. Re:apple's margins versus rimm. We are talking apples and oranges with that (sorry). Apple is getting away with high margins because they can, Right now. It wont last. Suppliers and carriers will push back the very moment they see weakness in the apple innovation machine, and margins will disappear. There are arrogant to assume that companies like Sprint will always be begging for their devices and will get punished very badly for that one day. Apple has been down this exact road before. In the meantime, rimm will still be getting the same margins from providing security to business and Governments worldwide. Finally, to be fair Rimm should jettison the hardware business and allow carriers to run any device on their server system for a fair price. Either way, setting up a system like rimms would cost a huge amount some of which will be going to rimm as licensing fees. In summary, all this makes for good intellectual fodder but as a value investor I wouldn't bet big on any outcome.

19 feet lol.

Without getting into specific OSs. Can any of us tell what the consumer is going to like or want two years out. In 2005 the Iphone did not exist. Andriod did not exist. So not only are you dealing with a rapidly changing environment technologically but you also have consumer fickleness. GM was dead, rexcept now they are the worlds biggest seller of cars. Apple without Jobs has lost the only edge it had, regardless of the 'culture' he put in place to succeed. Infighting will start, key people will exit to go on their own, and the consumer will move onto the next latest and greatest. The company likely stay profitable for years while something else becomes the latest and greatest. I think the OS and device business is destined to be commoditized faster than the PC business ever was. In two to three years every seller will have accurate voice activation, full music capability, full 4g or 5g data ability etc. Essentially the world at your finger tips. For 75$. I will feel like a numbskull for paying so much for this Ipad. The future will lie in the service side of the business. Who can provide a certainportion of their users with a safe, hack free, virus free, private, secure service. So far, not Samsung, Google, Nokia, or Windows, or Apple. The safest mobile data transmission so far is provided by Rim. So, to remain relevant device providers will need to duplicate or buy rimm's enterprise service. Unfortunately, a whole hell of alot of Rim's service is patent protected.

SD, Is it alot better than Black Swan. Black Swan was barely readable. Also, anyony read Andrew Ross Sorkin... Toobig too fail. I skimmed it into the first chapter and it seems worth reading.

A_Hamilton, what is the totalreturn swap you are talking about Average purchase price on rimm to be closer to 40. I am thinking the holdings in Rim and A are probably under reported. The 13 F only deals with buys and sells by US subs. Canadian subs may hold another 2-3 million shares of RIM that are not required to report.

I am enjoying the book. I am up to the point where Jobs gets ousted. He's 30 years old and has built the company from nothing over a ten year period to that point. To a degree he seems to recognize some of his blind spots, which is why they hired in an outside CEO. I dont think sociopaths can do that. To motivate others you need to be in tune with how they think and feel. He dounds like he is a bit bipolar, or just very moody. The stress of running a large and growing company treading on the edge of bureaucracy had to have been huge. It must be huge for anyone. The way he treated Daniel Kottke is poor but Kottke stayed and took it. A man with such obvious experience and skill could have gone anywhere else at the time. He sounds like alot of young men I knew back at that age including myself. Self centered in the extreme. Unlike him Most have checks and balances put on them by society such as having to earn a paycheck. Had I been a multimillionaire in my early 20's I would have been insufferable. You see alot of Jobs' behaviour with wildly successful musicians or Actors. I could list dozens of Prima Donna's but you all know who I mean. "were an American band, were coming to your town, were goin to party it down" sort of sums it up.

I think part of my problem is that this company has always looked like a good deal and has never actually been a good deal. It has for the six years that I have known it been a brutal value trap. I got out of the last round with my skin intact. On the opposite side of the equation is cfx which I have easily tripled my money on over 2.5 years, distributions included. We are in an apparent down cycle in pulp. CFX and MERc are insulated right now. I dont have the same confidence with fbk. If I am wrong I am wrong, so be it. As per Greenblatt's supposed returns. He made them using Leaps, and other options, not holding the likes of fbk. I bought BBY leaps when the stock was around 24 a few weeks ago and have done very well, and expect to make at least a 5x return on those. FBK (may) give me return of 2.5 x max over 3 years.

Either/or, probably need some Black Liquor, or nat. Gas to keep wood burning. Fbk is not cheap enough for me. Would but below 0.40, perhaps. Have been buying cfx, since it pays the 14%dividend. Market is probably pricing a 40% cut which should be the maximum. Merc looking better than fbk as well.

So, is that a good or bad price? I have been buying 2014 $10 at about 1.20.

All good points, thanks. Kraven, no argument here and it certainly sounds like Vinod agrees. I am Starting to dig at Jpm. Have enough exposure to Wfc and Bac.

It looks as though these banks are going to be made part of SIFI - considered to big to fail. If it comes to passing as written they will be required to have 2.5% more tangible equity to assets on their balance sheet, than average banks. This is in the distance time wise but there is an assumption in the market place that these banks will experience lower returns as a result. Now this is obviously logical since they have less leverage to use. My thoughts around this whole game are that these banks and their 20 or so peers in SIFI have enormous negotiating power. The assumption seems to that they will have lower returns. I am not sure this is the case. Having to hold that amount of equity may come with payoffs from repective governme ts to make up for the losses from reduced leverage. I am willing to bet that when push comes to shove there will be other ways that governments assist these banks in making up the shortfall. Thoughts?

An aside to the lawsuit topic. Although i dont like to admit it, I was shareholder of Washington Mutual just before it went down in fall of 2008. I just got paperwork the other day for the shareholder lawsuit against WM - 3 years. So any lawsuits against Bac for the ML deal will take years to work out. I am not thinking that moynihan will settle these ones unless he gets away with only a few cents on the dollar. I say he fights. Since every large company is endlessly in one lawsuit or another it will just be a normal cost od doing business. Kill all the lawyers.... Cept: txlaw

DCG, I think the comparison is quite apt, except that Msft had a far greater competitive advantage then, than Aapl has now. As to different industries Aapl operates in one industry which is consumer discretionary. That basically eliminates any margin of safety. Not saying Aapl would go out of business, just that there is no moat, of any type at all. Any one or all of their enterprises could shrink dramatically at any time. Msft had ongoing licence revenue that was far more sustainable than Itunes, Iphone, or Imac. A.

Anyone on this board recall Windows 95. Gates came to Toronto and did a huge press event rolling a gigantic banner down the CN Tower. It was actually in 96 because there had been so many delays. People lined up to buy cdroms worldwide. Remind you of any company. Msft stock went from 8 to 55 momentarily giving it the biggest market cap in the world at around 550 b. Now its in the mid twenties. Msft has only maintained and grown because it is in the stickier world of business. Aapl sells products which are totally discretionary. What Aapl will see in the next few years is: Supplier push back Competion increasing in every market Massive hits to profit margins Movement away from their products due to fickle consumers faddish behaviour The last item is probably of most concern. Investing in Aapl right now is totally predicated on them being able to continuously out predict the competition, maintain brutal relationships with suppliers, and stay as a fad. Even the Itunes store has competition coming from every direction. The first misstep on their part where they hang a supplier with unsold parts will kill that side of the business. Any slippage in earnings will force the compant to institute a dividend. I know I will get flamed for this but there is no margin of safety with Aapl at this price. Sent from mt Ipad that I love!

Nice work Eric.... Lawsuits are nearly always far larger than settlements. This seems pretty far fetched. They have to prove knowing negligence. Given what I have read about Lewis a case could be made for incompetence on the part of Bac rather than deliberate misleading. But then what do I know. US litigation practices always baffle me.

Its pretty minor as dilutions go. The stock fluctuates more than that every day. Twacowcfa, are you thinking class action?

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/70858/000119312510044940/d424b7.htm I am not totally clear on the effect of minor stock issuance. Give it a read.

RImm and Mastercard have launched nearfield payments as of a couple of weeks ago.

Finally, the got the damn power project in motion. I am not buying any yet, even though I am impressed with the numbers. Mercer is trading similarly cheap, as is CFX and both are in much better shape. Mercer is selling power now; cfx has no debt, pays a dividend, and easy access to asia.