BlackBerry (BBRY), the battleground stock du jour, is the target of sensationalistic headlines on a daily basis as vested interest from both sides battle it out. Hardly a week goes by without seeing yet another title with a variant of "too little too late" or "dead company walking" etc., etc. Let's face it, it's all getting a little cliché.

The press has been calling for the company's demise for almost two years, but it is still alive and kicking. Many analysts and writers have got it so wrong and have ignored basic mathematical facts for so long that it would be comical if the stakes weren't so high. We can expect these baseless conjectures to continue and the headline battle to heat up as we approach the moment of truth sometime in March - when the company releases hard numbers.

But the fact of the matter

On December 20, 2012, folks at Research in Motion (RIMM) reported results that beat analyst expectations on all fronts: they beat on earnings, they beat on revenue, their gross margins improved, and, most importantly, they increased their cash pile to $2.9 billion.

The reported numbers were surprisingly healthy for a company that was written off as "dead." There is no longer any question that RIM is well-positioned to finance the upcoming launch of BlackBerry 10 on January 30th - the next generation "mobile computing platform" that will make or break the company.

Investors took notice and bid up the shares initially to as high as $15.50 after hours on December 20th - a near 10% increase from that day's close. But then, shortly after on the same evening, CEO Thorsten Heins dropped a bombshell.

During the conference call, Thorsten all but confirmed that under BB10, consumers will no longer

I wrote last month about a potential hostile take-over of Research in Motion (RIMM) by Microsoft (MSFT). The thesis was this: Microsoft cannot risk losing in the mobile market, and buying the undervalued RIM was one of the cheapest ways it can permanently secure the 3rd place position.

Since that article was published, RIM has climbed significantly and Microsoft followed the broader market downwards.

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I continue to believe that the takeover scenario has a non-trivial chance of occurring within a 1-3 year timeframe. As each day passed while RIM CEO Thorsten Heins and his executive team continue their meticulously choreographed launch of BlackBerry 10, and as Microsoft falters and makes mistakes, that scenario becomes more likely. As a long term shareholder of RIM, I urge RIM's management and board to put a plan in place to defend against such a hostile bid from happening before BB10

I'm losing sleep over the risks of a hostile bid from Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) for Research In Motion Limited (RIMM). No, I am not referring to the various buy-out rumors that have come up in the past year or so, or even the talks about HP. I am addressing the increased chance, in my opinion, of a buy-out now from Microsoft, based on recent events and the unveiling of the BlackBerry 10.

As someone who has observed the mobile platform space for quite some time, I will make a case of why it makes strategic sense for Microsoft to take over Research In Motion at this juncture. Although nothing has been officially announced, I believe this could be a high-probability event that investors should prepare for.

And consequently, while this could potentially be an opportunity for short-term investors and speculators alike, it could also be detrimental to Research In

I've previously written about the framework for a sustainable fiat money in the form of the Modern Monetary Theory. In this article, I will describe the critical deficiencies of a metal-based currency that could, with no exaggeration whatsoever, bring about a permanent decline of our living standards and the end of the economy as we know it.

Private Sector Cannot Save Without Government Dis-saving

First, let's start with a simple thought experiment, where I illustrate one of the most important findings of MMT. Imagine that you live on an island with four other people, and there is a total of $10 in circulation on the entire island.

The five of you form a very "fiscally responsible" government that will not print any new money, and will not run a deficit. So, the total money supply of the island will forever stay at $10, which means each of you will

Despite the impressive 16%+ rebound year-to-date, Research In Motion's (RIMM) battered shares are still down 76% from the 52-week high of $70.54.

Most investors following this company are well aware of all of the various reasons for the downfall. The decline of the smartphone's U.S. market share has been well chronicled, and the recent execution problems have all been covered to death. These are not the focus of this article.

What I intend to do is to come up with the absolute worst-case valuation for RIMM, based on the worst-case scenario of it closing down its business at any moment, liquidating all of its assets, and returning the proceeds to shareholders. I will then compare this scenario with the current market price.

Analyzing a company's liquidation value is a theoretical but useful part of fundamental analysis because it provides a solid floor for its valuation. As a company trades at

Research in Motion's (RIMM) new CEO Thorsten Heins made no secret that he is looking for a new CMO, and he needs one pronto. The new BeBold Super Hero fiasco only hastens the need. One could only hope that the Super Hero idea was a relic from Jim Balsillie's era, and Thorsten had nothing to do with its inception.

Regardless of whether it was a new marketing direction or just a harmless blog post, the unfortunate fact is that it got viral in a very negative way. This type of unintended viral marketing would have never come from a top-tier brand such as BMW (BAMXF.PK), Coca Cola (KO) or Apple (AAPL).

RIM needs to (1) define the image it wants to project, and (2) control its message from all fronts (TV, social media, product placement, CEO interviews) to make sure they are consistent with the chosen image. And

Dear Jim and Mike,

The last few months must have been hell for you. You launched Playbook in April to lukewarm reviews. You guided poor earnings for Q1, only to slash them even lower part way through. You were sued for allegedly misleading investors. You were sued for alleged patent violations. Every analyst including your best friends in Canada downgraded the stock. All of this culminated in the earnings conference call on Thursday:

BlackBerry smart phone maker Research In Motion (RIMM) said Thursday that its net income and revenue declined in the latest quarter, hurt by lower demand amid the economic slowdown and product delays.

RIM is also cutting an unspecified number of jobs to reduce costs. It gave an outlook well below Wall Street's expectations for the current quarter and the full year.

First of all, now is not the time to be cutting costs. You are sitting

Research In Motion (RIMM), once a titan that dominated the smart phone space, has had its stock stuck in a mire since the 2008 peak. Despite a phenomenal earnings growth rate averaging 56% over the last 5 years, and similar sales growth rate over the same period, the jet is stuck in taxi and can't seem to find the runway.

Financially speaking, RIM is in extreme undervalued territory. The stock has a P/E of around 8, so with an estimated future growth rate of >20%, it is trading near 0.4 PEG. The company has no long term debt to speak of, and net cash of around $7.5 per share. It recently released weaker than expected Q1 guidance due to massive technological transitions underway, causing the stock to drop nearly 11% the day after the announcement. Despite posting excellent results for the year earnings-wise, its declining gross margin suggested bigger underlying

The central tenent of value investing is to purchase great businesses at bargain prices. Successful implementation of the strategy requires consideration of both sides of the equation - not only does an investor need to determine the underlying business's ability to sustain and grow economic profits, he also needs to understand IF and WHY the business is being offered at a bargain. The last point is often overlooked - it is very crucial to identify WHY a business is available for cheap, so that we can distinguish whether the price depression is due to short-term superficial reasons or true long term deterioration in business prospects, in order to avoid falling into so-called "value traps". In this article, I will look to analyse both the business and the price of China Sun Group High Tech Co (CSGH.OB).

Great Business

The fundamentals of CSGH's business are actually a rather straight-forward analysis. CSGH

There is a lot of misinformation out there that simply does not reflect the current state of the world we are in, and this misinformation is correspondingly causing a gigantic misallocation of private capital to non-productive uses (especially towards speculations in precious metals and other commodities) and an overblown distrust in the government's monetary policies.

This is actually somewhat expected, because even most of our policy makers do not have the proper educational background to understand what they are dealing with and how the fiat currency system really works. Ben Bernanke and his contemporaries are, in fact, learning on the job. It is no secret that they (as well as a lot of the doomsday prognosticators aka finance columnists out there) were educated by textbooks and schools of thought formulated during an era of gold standard with fixed exchange rates. An updated conceptual framework is required for good decision-making in

The advent of paper gold in the forms of funds/ETFs/ETNs is a godsend for those who want to play gold on the short side. I don't claim I can predict the movement of gold accurately, but all else being equal, the odds are stacked against paper gold. If you must own gold, try to own physical gold bullion and bars. If you want to short gold, paper gold is the perfect instrument - it is like being the house at a casino. Here's why (I will use SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) for some of the examples but this is directed at paper gold in general):

(1) GLD has an expense ratio of about 0.40% per annum. Which means GLD will lose value at 0.40% per annum even if the value of gold stays the same; And if you are on the short side, it is functionally the same as receiving

Dear President Obama,

I had always been a supporter of you, precisely because you are not married to any particular ideology, and you have an ability to listen to varying opinions, weigh their merits, and ground them on reality.

I am writing to you because your heavy-handed economic policies are too interventionistic for their own good. I previously wrote about Capitalism in Jeopardy, where I feared that governments all over the world will use the recent credit crisis as an excuse to enact various protectionistic and socialistic economic policies, undoing human progress over many decades past. My worst fears are beginning to take hold.

I will not go as far as naming you a socialist, as I remain convinced that your decision-making process is not overly hindered by any ideology. Which is why I even attempt to make a free-market capitalist's case to you at all.

First off, I

For the last two decades, we lived in a speculative economy where one bubble appeared after another in rapid succession. We had the hot money bubble in Asia that ended in 1997, then the dot-com bubble in the late 90's, followed by the housing bubble, and then finally the commodities bubble in energy and metals. As each one ended, the financial system was not allowed to wring out its excess because central banks and governments around the world churned their printing presses, and pumped incalculable amounts of money into the economy in order to rescue it from the short-term aftermath of each bubble. The result was that when each bubble burst, a new one began almost immediately, fueled by the flood of excess liquidity. It is not over just yet - I believe we have one final bubble to work out.

The final bubble is the US dollar itself, whose

I expected US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, being the ex-head of Goldman Sachs (GS), to be more effective at deploying the $700 billion financial bail-out package handed to him by Congress. I expected him to manage what is essentially one of the world's largest hedge fund with the acumen of a shrewd trader.

I did not expect him to openly declare his change in policy of using the funds to purchase shares in banks directly instead of buying up their toxic assets. He changed his mind too early, and tipped his hand too clearly, that not only does he appear he does not know what he is doing, he also exacerbated a crisis in confidence that has unintended cascading effect on the rest of the system. What he should have done instead was to keep his options opened.

His explicit switch of focus from the toxic ABS to bank shares

While testifying before the House Oversight Committee last week, Alan Greenspan said,

The economic crisis has revealed a flaw in the model that I perceived as the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works… Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity, myself especially, are in a state of shock and disbelief.

The recent crisis did reveal very clearly about one aspect of how the world works. There are in essence two economies: the real economy, where real goods and services are produced and consumed, and the financial economy, where assets are swapped for investment or speculative purposes. These two economies interact and affect each other, but each requires a unique regulatory framework to support. While government intervention in the real economy is almost always bad, government intervention in the financial economy is almost always necessary. For this reason, I