Recipient of Bachelor of Arts, major in Information & Communications, minor in Philosophy, Université de Moncton, 1990. Worked 12 years in various journalism and public relations positions for private enterprise and various levels of government, in both French and English before finding my... More
Ok folks, can I be more direct in the headline? The space below is for you to discuss how daily news events can or may have an impact on the trading price for NOK during the day, both ADRs in the US and shares in Helsinki.
Why? Users at SA have the option of either communicating with each other via comments in an article or by short messages in Stock Talks. This is insufficient in my opinion as we do not really have a designated area where NOK followers can focus on NOK share price.
Let me be the first to chime in: I have a long term core investment in NOK to which I am considering adding trading portion of 3k shares. This is not money that I would like to lose but it would not cripple me either.
This purchase would not go in my retirement account. I plan to put it in a Tax Fee Savings Account or TFSA for short as it is called in Canada.
Today 8 January 2013, NOK was hit with an tax audit from the Indian government and may be on the hook for a large fine of $500M US. I do not know when a decision to prosecute will be made and how long this will take to go through the courts.
Also out today a guesstimate was given on how many Lumias were sold in Q4, approx 4 million. If so, what kind of impact would this have on the share price, extrapolating results from the other Nokia divisions as well?
Chime in as I want to know when I should buy those 3k shares, at what price, and when I should sell them!
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Technically speaking, NOK is not in good shape. Volume on yesterday was high on -4%. NOK might rebound to test $4.2, but on low volume, and drop soon after.
I forecast NOK will test $3.8 support soon, before the end of the week.
AAPL news about iPhone mini will boost fear on NOK, because AAPL is now willing to compete on where NOK still has decent market share (cheaper phones).
I think if Amazon comes out with their own Android phone they could have an initial impact (because Amazon can deliver not only content but both compute and storage through their cloud - they could throw in these goodies initially for a low bundle price to help really sweeten the deal - discount on books, amazon prime, amazon cloud with both compute and storage, movies, and lots of other services/deals, a bunch of useful apps). Of course, as you can see other phone providers like Nokia/Microsoft, RIMM can easily counter this by providing similar cloud based services. But I think Amazon might be able to initially beat them on price because it (and the market) would see their phone as a conduit for Amazon to be able to sell more of it wares. But it could backfire on Amazon as well - because it would cause their profit margins to erode further - but so far Bezos has been able to play the markets well, the bagpiper seems to know what tunes to play.
I don't agree that iPhone mini will be a threat. When I first heard of it, my first thought is that Apple is going down. iPhones are already losing its magic, and a cheaper version will only make the magic gone - let alone cannibalization problem.
A lot of people are still buying iPhone because it WAS the best phone out there, but the situation has changed.
"We" see Apple as it is now, but emerging markets see it very differently. They didn't have access to each and every iPhone model or other Apple devices. In most countries it's a dream to own an Apple product other than an iPod. It would be an unexpected opportunity for them to purchase an "iPhone". And that's all that counts. Of course, Apple will blow up the margins by offering ridiculously low specifications, as it did for iPad mini, but the first year of the release people won't care. It's going to be the huge success in emerging markets. So phones like Lumia 620, Lumia 820, GS3 mini, Blackberry's, HTC's and even all the Chinese phone makers will certainly feel it coming. Heads are going to fall, while Apple will do what it does the best, it will make more cash. Making money is not "always" about innovation. They are taking the last big money of "iPhone" and either Job's magic is still here and they are coming with something even more spectacular, either they will simply keep coming with some upgrades. Anyhow, Apple's fall is certainly not for now. And no, I'm not long AAPL, but I'm seriously considering it.
I've read no official word from aapl, just rumours.... but have not gone looking. Don`t you think a cheap iphone would tarnish the brand in the eyes of the "elite" aapl users and turn them away to another phone?
@charles It is no $3.90, so going up. I think you are going to get your deal today :)
Just be careful with your entry, as there is now two negative factors, and nervousness as a result in the air. You could perhaps enter in two steps, 1500+1500 to average the PPS to play it safer.
The Amazon story that will unfold will be that Amazon will crash heavily back to earth from it's over 3000 PE. When Amazon falls, it will fall long and hard. I am just amazed that "Analysts" still rate it a BUY with no income to speak of.
cheap iPhone would cannibalize the 'real' iPhone a lot...
Also since the iPad mini, it seems more and more to me that iOS is not moving in the direction to be a more powerful OS, while Windows RT is, with Office, the Desktop and the other Windows Classic features.
I think, NOK is close to losing it. Like I said at the end of 2012, RIMM is the new NOK. RIMM has ardent fans http://bit.ly/12q5BSS whereas NOK has not, really. RIMM was a small beaten kid consumers want to see surviving. NOK was a drunken adult that stumbled and fell. RIMM launched late, but when it launched, product is available in quantities. When NOK launched, no product was available for a long time and then only in minuscule volume. WP8 simply does not catch on. RIMM's OS is at least popular with the chavs and businesspeople in English speaking nations. With no Lumia 920 numbers forthcoming, I suspect now that NOK might have blown it http://dthin.gs/WsjSt3, although they had a fair chance to execute properly.
System: you sound like an ex-Nokia employee with an axe to grind now. Your comment about BB having product after launch is not totally accurate. It will only be available in the US in March, correct? No product for a big market like that? Oops. The rest of your post is just bitter comments.
It seems the L920T is selling quite well in China if we are to believe the links provide in a stocktalk by Colaolli today.
As far as sales of the BB10, don`t you think it`s a bit premature to judge? I would be surprised if BB did not do well but that does not preclude NOK from doing well as well. Well as well. Well as well. :-)
You should check this out. http://bit.ly/VQeaBf Not very positive for BB10. It is more specific and detailed than the vague statements offered in other channel checks.
Nokia's Lumia 920 had severe component shortages. It was only on sale for 8 weeks last quarter. It was only on sale at AT&T, where they still have yet to sell the Yellow and Cyan model at their store. It was only until the last couple weeks of the quarter when the Units actually started to show up in the AT&T retail stores. The 920 is STILL in short supply throughout Europe. The 920 has only started to sell in India and China (still in short supply over there).
In one quarter, Nokia will start selling variants of the 920 (EOS & Catwalk) to Verizon and T-Mobile. They will finally have sales of their high end smartphone on all the major Telco's across the entire world. Sales results of their '920' will be in full force, especially with India & China coming on board. Then of course, Nokia has the Lumia 620. A full fledged WP8 smartphone, that sells for $250 OFF CONTRACT!!!! Google it for more info.
Not bitter, but frustrated at Nokia's execution problems that, to me it seems, are by far not resolved. Fact is that availability of Lumia 920 is terrible in Sweden, UK, Germany.
>> " OS is at least popular with the chavs and businesspeople in English speaking nations."
We have nothing to base this upon. The OS (QNX) is brand new, as is the UI. Also the hardware is totally different. Business would be buying the blackberry on name only.
Also, Blackberries were popular back when IT had ownership over the Information Technology data center, this is no longer the case with BYOD ..
I just don't see business people ditching their iPhones and Galaxys for Blackberries. The business world has moved on.
Its not hard to beat arround 1,3 million 920 in 2 month :).
I was only verry short in blackberriy and took my 12% after a week.
Overall i trust Nokia more, at 4,75$ they was too expensive for me but they reached a level close to my next buyorder.
At the moment its pure speculating if one or both NOK / RIM made the turnarround or not.
We will see if RIM get the business consumers, at least in germany private consumers never liked blackberrys.
NOK definetely show some weakness here and there. 1. Asha growth seems stopped ( Januar Data ) 2. If Elop dont bluff no tablet at the trade fair in Feb 3. How will the new phones run and what show the competition at the fair in Feb
If we see a foldable 10" tabphone from Samsung, they would get the most attention.
If you look at the transcript you will notice that it is quite long. In case you did not know you can get MS Word to read the text aloud to you instead.
Copy and paste the text from the page to MS Word, then use the Read function from word. It will read whatever text you have selected so make sure you select all the text once it is pasted in Word. Also you may need to re-start the Read a couple of times during. Just click Ctrl-F to find the last sentence read and select the rest of the text from there to continue.
Wow! I am impressed with how articulate Stephen Elop is. I have to believe it is a reflection of his mind and his wisdom. Everytime I read/hear one of his interviews, I always come out feeling good about NOK's prospects.
Hopefully this article will give the Android cheerleaders enough understanding about why NOK will never use that OS. The very, very valuable HERE (Navteq) that cost how many billions would become useless and a direct competitor or Google Maps. In 4 words: not going to happen.
simple , what is your view on the Lumia 920 operating margin? I say 100 euros profit/device. So you are looking at 400m EUR. If the costs do not rise or drop that is still a loss making handset division. The other divisions are harder to evaluate as the numbers/prices and profit margins are hidden. I would say buy after earnings unless you believe the earnings will significantly top estimates.
Sal, profit per device is a very important question but will it make any headlines on Wed 9 Jan 2013? Is there something I am missing? No one has those numbers for now, so we'll have to wait until q4 call, so far away......!
My usual trading policy is to increase my share positions only when it makes my average share price go down. Of course, sometimes I see some extraordinary reason to increase my positions, but it's very rare. First I bought NOK at $4.04, bought back at $2.65 and I bought the highest position at $1.75 Meantime I sold most of my $1,75 shares at $3.60, which I regret. At the moment my average price is at $3.19. So unless the share goes under $3, I won't even consider adding more shares and certainly not before the Q4 announcement. I prefer to play it safe and not to take any unconsidered risks in wake of this irrational euphoria surrounding Nokia. Unfortunately I see much more signs of a downturn rather than of an upturn regarding the Q4 results. The expectations seem too high and even if Nokia beats the expectations it would be way too soon to celebrate.
Davidoff: I dunno. Forget all the analysts for one minute and ask yourself: does the future seem brighter today for Nokia then it did on the day they announced a partnership with MSFT and had zero products to show only dying Symbian.
What was the price on that day? $9.36. Look at share price mid nov 2011, past q3 results? $6.50+ death of symbian priced in. I say objectively price should be past $7 today if not for manipulators.
Yes, Nokia looks certainly much better than a year ago, but it's far from perfect. I still have doubts regarding Nokia's ability to keep its phone division. Even if at the Q4 announcement Nokia won't have any losses at its phone division we can expect any tremendous profits either. The results are going to be around -50m and 50m which is simply ridiculous for a company of Nokia's size. On the long term it is not viable and sometimes tough decisions must be taken. I think that Q4 will be the answer to most of questions and conserns. We'll see if Mr Elop is on the right way.
There was a link on the article "Will 2013 be the year for Nokia" or something close to that, that stated $241/920. Another link that estimated 2.5 million 920's will be sold this Q. The estimate was by an ad firm that tracks US sales and guestimates the same % (16) of WP8 phones worldwide off US sales. I personally believe the overseas sales will be greater than in the US because of the Applenits that inhabit the US. The US is only a fraction of the world market for Nokia phones, as they have a far better image in the Far East. The India Tax issue is more of a concern, as they can order trebble damages, bringing the tax bill to $500 M + 500Mx3= total 2Billion plus. That would be only a speedbump to Apple or Google, but could crush NOK if it comes to worst case. I also hear that a few well-placed bribes could make things go away completely, and NOK is not bound by US laws against Bribery. It's all very confusing at this point to me today, and I can see a drop to 3.8 0r lower this week. The question is, is this a buying opportunity, or should I take money off the table while I am still at a profit until this dies down. I really want to stay with NOK for 12-18 months. How low do you expect NOK to go before rebounding?
Finland has strong anti-corruption laws, and people get prosecuted easily. As Finland is the least corrupt country in the world, if one gets caught, there is no sympathy for how business is done some other parts of the world...
I personally don't believe $NOK is that stupid to make such a costly mistake. The current Indian government is pro business, and usually there are so many accounting loopholes that it is usually difficult to have a company like Nokia prosecuted. Also to my recollection I haven't read or heard of a single foreign company like Nokia or others indulging in tax evasion in India. The only companies that I can remember being openly criticized in India for wrong doings are Union Carbide (Bhopal accident), Monsanto (genetically modified seeds) and Enron. As far as I know Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry, Apple, Cadburys, Glaxo, J&J, Tatas are some of the most respected brand names (for their quality) in India. I don't want to list the most hated to keep the discussion neutral :)
I agree. This is nothing more than an official shakedown. But the Indian government will be after something, a sop even. perhaps a new factory, promises of new jobs, something. We just have to hope as investors it won't cost Nokia too much. this actually reminds me of the Vodafone tax case in India. http://reut.rs/11facXs
I think this is a reverse tactics employed by India so as to ensure that foreign companies don't hold India on ransom of pulling out its operations "if you don't do this..." kind of scenario. Indian courts are well known for dragging the cases for decades and when government changes, the next party can do a 180 degree turn. In India the government has lot more influence on the court decisions. So like you pointed out India might be doing this to solicit a better deal for itself - very likely. Also, be aware that even though corruption exists at all level of the government, courts and administration these folks are very smart people they are not dumb; they do know what companies are doing in terms of pushing the envelope (and, I won't be surprised if they sometimes even indirectly encourage them to do so).
As an example of a company driven out of the country at one point in its history look at Coca Cola (Coke) and IBM who were driven out of the country by George Fernandez (who was a well known socialist). Things happen in Asia which you sometimes start scratching your head about to make sense - but there are always deeper wrinkles in that story that are tied to the push and pull game between the politicians and the industry.
There is a very nice British series "The Story of India" by Michael Wood
I have been reading some about India on Bloomberg. The new government there is more "Pro Business" and wants to relax the ownership rules to some extent. This may be a parting shot by outgoing officials to set themselves up for the next elections as the "Pro-India" party. I am skeptical that the new government will let this go too awfully far, after NOK makes some favorable deals to Indian Carriers to appease the hardliners. The new government especially wants to open the door for WalMart to open stores there.
India is trying to distance itself from the Russian influenced policies that kept India from so much progress over the last 20 years. They have a lot of well educated people there, but the best have left India for better opportunities in the UK as well as the US.
Also, Thank you for the invite here. I am tired of having to spell out in detail ad nauseum the Short position to people who won't look at links nor do math.
For Wed 9 Jan 2013: if general market is up I don`t see anything (right now) preventing NOK to follow the general market and go up relatively, could be 3 cents or 10 cents + to compensate for today`s debacle. I don`t expect the India tax issue to be resolved quickly and hopefully the current price reflects a middle of the road fine of $1B US.
Unfortunately if I'm right and it gaps up 3-10 cents then I have lost a buying opportunity as I do not buy when markets are closed.
I've been basing my assumptions/forecast on a 10 day EMA. This moving average had been on point since the biggest uptrend this past Thanksgiving (21st,22nd of Nov.) "If" I had followed my theory and swing traded my 7th position before the end of the year, I would've, could've made a lot of money.
Fundamentally, economic factors (negative sentiments) will be in full effect before Q4 earning. You need to pay attention to these chain of events which is most likely created by big institutions to place your bets.
You should follow your gut instincts Charles. Putting aside trend , technical and fundamental analysis.
I haven't sold any of my position. My 10th and last position Dec. 11th P/S 3.78 @ 3000shares. It was purchased w/ 30% margin hoping for a parabolic move in the year 2013. LONG NOK. Good Luck.
That had to have been a misprint. No one has been talking about any numbers that specific that I have read anywhere. Some have said things like $7-$8 as a 2014 PT.
NOK seems amazingly resilient at the moment to me. Even the info about possibility of triple damages was available for most part of the day, and the price did not budge. So I would say that India case is now fully included in the prize.
I loaded my NOK trading position today @$4.07 in average (roughly 1/5 of my core position).
My key take is this graph, NOK in mid October (18th) during last Earning report. The price went up during the week leading to the earnings and then dropped back to base level after the earnings. I am planning to get fully vested in my trading position for that ascend: http://bit.ly/11dHiar
Now, the easy way to make money is to sell before the earnings, and bag the profits. But if the prize does not drop, then one looses even better profits. I am pretty confident that the earnings will not disappoint. The market psychology is nevertheless always wayward. So I will probably sell 50% of my trading position just before the earnings call, and hold on to the rest.
Thru the earnings, I am going to hold on to my core portfolio (averaged a bit below $3) no matter what.
Seppo2, your method seems wise, selling 50% in the pre-earnings euphoria and holding on to the rest regardless. Better to lose potential profits than to lose actual dollars.
@charles yep, that's what I am telling myself and how I am trying to approach this business. Better to have a little bit of money in the bank than wait for bigger returns just to see things drop or perhaps even turn on the red. There will always be new opportunities to make some profit, so it 'what ifs' should not really be of concern. Particularly in trading.
That is, my swing trading philosophy is to execute several trades of smaller profit so that profits add up over time instead of trying to master only a few trades of larger returns.
My NOK long core position is a different story, it is meant to be a multi x bagger.
Very wise Seppo, I opted to master only a few trades of larger returns. I will be using NOK as a trade vehicle in the future once my cost basis has been covered.
After Hours on TD Ameritrade Bid 3.95 ask 4.3 indicating an opening ~4.12-4.13 On Schwab, Bid 4.04 Ask 4.07 so up also. Just not as much. Closed 4.05, so if you want in, you can maybe get in at 4.05 after hours if lucky. I personally want to wait for 3.8, maybe 3.85 for my next entry point, but I am already in 4k shares @ 4.67, and 1600 more @ 4.81 my current Tech limit is $20k so I am already a bit Tech heavy for diversification, but NOK was just too good.
Looks like the "HooRaa" about Elop saying something about Android was a translation error. http://seekingalpha.co... No way would NOK want to alienate MSFT right now. I too am likely to take half my 3.67 position off the table before earnings, as there is no way NOK can make everyone happy. The "analysts" will all jump on NOK if NOK misses their expectations, and all the "Cheerleaders" will sell low right after IMO. that will be the buying opportunity I think I am looking for, not down to 3.8, but likely below 4 as the events unfold. Still, I am in NOK for 12-18 months unless something really ugly happens. Which is not to say I won't do some trading along with my Long position.
I have two large core holdings, one in my trading account and one in my ROTH. My price target for these blocks is $8
I also day trade Nokia frequently in fairly large blocks. These blocks I often flip for .05 - .35.
With regard to today's news about the tax audit, I was immediately concerned, but I quickly noticed the stock recovering a tad, then even going up a penny in After Hours. This hints to me that part of the movement was simply the gravity of a down market and that NOK will likely shake off this tax blemish. However, if story balloons even more, then all bets are off.
I am very happy with both Elop and the current trajectory of Nokia and especially the Lumia. The new aluminium Lumia is a beautiful phone and should quite all the "too heavy" jabber that you hear by the nay saying analysts (you now have a choice.)
I've been patiently waiting for my 920 class device to appear on Verizon, and I refuse to settle for an 822. My hunch is that maybe the aluminium follow-on 920 phone *could* be the phone that ends up on Verizon.
In addition to my $NOK, I also have long $INTC and $MSFT positions on which I write covered calls to enhance yield. I also hold EA, although I'm not sure why...
I'll come back to this party maybe tomorrow morning, I need to take the old lady out for the evening!
Thanks Luke for the comment and the humour. I think we all have some kind of addiction if we`re here, right? I'm just glad it`s not booze, it`s more the dream of being able to put a checkmark next to: "have sufficient money, so no troubles in that category" for me. I don`t need to own a fast car or a cabana on a tropical island, but it would be nice to be able to rent whatever at the drop of a hat.
I entered Nokia @3.30, and traded it up to $4. I wish I had simply longed to begin with. Bought my core holding before and during the big sell-off, averaged below $4, but still pretty high. (I meant to add more today just below $4, but ended up loading up another big loser instead of Nokia, which already makes up ~30% of my entire portfolio of ~10 stocks.)
At the moment Nokia is up 1.5~2% in Finland. Tomorrow won't be bad. Nokia is one of the most resilient stocks I have followed, I feel pretty "safe" with a relatively high average price.
As to Q4 earnings, I am still on the fence. I plan to swing trade at least half of my positions before the earnings. I suspect that there will be a tank before earnings as nonbelievers take profit before the call. I agree that the expectation is so high now that it's good for the stock. The results will likely be a mix of goods and bads (number of phones sold, good; margin, bad), so the stock will become extremely volatile after the call.
I also am a staunch defender of everything Nokia and MSFT. I sometimes turn to the dark side and warn people not to buy nokia when it gains to much and secretly hope the stock tanks so I can sell puts for a juicy premium.
For example now is a great opportunity for me to buy back my april 20th $3 AMD puts for a small profit and turn around and use the money to sell the Feb 13 $3.50 put.
I didn't expect NOK to go that low today. It took me by surprise. It's clearly a shorts day today! Nothing really negative for Nokia to bring it down by 7% but somehow news get exaggerated and everything comes in the same time.
I don't know why Crazy Joys always ends up so high on the list of stories on Google Finance. They must be paying for placement. CJs had at least 4 stories on Google Finance yesterday.
And that site is less than a year old. I smell fish. They were the ones also reporting component shortages for NOK yesterday right at the top of list. And then this unfortunate translation error (M vs B)... :)
Just back in Nokia, that was faster than i thought. Add more on more weakness, my concerns about the tax issue in india are priced in now ( my opinion )
More Nokia dis-information being disseminated to put fear and drive down price? This is related to Nokia`s proxy browser designed to cut down on data use.
"Nokia seems to be hijacking traffic on some of its phones, grabbing your HTTPS data unencrypted". http://tnw.co/WtUmRw
My conspiracy theory: NOK was getting closer and closer to $5, making the shorters uncomfortable, particularly in the light of the forthcoming Earnings call. IMO the earnings will not disappoint (probably no profit, but will likely exceed analyst predictions in smartphone sales), so I am expecting a positive response after the report (I could be wrong, you never know). With that, today's manipulation is an attempt to move the baseline lower so that shorters won't get burned.
Also, we might be seeing some shaking of the tree, to get the weak out, so that the dark overlords can buy some stock for cheap before the earnings...
That Bloomberg doesn't have a news update about the India story is very telling - there is nothing to report, all thin air and the typical Indian hubris.
I wasn't gonna let these shorters fool me, I sold my 10000 shares this morning at 3.92 and rebought back my same shares at 3.72. All this action means is that Q4 is REAL good, they already have all the insider info on actual sales numbers and thus scaring everyone off before the stock goes up to $5.
Sorry SA been holding my comments for review the past 2 months, sometimes many hours go by when its finally posted, thus i dont post much here any longer.
Sorry for the late arrival. Didn't realize I got an invite until now. First and foremost. I personally don't think a sudden announcement of Lumia sales in china/India will evolve. It's never been Nokia's style. If china mobile or some other website does, it will be greeted with a big yawn and skepticism. The media is in a frenzy to hyper critique Nokia as evidenced by the Spanish interview with Elop. Since when has a company had to clarify an interview by its CEO? I also don't think Elop will announce Lumia 920 units shipped during the JAN 24th conference call. Trading Nokia NOW prior to earnings is anyone's guess. The prime time to trade Nokia would be around 2 weeks prior to MWC. We know Nokia will be announcing a whole lot of new devices at MWC, along with new partnerships. I.e. buy the rumors, sell the news. When I have more time this weekend, I'll chime in on my thoughts about Nokia's quarterly report.
Still not selling a single share. FWI, if I bought trading shares yesterday and already had a core position, I would sell those trading shares. However, if you dont have a large core position, I would keep the trading shares.
Editorial: I'm starting to like Elop more and more. You have to believe that Elop threw us a bone by pre-releasing numbers. Even Elop saw the crap that was going on the last 2 days. Hopefully this is a new leaf in Nokia's game plan... start releasing sales (units) numbers as soon as they become material. This will be extremely beneficial when China and India 8/920 sales kick in. Shorts will have to abandon their positions or risk losing 10-20% in a single day. Major short squeeze will occur at the $5 mark.
Late "after Hours" on Schwab closed @ bid 3.75, Ask 3.77 Caught me without any bullets ready, so I have to wait till Friday to move funds into my stock account. Friday is also the day that the shorts will be trying to push it down, though not as hard as the Jan 18 Options expiration. IMO it may keep testing that 3.74 support level through Friday, then start rebounding next week. My outlook has changed though. I had expected some selling after the 6K filing, but now that we have had our consolidation, I believe that NOK can only climb from whatever bottom it sets this week. The shaky people have already capitulated, and probably at a loss so it will be a month before they can buy back in-right around the World Congress which is Nokia's big event. Historically they skip the CES like this year, to make their next product announcement at the WC. That is when I expect them to announce a 10 in Tablet for release around May (If they can get the chips by then).
Yes I have margin accounts, but by having money in a fund in a bank, rather than having it in my brokerage account, I got caught on one of the few days when I was fully invested, and didn't want to sell non-Tech positions when I was already Tech Heavy. I would rather miss out on 1 buying opportunity (with no guarantee that NOK wouldn't fall further today), than blow up my diversification that has saved me many times, especially in 2008. I am too old to destroy my retirement on a whim. Without that announcement, which I didn't know was coming nor did I know it would be so well received, NOK could well have stayed low through Friday's weekly Options expirations. Did YOU know NOK would go to 4.5 at 3:45 pm EST today?
TBH, I was scared yesterday. I thought I would have another chance today to buy at even lower price today, so yesterday I didn't go all out. Well, I'm still happy with the way it is now. :)
OW: I put in my order after that low was set and it did not go back down. I'm kinda glad because currently I don`t see the floor.
2 days down in US, and 3rd straight day in Helsinki @2.88 Euros, -3.87%, as I write this very early Thursday. I am going to hold off adding for now. Also I am divided if I should take a loss on the 1k ADRs bought @3.90 Wed, or wait a few more days and see, or just add it to my long term core.
The tax issue with India, as outsiders it is impossible to foresee the forward implications, I think the "time value" does greater damage than the actual cost in fines and fees that may end up being imposed. Time wise, the longer this drags on the more difficult it is to draw in new money.
The patent suite issue is equally troublesome for the same aforementioned reasons, time wise, it can drag on and become more deteriorating to the share price than any damages that could be awarded.
The tree was shaken and some speculative money fled. Nokia must find a bottom from which to build a base and draw in new speculative trader flows or new investors. As a speculative trade it relies heavily on sentiment and the sentiment which had gotten quite positive has now turned. The stock price needs to survive this long enough for earnings to pass and shed some light on whether or not the previous bullish sentiment was justifiable. There are a multitude of positive forward catalysts; however they have been muted by fear which works well against bullish speculation.
As far as the approaching earnings; being honest, what we won't see is a profit and we also will not see the band aide of device sells plug up the gunshot wound of spending and costs. What we can hear is better than expected sales on all devices and lower than expected loss per share and possibly good news out of NSN.
Those could provide a relief rally especially after a huge sell off, but there's the problem, there is a lot of time between now and earnings and the stock could continue to go lower. There is also the possibility that the losses are greater than expected and unit sales of feature phones or smartphones or both disappoint.
I can make a bear and a bull case (which you should always be able to do no matter the situation) but I decided at the start of the year I'd make no further moves in NOK until after earnings, I still hold to that.
interesting comment thank you. other divisions being equal, how many smartphones does Nokia really need to sell to break even? I can see it selling 7-9million this quarter. Next quarter will be pivotal. it WILL need to have full availability across its target markets. These stockouts are very unhelpful and once next gen competitor phones start hitting the market, its negative impact on nokia will increase.
Perhaps bullish sentiment on Asia markets and new Asia Windows Phone hype pouring out of MSFT can creat a "bounce" environment:
Greg Sullivan: Windows Phone has 5% market share, "selling like hotcakes in China" http://shar.es/4CxZm
Microsoft executives are pretty hyped about Windows Phone sales at the minute.
While they are not revealing exact sales figures, we have already had Steve Ballmer talking about sales being 4 to 5 times higher at the end of last year.
Now we have Greg Sullivan, Senior Marketing Manager at Microsoft, in an interview with PCMag also delivering encouraging news.
He told PCMag Windows Phone 8 handsets were "selling like hotcakes in China," and that the OS was also gaining success with Nokia’s Windows Phones in the U.S.
He also repeated Ballmer’s statements that sales were five times higher for the last week of December when compared with a year earlier.
"The sales trends are there for Windows Phone," Sullivan said. "They are going in the right directly absolutely and strongly."
"There’s sales momentum, carrier momentum, and app momentum, with 125,000 apps," Sullivan noted.
He also revealed that Windows Phones now had 5% market share, presumably of the world-wide market, and said focus groups found consumers were now more often considering buying one, helped by a robust marketing campaign.
"With Windows Phone 8, we’re in this for the long haul," Sullivan said. "We used to think about Windows as software on a PC, but it’s also on the server and in the cloud and in Skybox and other services even Xbox. Windows is not only Windows and Windows Phone. It’s across all parts of Microsoft."
I would like to recap the reasons why I am long NOK.
Windows 8/RT/Phone by MSFT. <-------------
I like underdogs and history has proven MSFT likes to come from behind and nip you in the butt. Office suite took down competitors like Wordperfect and Lotus 123, Xbox took down Nintendo and Sony, Windows NT server took down Novell Netware and Linux for 75 percent of the Enterprise Server market.
Windows xp/7 together own close to 75% of the Operating systems market http://bit.ly/KPoXUJ, anyone remember OS/2?
As you can see, MSFT does real well coming from behind. It was caught dozing behind the wheel with the Tablet and smartphone market , Along with Nokia. But it is not to late for them, never say never
Thats my main reason for believing in NOK. Nokia is already rumored to come out with a couple of WinRT based tablets and once the Haswell chipsets from Intel come out I am sure they will build a Windows 8 Pro Tablet that can run all legacy windows programs and last at least 8 hours without charging.
Has anyone looked at this http://bit.ly/UYnp2z , Its a real big touchscreen computer, What would prevent Nokia from incorporating this kind of tech and building a LCD TV? Now that would give Apple TV and Google TV a run for the money.
The only thing you have to add to this setup are some Kinect sensors and its the future. No need to go up to that monitor and touch it. All you got to do is sit on your couch and start pointing in thin air.
I wrote not too long ago about my trading education courtesy of the OTC and how every dirty, low down, manipulative trick I saw on the OTC is alive and kicking on the big board’s (major exchanges). Well here is your prime example.
Just before a major release from Nokia that exceeds expectations on most accounts, the stock price takes a major nose dive as COINCEIDENTALLY the company becomes under attack by events that could have easily transpired weeks and even months ago. Your choices are 1) pure coincidence 2) someone made well timed calls to all the right friends in India and China or 3) Jesus likes to play stock market. I'm gonna pretty much rule out 1&3 ;-)
Of course I’m just joking; the cascading of events is purely coincidental; that is as long as Nokia is found to have dodged taxes and fined a hefty sum and did in fact violate a patent and forced to pay substantial licensing fees and massive one time upfront payment. By the time either of those becomes a reality I doubt anyone will remember or care. Enjoy the nice rip boys, and take some off the table and buy yourself a sweater!
Disappointing results and a clear case of a massive inside trading for the last 2 days... Way too much hidden information and emotional trading! What else to say... Risks and rewards of beaten stocks!
Anyhow, I'm not going to cash out until all this euphoria is going to settle down. It's obvious that there is way too much movement on the market and it's being completely deregulated for a couple of days. Hard to predict the next NOK's movement. Unfortunately there is still no coverage of NOK on sites and channels like CNBC...
All: I sold my 1k lot @4.40, from 3.90! Yee ha! I did not want to be too greedy. Yesterday and today during the night was quite stressful, I did not sleep much.... worrying I must admit. All smiles now!
I think not so deep so i sold my position again 15% in 24 hours is nothing to complain. My mainreason is the number of sold smartphones..anything else is better than i expected.
Nokia (NOK): Investors purchased almost 29,000 April 4.50 puts, mostly for $0.71 and $0.72, looking for the shares to push lower. NOK rose 17 percent to $4.38.
I wrote this before the open but posted it in the wrong place:
Well, while I feared an earnings warning, I didn't expect this. A little while ago I took profits on most of my NOK holdings in my trading IRA account and bought the January $4/$4.50 bull call options spread for 11 cents, reasoning that if NOK bombed I could only lose 11 cents per share, and if it finished the January options period at $4.50, I would have a four bagger. I also kept a few thousand shares long in my Roth IRA account which is now up 50% over the last 6 months purely based on trading in and out of NOK stock (no options.) Would have been better to buy and hold, but, oh well. Profit beats loss any day.
Over the last two days I was a bit dispirited as I had expected a slow rise into earnings and with the two down days was now expecting the $4/$4.50 bull call spread to expire worthless. Since the value of the short January $4.50 calls was now next to worthless, I bought them all back to make my position longer, and balanced a bit with some February $4 puts in case of further slippage.
(I had kind of suspected the Indian tax thing was a contrived put up job, because there was also heavy call option activity in NOK.)
This morning I quickly sold the remaining long shares in my ROTH in the premarket for an average of $4.49 with the intention of buying them back for less later on if possible,.
The bull call spread now looks very positive and will break even on January 19th at $4.11, however, since the bull call spread is no longer a spread, I will probably start to take some profits when options trading opens today, and put the rest on offer if NOK spikes higher to $4.70 this morning.
My prediction is that NOK hits a short term high at 10:00 a.m. today, but who really knows what will happen with short covering, or if the stock approaches the magical $5.
The earnings "warning" is positive, but not completely euphoric as there is a kind of warning that things may not be that great in the next quarter. Now what we want to know is whether there will be a dividend this year.
1:30 p.m. Well my prediction about the 10:00 a.m high was off, but I sold off all my January $4 calls for an average of about 45 cents, so happy with that. I am also short a stack of January $4 puts that I had sold for 12 cents per share, and it seems pretty likely that they will pay off in full too. My April $3.50 short puts also look fine and I will keep them. I am also long an April $4.50/$5 bull call spread that is looking a lot more promising now than it was a couple of days ago.
Having lost money on the way down via LEAP put and call spreads, I had cashed out on the short legs of the spreads below $2.20, increased my long option positions, and had a nice ride up over the last couple of months that had taken my overall NOK dealing firmly into green ink territory.This spike today has made NOK into a major winner for me, and I hope for others.
There is also a case to be made at this point that possibly Stephen Elop is not the goofy incompetent Microsoft lackey who does not understand the phone business, which has been a common theme of posters here on SA. NOK isn't out of the woods yet, but we MIGHT be seeing the beginning of competent management with better things to come. Certainly something to think about.
An announcement of a NSN spin off, for example, might be good.
Just thought I'd drop in and put some color around today's Nokia Christmas quarter press release. Those who care about statistics may appreciate this, but for others I will not be debating it:
"But the Finnish handset maker still expects its main devices and services unit to record a fall in net sales in the fourth quarter of 2012, to €3.9 billion ($5.10 billion) from €6 billion a year earlier, with total device shipments projected at 86.3 million units, down from 113.5 million."
That is a 35% drop and 27.2 million fewer units. That is not just Lumia or smartphone units.
There were no activation numbers only "sales". Activation is more important because it shows a unit off the retailer shelf and in the hands of a consumer. Also, Elop claimed supply constraint due to parts shortage which affected "other phone makers" as well. We shall see if that is true as other makers report.
I think that the point is that NOK has brought down the break even point from over 100M mobile units down to ~86M units. Smart and dumb phones share many costs, so one should focus on total sales numbers for breakeven.
I think Asha might help for the breakeven more than the Lumias, and i dont know if they have the breakeven inclusive there Headquartersales and RIM payments or without.
If i look to the ASP it goes up from 155 EUR to 185 EUR so my guessing "ONLY " arround 2 million 920 + 820, and there are also Lumia 510 sales from india inside these 4,4 million Lumias.
I had my own forecast of 8-9 million smartphones and a slight loss, so the numbers are mixed for me. At the moment Nokia is fair valued in my opinion and still have a great growing chance.
But i will wait untill the final Q4 numbers, if they show weakness 5-10% lower than today i am back . For the moment i dont see news that push Nokia higher.
For those trading today's big move, fact is this news caused a big short squeeze with really big volume but by the time normal US retail saw it the move had already happened. According to the Helsinki intraday chart, 90% of the move was over in 15 minutes. This was even 45 minutes before the NOK ADR trading opened at 4AM EST. So, those with a good US broker could not have gotten in the ADR if they wanted. There has been little follow through up or down since the squeeze. So put away, the aww I missed the move feelings. My advice would be tread carefully. You could get trapped in a news flash. Why? Because there doesn't appear to be any of the normal continuing short buyback spurts either 15 minutes after the Helsinki spike or since the US ADR opened. Volume has steadily been dropping since the initial first hour in Helsinki which had over 100 million shares trade. Most momentum news moves have a stair step throughout the day as big money drives price to profit on shorts pain points. This one does not. It was just one big 15 minute knee jerk and then flat ever since.
@bilton, seriously I am not sure if you hold any nokia share, but at this point I think you should consider buying any pullbacks as you do put a lot of effort into Nok threads. You might as well make some money.
Just for some information. I sold 1000 shares a last week for 4.17 and bought it all back yesterday for 3.70. Lets say I was grinning ear to ear this morning.
At this point all the NOK shares I own are completely paid with money made from sellling NOK high and buying low. So essentially my average price is $0 per share.
You will have to pry these shares from my cold dead hands!!!
As always, thanks @bilton for your detailed analysis helps to put things in perspective. Have bought 50 contracts yesterday at 22 cents a piece and sold it this morning @50 cents wanted to hold on to it but you know how these calls play out usually - so locked in a good profit on Nokia.
I have closed all my positions in Nokia as of today and plan to get in again in another quarter or so. Locked in an average gain of around 80% over last 3 months - thanks to Nokia for that. I don't like the fact that they called out a weak Q1 '13 due to seasonality on both D&S and NSN, going to let the stock breath for about a quarter before getting in again. This in no way means that Nokia's prospects have diminished in anyway but I agree with @bilton's analysis and I will wait for the next move.
As of now, I have moved my position over to $RIMM as I think there is a similar upside in $RIMM.
That may have been true early in the day, but during the day, nearly 300 Million shares traded peaking during normal hours @$3.50. I took off half my position at 4.49 for a ~20% gain. The highest it traded in premarket was ~4.6. Low today was 4.24, but that reversed and it closed at almost it's top. I expect a buying opportunity within the next week, I just have to decide my entry point. Historically, a stock this volatile will fall back some soon as the buying hangover wears off. It may even be after Earnings. At days end it was up over 18% so the surge was NOT just before opening.
Bilton: you are welcome here anytime. Thanks for your contribution. BTW for us poor slobs that do not subscribe to the WSJ can you copy and paste the article here? Thanks!
Nokia clearly spells out on its website what the expectations for next quarter are internally and disclosed it as they should. The media, pundits, investors and traders made of it what they wanted to. Those who care to read it from the source can go here:
Nokia expects its non-IFRS Devices & Services operating margin in the first quarter 2013 to be approximately negative 2 percent, plus or minus four percentage points. This outlook is based on Nokia's expectations regarding a number of factors, including: - competitive industry dynamics continuing to negatively affect the Smart Devices and Mobile Phones business units; - the first quarter being a seasonally weak quarter; - consumer demand, particularly for our Lumia and Asha smartphones; - continued ramp up for our new Lumia smartphones; - expected cost reductions under Devices & Services' restructuring program; and - the macroeconomic environment.
Nokia expects Location & Commerce non-IFRS operating margin in the first quarter 2013 to be negative due to lower recognized revenue from internal sales, which carry higher gross margin, and to a lesser extent by a negative mix shift within external sales.
Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks expect Nokia Siemens Networks non-IFRS operating margin in the first quarter 2013 to be approximately positive 3 percent, plus or minus four percentage points. This outlook is based on Nokia Siemens Networks' expectations regarding a number of factors, including: - competitive industry dynamics; - the first quarter being a seasonally weak quarter; - product and regional mix; - expected continued improvement under Nokia Siemens Networks' restructuring program; and - the macroeconomic environment.
Nokia will provide more details when it reports fourth quarter and full year 2012 results on January 24, 2013.
Nokia will be hosting a conference call today at 13:30 UK time (8:30 EST).
The dial-in number for media (listen only - the question and answer session will be limited to financial analysts and investors only) is +1 706 634 5012. Conference ID: 86914019.
The dial-in number for financial analysts and investors is US: +1 888 636 1561. Conference ID: 86914019. UK: +44 1452 560 299. Conference ID: 87088764.
A replay of the call will be available soon after the call completion. The replay number is US: +1 800 585 8367. Conference ID: 86914019. UK: +44 1452 55 0000. Conference ID: 87088764.
Looks like China Mobiles deal with Nokia (clearly intended to give them bargaining leverage) is working, ..if you listen carefully, you can hear the future margin compression ;-)
Apple's Tim Cook Has Talks With China Mobile: Little Expected As A Result http://onforb.es/WvGwOt
The Shorts ran out of Ammo at 4.24 this morn, and it is now up to 4.4 again or so. Love to see Friday Short Squeezes <g> (meaning some shorts expire each Friday in case you were unaware) Today being Thursday, The ones expiring tomorrow are pretty much hosed.
OK Pulled the trigger, sold the remaining half of the trading pos @$4.48. Decided to sell since basically wanted to play it safe. People making good points on both sides, but there are some questions in the air, so wanted to play it safe and bag the profits for the moment.
Thanks for everyone here in SA NOK community. Everyday learning something new.
I think you did well. The only quote from Cramer that I like is 'Bulls make money, Bears make money, Hogs get slaughtered". You undoubtedly made money so how can that be bad. Use some of that money to buy into dips, which will inevitably happen in a stock with a Beta of 1.6. (1.0 is neutral) After twice taking profits of a dollar/share or so, now I am playing with at least $2.00 of "House Money. That of course means I can buy in, take a 10% profit or loss, and still be happy. You now have an overall positive position, so you can set tighter Stop Losses safely. Enjoy your day. If Charters are right, tomorrow will open higher, then drop as the big short squeeze happened today. I would not be buying early in the day myself, but pick your own poison.
Yeah, I decided to take the money, and wait for the next dip, be it at lower or higher baseline. Like you said, with this volatility, the opportunity keeps on repeating...
Sold half my Nokia shares, still own calls for Jul13 $4 I don't look to make any more "buy" moves in January, I want my portfolio smaller for a while, minimum weight on core holdings and half weight on my one spec. No issue with Nokia, I just need to trim positions and see what 2013 is going to look like after Q4 2012, Nokia ran the furthest the fastest and is the most speculative so it is the first to be trimmed.
It's called the hour-of-power, the last hour of trading; never discount the strength of the gap up at open just because it does not bull rush the remainder of the session, if it holds the bulk of its gains until the last hour it can still run, if you see it fade in the last hour and close on the lower end of the range it may sell off the next day if it closes at, near or on a new high, it could gap up next session. I'm not making a call, I've made my move for today, I'm just thinking like the groups I use to trade in on the OTC. That was the think tank that went on as the trading session progressed. I didn't like trading for a gap, too hard to predict and you had to have lightning fast order execution and live the life of a day trader...too much work ;-)
Walmart To Offer iPhone 5 Off Contract, Unlimited Service For $45 Monthly http://onforb.es/UZrqno
This article in Forbes wants you to believe that this is bullish for Walmart and Apple and bearish for ATT and Nokia on the low end.
First of all the upfront cost is from 400 to 600, then $45/month, clearly they do not understand where the consumer crowd in the U.S. that uses prepaid phones comes from. They are not dodging a contract; at least 70% just can't afford to put 400 to 600 on a phone!
They are on a budget, they want a $40 to $100 phone and a $20 to $30 phone bill, and who is this bootleg company providing the service? Is it 4G-LTE and what’s the coverage? Is this literally and figuratively Apples to apples?
What it sounds like to me is the iPhone 5 making huge sales volume but also killing the iPhone 4 (just like everyone warned them it would) so now they've got to get creative on how to move excess inventory because nobody wants a 4x when they can have a 5. Look forward to the same issue with the iPads, the iPad mini is crushing the numbers and will likely be crushing its siblings into margin dust! I've not even heard anyone mention iPod numbers, they could also disappoint. Apple had a huge product refresh and its likely (2) of those products will have to pull the wagon if they are going to beat (which they will likely do, but at what cost?)
You could buy the phone with a credit card and pay it off over a few months. The service is probably provided by América Móvil which uses the AT&T bootleg network. T is a major shareholder in AMX. You could used an older version of the iPhone, which would cost less even if bought new.
I personally like $INTC a lot at these prices and the dividend (4.4%) is heaven. I also sell covered calls on the shares I own for a strike of maybe $1 over what I bought it at. (Made .75 premium per share last time around.)
Then we have Intel making real inroads into mobile with the Lenovo K900 http://bit.ly/VNnnsM
As an ardent Nokia supporter I published a set of research reports on the upside of Nokia during this past summer/early fall when the stock had become oversold to a ridiculous extent. Here are the links for those that did not get a chance to read my analysis; http://seekingalpha.co... and http://seekingalpha.co.... e To summarize, the company holds a patent portfolio that is truly industry leading as it trails only Microsoft in total number of issued patents yet surpasses Microsoft and all others by a large margin when it comes to strategic importance and technological innovation. This is apparent in the fact that Nokia holds approximately 19% of all patents considered essential to mobile 4G/LTE technology. The ability of Nokia to maintain such a consistently high success rate while asserting and defending claims against multiple competitors for a variety of different technologies in numerous continents shows the true dominance of their patented technology. Annual IPR revenue will be about $600, despite this significant amount of free cash flow, the staggering truth is that patent monetization was not a major emphasis of Nokia management until recent quarters when Elop began to push active monetization of the patent portfolio. To this end, the first major manifestation of this approach was the lawsuit filed against Rimm, Viewsonic and HTC which in May 2012. The IPR revenues resulting from the settlement if these suits will begin to materially impact revenue by Q4 of this year and combine that with the potential of licensing settlements for the other major Android manufactures and annual IPR revenue could very easily surpass $1 billion by early 2014. And while many investors would rather not fathom this situation, if the Nokia turnaround proves to be short-lived and in a worst case scenario Nokia approaches bankruptcy, it seems plausible that Nokia would follow the path of Nortel/Motorola and sell their patents to the highest bidder in an auction based sale. In such an event, it would appear that in n identical auction setup with the same companies bidding on the patents, Nokia garner substantially more than Nortel (4.5) or Motorola (5.5) as its portfolio is sustainably superior in every conceivable valuation metric, it seems plausible to assume that at the very least Nok would sell for the 4.5 garnered by Nortel however, even in such a discounted scenario investors must remember that 4.5 is a substantial floor for a company with a market cap of only 12 billion. Very briefly, the second article deals with my assertion that most many mobile markets outside if the US and UK are still in their infancy and as such feature-phones will continue to make up a majority of device sales in such places. In particular, I focus on gigantic opportunity this allows Nokia in India which is the world’s second largest mobile market and due to a variety of factors from a lack of complete lack of mobile centric infrastructure to extremely low per capita income, the majority of users have no desire in smartphones as evidenced by the prevalence of the feature phone which still makes up 90% of units sold. As some of you may remember, I mentioned that Navteq and the mobile mapping market encompassed my third and final area of upside for Nokia and as such I had completed a rather detailed article on the subject about two weeks after I published the patents article but after having it sent back multiple times by SA editors do to length restrictions I became pretty annoyed and decided that I would return to it at a later date. However, this plan changed after the Apple-Maps debacle which convinced me that mobile mapping was a lot more complicated than I originally surmised and since very little reliable research exists regarding the complex processes that underlie these services. I have spent a good amount of time researching the entire process from the ground up and attempting to provide analysis in what was supposed to be a 2K-4K word article but became a 22K word document packed with data and findings which lead to the conclusion that Navteq maps is poised to bring back the glory days of Nokia. Hoping to have it published by Monday market open Monday but who knows with SA sometimes! If it wasn’t obvious, I would advise you to hold the stock as the upside is astronomical!
Thank you very much. Your patent article is absolutely golden, high quality research. I revisit it often, and point to it often as a reference here in SA.
Nokia (NYSE:NOK): The telecom stock, up 18.67% yesterday to top the entire NYSE, is this morning upgraded 180 degrees (Buy from Sell) at Société Générale.
My 2 cents for Charles and every heavy Nokia bag holders in SA.
Everyone needs to understand that investors and analyst cannot come up with actual growth rates of a company. I'm a bit skeptical of analysts' earnings estimates because all opinions are pretty much pre-mature and should be taken with a grain of salt until quarterly earning are presented. You have to look deep down inside if you really believe in Nokia's growth, management, product and turnaround which will lead you to reasonable expectations. I've been so caught up with technical analysis this past 3 months that I forgot the true nature of investing is through fundamentals. Technical analysis does not attempt to measure a company's intrinsic value. I need to use more of a subjective valuation technique to truly judge the contributions of a company's management such as Nokia. My bottom line is, doing your own "due diligence" with help from a few authors/commenters of SA will convert you to be a long holder of this gem of a stock. Thank you Charles and everyone involved in this Instablog. LONG NOKIA : )
"I've been so caught up with technical analysis this past 3 months that I forgot the true nature of investing is through fundamentals. Technical analysis does not attempt to measure a company's intrinsic value."
Yep, you've got to separate your investment fundamentals from your trading technicals but using a little technical know-how can help find entry/exit points for both.
I have been doing to much reading about investment strategies which can be quite overwhelming. Great point Bilton with finding entry/exit points using technicals.
Indeed. A proper Exit strategy is more important than finding an entry point IMO. Not just a Price Target, or a Time Target, but a combination of them with fundamentals. Technicals are Historical patterns, and as such help you track investments once made. An example can be found in REIT's. Some drop After dividends, some Before. If you study past patterns, you can often decide whether tis better to collect the div, or bail a day or 2 before. While crude, that is just one use of Technical Analysis. While I'm no fan of "Chart Patterns" like "Head and Shoulders", Certain technicals should be looked at, even if with a jaundiced eye. The most important "Fundamental" IMO, is the attitude and outlook of the decision makers within a company. Often a CEO will lose a business because he/she is more focused on the Stock Value than the customer. Certain "Boards" continually hire inept people while others seem to hit winner after winner. This is as "Fundamental" as it gets.
Nokias growth is my problem for the moment, my investment idea a few month ago was great phone , nice OS, cheap stock.
I made my own forecast and hoped NOKIA / MSFT get a larger part from the market and after that they show profit / turnarround.
With the actual numbers they simple total miss my goal and instead win marketshare they lost marketshare with there smartphonebusiness.
The good thing is that they seems to stop burning cash and have now more time. I am not so pessimistic like Sail..., but i really dont like the salesnumbers.
I would prefer much more 8-9 million sold and a slight loss. With that marketshare i think we dont see 6$ this year. Increased sales and solved short supply will be compensated with lower prices ( at sample some reduced from 649 EUR to 549 EUR )
@solucky So you are basically thinking Lumias have demand issues?
I would think that the low sales were more due to intentional and component supply issues (as stated by Elop in yesterdays conf call). Now, if that is the case, and I am sure they are now ramping up the production to meet the demand. And with the improved, already at this volume level profitable, cost structure, off we go :)
@solucky, are you aware that Nokia is going to start ramping their Lumia 920 sales to China Mobile (700 million customers, with CU subsidizing over $4 billion for CY13) and India (25% of the world population)? Most long term investors are in Nokia for a stabilization of the business NOT growth. Once stabilization occurs, Nokia will be in the $6-7 range, once growth kicks in $8-10. Also, most long term investors are invested in Nokia for the whole company (NSN, Navteq, Patents, Devices) not just for their smartphone division, which explains your short sightedness.
Sometimes "Burning Cash" can be good, if done for the right purpose. 2 things about Nokia's cash burning stick out. Early on, it was R&D on competing platforms, none of which were working very well. Lately, they burned a lot of cash reorganizing to cut overhead. European labor laws being what they are, it can be expensive to close down an underperforming plant, but they burned some cash doing just that. If the cash burned had been equal, which one is better, given that the customer is not lost in the "Goal"?
Some of the "Supply' issues may have been due to moving production. Now this can cause some "Demand" issues if the country/region takes a dislike to the company laying off workers, as well as the fewer jobs also may reduce demand locally. Likely somewhere, some people begin making more money, (more demand) and there may be some lag between the demand lost and the new demand gained. Add to that, that "Potentially" some supplier sends their available parts to a "Big" customer rather than a smaller volume buyer. A company that has to buy critically needed parts from a company with divided loyalties can become vulnerable without alternate sources.
Sure i know that they have supply issues and that they increase there production. But they also lower there prices and in areas where the Lumia was available the whole time the demand is shrinking at the moment.
My mainproblem with the numbers is. WP 7/ 7,5 NOK sold 1 / 2 / 4/ 2.6 million
WP 8 so far arround 2 million if we see the same " growing " the 2013 numbers will be.
4 million WP8 in Q1 8 million in Q2 and arround 6 million in Q3.
My original expectations a few month ago was at least 50% higher. The good surprise at the moment is that Nokia stop/ reduced burning cash but for the future they must increase sales and market share.
I simple dont see an increased market share in the Q4 numbers and thats a problem for my original investment idea. I thought that NOK make the turnarround with volume..but at the moment this volume is not there.
solucky: It looks to me like you analyze in a parallel vacuum. Are you considering that as time goes by there is greater awareness of wp in general and Nokia in particular? To say that the pattern of wp8 will match wp7.5 sales seems narrow. Don`t forget that wp7.x & wp8 are now selling together and new markets are being launched. Momentum.Increases.Wit...
No need for Volume, and they do not have the capacity to crank out a lot of smartphones yet. If they can break even with 4.4 million phones sold, they will make money selling 8 million.
Thats all that we need to see in the short term. I predict $8 share price before the end of this year.
I will look to the Q4 numbers in 2 weeks, exspecially breakeven inclusive or exclusive one time payments.
But with 8$ / share we talk about a 25 billion company, if you remove the cash NOK should generate at least 1,5 billion profit.
If NOK/ MSFT really solved there supply issues and increase there marketshare i am back without a doubt, but for the last quarter i dont see that. I have no problem to be back on a higher price for NOK if i see a confirmation that they grab marketshare. IF NOK / MSFT is a real longterm success there are many points to jump in and out.
Did not not see another big day like this coming but it appears to be approaching that all important $5.00 which will open the stock to the many institutional investors that cannot trade stocks below $5, thus be advised that the stock will quickly rise toi the 6 or 7 level once 5 is reached so if anyone wants to get back in now is the time to think about it...
"that all important $5.00 which will open the stock to the many institutional investors that cannot trade stocks below $5"
Which institutional investors are going to risk investing in $NOK if it gets to $5? That is a target for some funds but they will look at fundamentals not speculative buying before risking their investors cash or retirement contributions. I would like to see someone make an unemotional case here.
bilton, at ~$5, many large buyers like CALPERS can afford to "Spec" what to us is a lifetime fortune, but to them, is in the Petty Cash drawer. They don't have to drop more than .05% of an average position to move the stock a nickle or so. They have money coming in every month that has to be put somewhere, lest they lose money to inflation. Which is more of a spec play now. AAPL or NOK? You will get many valid arguments both ways, but I would bet that they, like many of us, spread the risk across many companies. Want to buy some ENRON shares? Bet I could find you some.
OldWarrior, great point made. The "crazy growth" sentiment does wonders, AAPL was a prime example. If the Q4 earnings don't disappoint (which is unlikely it seems), the stocks will continue to grow at an astonishing rate.
Warrior, I actually traded Enron and Worldcom shares around the time of the great crash and made money. How about you? I don't marry spec, I just hop in bed with her and have a good time while the husband is out of the room. At the end of the day, I have NO risk. How about you?
I was essentially out of the market around that time, I think I had like 2k invested. I was in the process of buying a small unlisted mobile Ultrasound company. However, I had just started watching CNBC, and my wife was so impressed by the CEO of Wachovia coming on and telling some bald-faced lies that I bought about 1k $ of Wachovia and that was the last time I ever listened to either Cramer or my Wife on investing. I escaped down about 50%. I had not been doing any research for several months, as I was working 2 deals. One was the U/S company, the other was an acquaintance who had developed (or thought he had), a security device for generating a new PIN number for every ATM transaction. It was like the little security buttons for logging onto online games. Push the button, and it generates a random code number that has to be entered after your PIN #. There were some big companies (Banks) interested in it, but he needed some more startup money. It may have been a success if the banks had not been so distracted trying to survive. Fortunately, I didn't invest, and the banks gave him about 3-4 mil just before Lehman went under. It still lays there forgotten. The U/S company got bought out from under me, so I was in cash and stayed there until summer of 09. The programmer moved to NY and I lost track of him. Essentially I dodged a bullet, not by being smart, but by being lucky. Escaping the Crash with minimal damage was more a function of my long term strategy of investing in companies that I knew not only the owners of, but the medical field that I knew. People still needed healthcare, and I was almost debt free.
Two days up big, unexpectedly. This certainly feels like the Jan 8 - 9 reversed...:) As much as I like to chase the price, I have been telling myself to be patient to wait for a better deal.
I completely understand, discipline and conviction are the most important thins when it comes to investing, making a plan and sticking to it may result in a few missed opportunities nut more often than not it save retail from more rushed mistakes than they can even fathom. That said, i just wanted to let everyone know as the technicals are lining up for an outside shot at hitting 5 today at which point it is poised to run due as much to the non-institutional investors aware of this and jump in pushing the stock.
Thank you for the advice! I really appreciate it. On your advice, I would like to add again before it reaches $5, but I don't think it will happen today.
As a small fish, I've made rushed mistakes several times, and I regretted it every time. It is very hard to avoid them. This time I am prepared to miss out the gain from $4.75 to $5. while remaining hopeful to see NOK in the $4.40 - $4.50 range again.
@gwenace Well said . Some guy in Omaha said "I would rather sell a day early than a day late" Similar can be true of buying I do believe. What a difference a day has made within just the last week. If you have a target price of $7-$8 in a year, a day or 2 should still be OK IMO. NOK has a Beta of 1.6, which is to say, it has about a 50/50 chance of going up as down on any given day. My math is no more exact than "Analysts" estimates.
So why did I put money in Nokia in the first play?
This was a contrarian trade, I felt like Mr. Market had discounted Nokia to a point where it was priced to go out of business and be reduced to the OTC as it dissolves at the then price of $1.70 (that was my original entry). I felt that Nokia could last longer than 52wks (my longest measuring stick for trades) and that in that much time some of the negative sentiment that drove the price too low would come off and allow the stock to rise.
As a contrarian trade, I measure sentiment; I’m measuring what is difficult to measure because it cannot be found on the balance sheet and can be misunderstood on a chart. If it could be quantitatively verified; that side of the trade would be overly crowded and the move muted. It is a mistake to assume that the market is correcting it’s over discounting of Nokia. The market does not know what Nokia is worth because Nokia does not know what they are worth. They are transitioning into a company of a different size and focus and the markets they are selling goods and service in are changing because of global demand and changes. The stock price is going higher because it now looks like Nokia is substantially further away from bankruptcy and OTC demise than the market priced it for at a low of 1.63 (if I recall).
The market likes to sell sentiment. If the traders are mostly bearish, the market will churn out negative articles, negative analysts, and negative pundits. The hardest thing for a company in this type of situation is to change the sentiment. At some point, Nokia will be held captive by its balance sheet and will be priced based on what it’s worth. My bet is that we are still a long way from figuring that out and the market will continue to trade sentiment until that happens. There is still more negative sentiment for Nokia than there is positive amongst wall street professionals. Although there will be many pull backs and sell offs, I still believe that the upside in Nokia is a better bet than the downside. My original target for Nokia was $4 by Jan 2013. I was not right, nor did I look to be right, the target was a number I felt comfortable selling at. It was my measuring stick. I felt that this was how much negative sentiment could come off. It is January therefore I must reassess and figure how much sentiment is still worth trading on the long side.
Now comes the part of contrarian trading I love the most, “the digging in of the heels”. You see all the analysts and pundits that had labeled Nokia a trash stock, must now sound smart by scientifically explaining why it still went from $1.63 to $4.50+ and how it’s still a better “short” or “sell”. Market sentiment is very powerful, the sentiment in Nokia is not bullish, it is just less bearish. There are fewer bearish articles, talk show hosts and pundits bashing Nokia. The stock has less weight on its back and has risen because it was never worth $1.63, only negative sentiment held it there. We have not seen a sentiment change, not yet. The most positive catalysts are still ahead of the stock. Lumia China sales, further NSN expansion into LTE network build outs; Nokia pipeline filling with new Lumia’s, new tablet, surprises exclusive for Verizon’s…this is a long term transition of market sentiment from bearish to bullish. Right now the bears have dug their heels in deep and this is good for the bulls. The stock is still only rising because it has less negative sentiment holding it down. We have not yet seen the stock make a run based purely on positive catalysts like gaining substantial market share, increasing margin or grabbing large enterprise customers. At some point if Nokia is successful, the story will stop being about how they are doing “less bad”, and become about how they are rewarding share holders and moving the market with game changing products and potential market disruptors.
All of this will of course be “hype” and the sentiment will be bullish and therefore the contrarian trade will become betting against Nokia but that’s getting too far ahead (and not really my game). My point is that we are a long way from Nokia trading on fundamentals, it is trading on sentiment, at some point if it trades higher long enough it will turn sentiment into momentum this happens when the bears either tern bulls or stop selling or shorting. If Nokia can become a pure momentum play it will get massive wall street participation (bears are not against making money on the long side).
I think this will happen in 2013 if you can get back to back profitable quarters (either Q4 2012 + Q1 2013) or (Q2 2013 + Q3 2013). It could also happen if you can get the price to break above $5 and close above $5 and continue to close above it for two additional sessions. I don’t have a price target for this stock. The shares I own are house money and I’d like to see where this one goes but I reserve the right to add to the position or dump it depending on the stock, company or market; however, I am still long Nokia in both stock (now houses money) and call options (been houses money for a long time).
fantastic post! Want to add a thought I had may times...:
The Finns take lots of pride in Nokia and Finland is not Norway, or the US, or Germany. I feel the Finns would work for free or even bring their own money to sustain Nokia. It's a matter of pride! And emotions are the stuff extraordinary things are made of...!
If you have some time, can you talk a bit about the magical $5 number and what's likely to happen? I mean, will institutional investors rush out and load up, or is there a cooling off period to see if it's real.
@ewm, To add to one of the catalysts for Nokia in the later half of cy13, look for Nokia and sprint to work on a large deal. Every time Nokia's NSN division has expanded/built a telcos network, they have followed up with the release of new phones, e.g. China Mobile, AT&T, India, etc,. Note that Sprint just announced at CES, that their 4G LTE network is expanding significantly across all of the US(built by Nokia). More importantly, Sprint will soon be doing away with subsidies. Hence, it will be imperative that device makers have their 'A' game when it comes to building lost cost phones... Game, set and match for Nokia. If this business model takes hold, then look for Verizon and AT&T to follow suit.
Another thing to consider. Nokia's NSN division gives them an advantage when it comes down to behind the doors negotiations on business. Think Nokia's coup of getting their Lumia line into China Mobile was luck? I'm sure NSN had a big factor in the arrangement. Apple must be crying foul.
"More importantly, Sprint will soon be doing away with subsidies." Yeah, and this will be a big problem for Apple.. And if they drop their prices, that's yet another can of worms for Apple.
WRT China Mobile... Apple's been trying to secure that deal since 2008 and all the while China Mobile has been pushing Apple for revenue sharing. Mr. Cook was again at China Mobile Thursday and we heard nothing of a deal (still kind of soon.) But if Apple fails to strike a deal with China Mobile AGAIN, look for Apple's price per share to again drop (as confidence drops,) and it could help boost Nokia's stock price (less competition in China.)
And it may go without saying, but I also believe Apple's recent troubles are playing into Nokia's recovery. Some high-end users will be looking for a new phone to replace their aging iPhone and the high-end Nokia phones are sexy and beautiful - they will play in that market nicely.
Luke I loved the one "Apple-Long" writer saying that the 920 was only good for Pumping Iron with. How many times is he going to pump that 243 grams difference before he gets tired, turns the phone on, and says Ut-Oh <g>
I agree that this all can happen and Nokia have a real chance to do it.
Myself had a forecast for Q4 sales and a targetprice for NOK , at the moment i see NOK as a hold but decided to stay at the sideline untill i see improvements volume / marketshare.
How is the availibility of the 920 arround the world ? At least here in germany its still less / not available.
still terrible availability in the UK - there's a decent culture of buying unlocked phones here. the only people doing it fairly are clove - they keep on selling out - expansys never seems to be in stock but then again it is ranked as the most popular seller. http://bit.ly/Xm6cmf most phones in UK tend to be available on all carriers on pay as you go and contract, and have a completely unlocked price also. now that we know more about Nokia's lumia shortfalls, it is still sad to see that there is only real availability on EE as a contract. I hope within a couple of months this situation has changed. The most desireable time to own a L920 was in November. each month brings us a month closer to the 'next big thing'. It will be pretty pointless to see L920s fully available everywhere once galaxy s4 releases (and rumours are pointing towards an early launch for the new iphone also). I am happy to see its stock price rise of course, but i'm still disappointed in the total sales - however I do agree with the common bullish sentiment on this forum. As a relative stock 'newbie' - I wonder if we should remember 3 weeks before Q1 2013 announcement to ensure we are adequately positioned for the next 'positive' stock warning. I really doubt its sales will decline though that is what nokia's earning guidance indicated.
good luck! I heard another anecdote that on opening day, Nokia Hyderabad received 80 L920s. One of the richest cities in india and home to one of the largest tech hubs in the world... received 80!! they are parcelling them out like rations haha!
They seem to be adopting the "under promise, over deliver" strategy which is actually preferable given their troubles; and unlike most who use it, they are wisely using "prereleases" to keep from being taken to the wood shed by shareholder activists, bond holders and derivative market movers.
Abu: it`s quite a nice change to get "positive" stock warnings for a change. Let`s hope it becomes a habit. I was at my regular Thursday client when I took a minute to bring up Google Finance. It`s an earlier start for me on that day so I thought I was dreaming when I saw the numbers in Helsinki! And like others, I could not believe it for the first few minutes. I thought it was a glitch and that it would correct itself.
Looking for a consolidation Monday or Tuesday for no good reason (hope maybe?) just on the basis of some profit taking. I'll buy back in at 4.45 or below if I can. May just be wishful thinking on my part. Realistically, there could be a pullback after the Earnings-kind of "Buy on the Rumor..." Have to think that there will be an entry point in this volatile a stock one more time before it goes on up. Still have some shares from 3.81 or so, but not enough to be happy with. Anyone hear any juicy rumors? Other than the probable Tablet TBA at World Congress.
NSN had merged its Africa and Middle East operations alongside China announced at the beginning of the year. We already witnessed what td-scmda did for China. Telecom operators are foaming from the mouth for advanced mobile technology in emerging markets. NSN is paving the road Westward for its high end mobile phone (lumia) operations. Asha has been put in peoples hand who will most likely transition to Lumia smartphones. Then a U.S./Euro Nokia revitalization with new products at higher price margins to be subsidize and repeat process starting w/ China. Juicy : )
Here's a rumor for you: Now that it is profitable, NSN might be spun off and listed sooner than we think. The value should be over 5B EUR, half of which goes to Nokia. If Nokia takes it all in cash, that;s a nice $3.3B cash infusion :)
Siemens and NOK tried to sell NSN since awhile. noone want it and so they decided to restructure it.
Guess we need a few quarterly results to see how many NSN is worth. NSN was the whole time a looser and only turn to profitability since a few quarters.
IF Nokia and Siemens believe in success there is no reason to sell, and if they have doubts you would not generate enough during a spin off...we will see.
But a rumour could help NOK to go up, at the moment i hope it come back a bit :)
Tim Cook was at China Mobile Thursday. Apple has been trying to secure this deal since 2008. If Apple fails again to secure China Mobile I believe it will result in a boost to Nokia.
AFAIK there is something in the treaty of the JV that says they cannot exit it till 2013 or 2014 anyway. I'm also not aware that there are any selling intentions.
@solucky In my many years in Medicine, when it came to X-Ray machines, CT, MRI and other areas, Siemens was the "Standard of the Industry" like IBM, no one was ever fired for buying Siemens. Even Nokia's bad days couldn't hold Siemens down forever.
I was a few years in the large Siemens family . The company where i work for was renamed and splitted a few years, from a former computer pioneer in germany to a spin off.
I know still a bunch of people that work daily with NSN , Fujitzu Siemens....
I would not say that Siemens dont sold NSN if the price is right. If that is good or bad for NOK depends on the price..
turtledividend has sent me a message asking to create an instablog on quarterly earnings. I think it`s a good idea but I'm not the guy you want to write a good intro on the topic, and even then, I would most likely just be a reader, not a contributor, and I'm not just being modest. So go ahead peeps and create a Nokia instablog on quarterly earnings and send us the invite.
In fact anyone can create an instablog on any topic and invite anyone. You don`t get any $ for page-views but as you can tell, they tend to be more peaceful and informative, and the creator has the privilege to delete any comment. If there are too many blogs, however, comments and ideas can become scattered and the blog, diminished in value IMO.
That is one of the criticisms I had of the article "concept": you get a rehashed opinion designed to upset and generate comments to increase page-views. No one is happy except the author when he/she receives his money. The commenters can become pit one against the other in a pissing contest. I was hoping for a gathering of ideas designed to help everyone who took the time to read and add their 2 cents. I'm quite happy with the result.
I am pleased to say I have not deleted one comment to date in this blog. I guess it helps when the stock you spend so much time following and writing about starts to bear fruit. If we were all meeting in person, I am sure there would be many hand shakes and hugs and taps on the shoulders congratulating each other on our investment/ speculative choice.
As for the Quarterly Earnings, I'll pull up some 10k's after the 24th, and try to post the things that jump out to me that others might miss. I really didn't look at Nokia's Quarterly's before investing in it, there were so many other upside items going on. Like they say, Past history is no guarantee of Future Performance. What I was looking at was cash flowing out of Apple, and not leaving Tech as a whole. I looked at competitors of Apple. NOK was priced below breakup value and was being stroked by MSFT. You couldn't find a better setup but about once per decade. If you want to give me about 3 companies to study earnings of Charles, I'll give it a shot. No point in digging too deep into Nokia as they have turned around 180 Degrees since 2nd Q that their previous filings have little bearing on the current company.
I think we'd all really appreciate your analysis Oldwarrior on those results, thank you! I find the knowledge being generated on this thread to be fantastic as a whole, but your posts are particularly insightful to me, thank you.
Old warrior: if you are offering heck, how about FTR? I'm less worried about SAN but FTR has been a dog for the last 2 years and I bought in at the high of about $9.x. As far as I can tell they pretty much have a license to print money but the acquisition costs of Verizon's rural properties have been higher than expected and they are suffering from landline losses. Thankfully they now sell wireless service via a partnership with AT&T. Don't feel any obligation. Charles
Question for all? What would you do in my shoes? I already have 3500 shares of Nokia in my long term core holding. As of last week I am back in the black according to Google Finance. It represents approx 25% of my 4 company portfolio.
If you had an extra $2k and access to another $6k in credit at 5.99% interest, would you buy another 3k shares of NOK or just say no, it's not worth the risk, it would make my portfolio too concentrated, etc.
Consider MSFT, it should benefit from NOK, and much more stable/safer for borrowed money, and pays a nice dividend.
In any case, I would advice against using any borrowed money for investing in stocks. Beating 6% is difficult, and the risk will be high by definition.
NOK is my biggest long holding, MSFT second largest.
I would advise not to speculate on credit. That's a setup with which you can lose more than 100% of your input and it CAN happen.
If you still want leverage, I would prefer options instead, so that your maximum loss is 100% but not more. When I use options I select mostly slightly in-the-money options with an expiration of 5-7 months ahead.
It really depends on your age and long term goals, retirement plans, etc. If you are under 40 and want to try to make a big killing that will change your life, then you could sell all the NOK stock that you have for about $15,000 (which is about 25% of your current portfolio).
With this you could buy about 300 January 2014 $7 calls for 50 cents each, that would represent 30,000 shares. I would not hold these options until expiry, but if the stock moves up sharply over the next 3 months as many expect (hope), then you could double you money (or if you don't double it you could make 40% or 50%). At that point you could probably sell the $10 calls to form a bull call spread and get most of your initial outlay back. If NOK ended January '14 at $10 a share or better (that's a big IF), you would then show a profit of about $75,000.
If NOK didn't accelerate over the next 3 months, you would be able to sell out the options position and recoup most or maybe some of your outlay.
If NOK doesn't do as well as we all hope, you might lose your $15,000, but you would still have the other $45,000 in your account.
Or you could sell half your NOK holdings and try this approach with 150 $7 call options and have a shot at turning $7,500 into $37,500, but I would not borrow the $6,000 or try this trade on margin if it represents a large part of your portfolio.
NOK is certainly at an interesting point. If you have faith in Elop's vision and abilities to manage the company successfully, then we could be right at the start of something very big indeed. On the other hand, maybe not. Remember that NOK may do very well, but still get killed by the macroeconomic situation if the politicans screw up.
[I am not an investment professional and this should not be construed as investment advice, just a theoretical discussion.]
Or here is another play with a bit more built in safety:
Buy 200 January 2014 $3/$4 bull call spreads for 65 cents per. This will cost $13,000 and return $20,000 if NOK > = $4 on expiration in January 2014. Break even point would be $3.65.
Below $3 you would lose $13,000 but here's the thing. How much would you lose if you kept the 3,500 shares and they were below $3 in January 2014. You would lose $1.70 per share give or take, so that would be about $6,000 (mental arithmetic) you would lose, but if the stock went below $3 you would lose more.
Now, if my mental arithmetic is right, you would sell 3500 shares for $16,500 at the current price, so after you bought your options you would have $3,500 cash left versus the $10,500 in stock you would have if the stock fell to $3.
So by doing this $13,000 options trade versus holding on to the shares, you only really have $7000 at risk and you will make a very nice profit even if the stock FALLS 20% from its current valuation.
On the other hand the profit you will make will be only 50%, about the same as you would have if you kept the stock and it went up to about $7, so any gain over $7 will be missed.
Of course you could combine the two suggested trades (this post and the one before) to try to get the best of both worlds.
By buying 2 $3/$4 Jan 2014 spreads for every one long $7 Jan 2014 call, you would still make 10 cents per share if the stock remained higher than $4 in January 14 while still having a shot at huge gains if the stock takes off.
Your break even point for the combo would be $3.90.
Of course with options, as with stocks, it is judicious to set stops to prevent disastrous losses. It is also generally useful to buy into a long strategy on a pullback so as to get in cheaper.
Sorry for boring anyone who is not interested in options.
Charles, I would caution you from either buying Nokia (or RIMM for that matter) with that money on which you are paying interest. Although, I truly believe there is huge upside on both these stocks these still are speculative plays and at the values at which they are trading they are a hostage to huge swings due to good or bad news.
If I were you I would consider "safe" banks like Wells Fargo (WFC), JP Morgan (http://bit.ly/HUd5zi); or, in commodities Alcoa (http://bit.ly/pifhdN) or US Steel (X). WFC could easy go to $38/40, JPM could go to $55/58 while AA could go up to $16 in a year or so. IMO, these are safe bets (plus most of these banks including BAC are expected to start paying additional dividends which is icing on the cake). If you want to play on speculation within banks I think BAC (Bank of America) would be your best and safest bet (given that the housing market is on the mend and BAC and other banks have reached major settlements to this date). Bank of America be anywhere between $14 and $18+ in 2013 if things improve at a pace that they are improving currently.
Considering housing you could buy the builders Pulte, etc.
Just my 2 cents on what I would consider as good bets.
I had a bunch of NOK and bought a part of them on credit, but it was on a much lower level and i slept not verry well.
It works nice for me and 80% in a few months are more than good, but I never would recommend it at the moment.
But like i said before i want a confirmation that WP8 get more marketshare, i believe that NOK only can make a real turnarround and another 100% if they grab marketshare from IOS and the DROIDs.
Thanks to all for taking the time to give me your input on my question.
Rookie, I hope your options scenario helps someone after you took all that time and effort. I have never used options. They are an alien being to me. I've read about them at one time, but do not grasp the concept fully. It seems to me that money can be made without risking the whole amount, leverage, however leverage is a double edge sword and it should swing both ways. Ouch.
I was not intending on putting borrowed money in harms way unless it's almost a sure thing, and as you have pointed out, NOK seems positive but even if it does everything right, events out of its control can slow or screw things up. I guess I'm just a greedy human who finds it hard to resist the temptation of potential "riches" on the one hand. On the other hand I value my sleep and serenity more.
One option could be to take the loan and deposit the money on your investment account, but never actually use the money for buying shares, i.e. _always_ keep the cash balance over $6k. You would probably get some interest, but moreover this would give you much more flexibility and better turnover time in trading:
Say, if you sell 1000 NOK today and get ~$4700, you can not use that cash to buy more NOK until after 3 days settling period. But if you have an extra $6k cash always idling on your account as a 'buffer', you can buy more NOK already tomorrow if the PPS were to dip. This is due to the fact that from the regulatory point of view you did not use the proceeds to buy more rather than idle cash (which had already settled). From your point of view your balance never dips below $6k and you are safe, not risking borrowed money.
In a sense the 6% interest in a cost of doing business for you :)
Again, I am not an expert or financial advisor, so do your due diligence and double check with a certified financial professional before committing.
Seppo I like your disclaimer :-). Of course for my balance to never dip below $6k would presume that I would never sell at a loss. Another headwind that I did not mention, aside from the 6% interest, are the currency conversion fees that I need to pay both ways with every transaction. Unless I created a TFSA trading account in my RBC that accepts US currency...
Regarding settlement period, how the ultra fast computer traders get around this inconvenience?
Here To Make (Quick) Money With Nokia 820 comments
Ok folks, can I be more direct in the headline? The space below is for you to discuss how daily news events can or may have an impact on the trading price for NOK during the day, both ADRs in the US and shares in Helsinki.
Why? Users at SA have the option of either communicating with each other via comments in an article or by short messages in Stock Talks. This is insufficient in my opinion as we do not really have a designated area where NOK followers can focus on NOK share price.
Let me be the first to chime in: I have a long term core investment in NOK to which I am considering adding trading portion of 3k shares. This is not money that I would like to lose but it would not cripple me either.
This purchase would not go in my retirement account. I plan to put it in a Tax Fee Savings Account or TFSA for short as it is called in Canada.
Today 8 January 2013, NOK was hit with an tax audit from the Indian government and may be on the hook for a large fine of $500M US. I do not know when a decision to prosecute will be made and how long this will take to go through the courts.
Also out today a guesstimate was given on how many Lumias were sold in Q4, approx 4 million. If so, what kind of impact would this have on the share price, extrapolating results from the other Nokia divisions as well?
Chime in as I want to know when I should buy those 3k shares, at what price, and when I should sell them!
Let's make some money!
Disclosure: I am long NOK.
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Technically speaking, NOK is not in good shape. Volume on yesterday was high on -4%. NOK might rebound to test $4.2, but on low volume, and drop soon after.
I forecast NOK will test $3.8 support soon, before the end of the week.
AAPL news about iPhone mini will boost fear on NOK, because AAPL is now willing to compete on where NOK still has decent market share (cheaper phones).
A lot of people are still buying iPhone because it WAS the best phone out there, but the situation has changed.
"We" see Apple as it is now, but emerging markets see it very differently. They didn't have access to each and every iPhone model or other Apple devices. In most countries it's a dream to own an Apple product other than an iPod. It would be an unexpected opportunity for them to purchase an "iPhone". And that's all that counts. Of course, Apple will blow up the margins by offering ridiculously low specifications, as it did for iPad mini, but the first year of the release people won't care. It's going to be the huge success in emerging markets. So phones like Lumia 620, Lumia 820, GS3 mini, Blackberry's, HTC's and even all the Chinese phone makers will certainly feel it coming. Heads are going to fall, while Apple will do what it does the best, it will make more cash. Making money is not "always" about innovation. They are taking the last big money of "iPhone" and either Job's magic is still here and they are coming with something even more spectacular, either they will simply keep coming with some upgrades. Anyhow, Apple's fall is certainly not for now. And no, I'm not long AAPL, but I'm seriously considering it.
I've read no official word from aapl, just rumours.... but have not gone looking. Don`t you think a cheap iphone would tarnish the brand in the eyes of the "elite" aapl users and turn them away to another phone?
Just be careful with your entry, as there is now two negative factors, and nervousness as a result in the air. You could perhaps enter in two steps, 1500+1500 to average the PPS to play it safer.
I hope someone presents an analysis on the Taiwan patent infringement suit, possible impact on today`s price.
Also since the iPad mini, it seems more and more to me that iOS is not moving in the direction to be a more powerful OS, while Windows RT is, with Office, the Desktop and the other Windows Classic features.
http://bit.ly/VpfR6S
Persistence is rewarding..
http://bit.ly/VBkiLP
It seems the L920T is selling quite well in China if we are to believe the links provide in a stocktalk by Colaolli today.
As far as sales of the BB10, don`t you think it`s a bit premature to judge? I would be surprised if BB did not do well but that does not preclude NOK from doing well as well. Well as well. Well as well. :-)
Nokia's Lumia 920 had severe component shortages. It was only on sale for 8 weeks last quarter. It was only on sale at AT&T, where they still have yet to sell the Yellow and Cyan model at their store. It was only until the last couple weeks of the quarter when the Units actually started to show up in the AT&T retail stores. The 920 is STILL in short supply throughout Europe. The 920 has only started to sell in India and China (still in short supply over there).
In one quarter, Nokia will start selling variants of the 920 (EOS & Catwalk) to Verizon and T-Mobile. They will finally have sales of their high end smartphone on all the major Telco's across the entire world. Sales results of their '920' will be in full force, especially with India & China coming on board. Then of course, Nokia has the Lumia 620. A full fledged WP8 smartphone, that sells for $250 OFF CONTRACT!!!! Google it for more info.
Now you got cold feet on finding a new entry point.
Just an analysis, no pun intended.
We have nothing to base this upon. The OS (QNX) is brand new, as is the UI. Also the hardware is totally different. Business would be buying the blackberry on name only.
Also, Blackberries were popular back when IT had ownership over the Information Technology data center, this is no longer the case with BYOD ..
I just don't see business people ditching their iPhones and Galaxys for Blackberries. The business world has moved on.
I was only verry short in blackberriy and took my 12% after a week.
Overall i trust Nokia more, at 4,75$ they was too expensive for me but they reached a level close to my next buyorder.
At the moment its pure speculating if one or both NOK / RIM made the turnarround or not.
We will see if RIM get the business consumers, at least in germany private consumers never liked blackberrys.
NOK definetely show some weakness here and there.
1. Asha growth seems stopped ( Januar Data )
2. If Elop dont bluff no tablet at the trade fair in Feb
3. How will the new phones run and what show the competition at the fair in Feb
If we see a foldable 10" tabphone from Samsung, they would get the most attention.
I am general still long in NOK, but think i get a few percent discount :).
Someone looked to asha sales in Jan ? If it is reliable it seems they lost against entry level droids.
http://bit.ly/12qNdt8
S40 = Nokia Asha
If you look at the transcript you will notice that it is quite long. In case you did not know you can get MS Word to read the text aloud to you instead.
Copy and paste the text from the page to MS Word, then use the Read function from word. It will read whatever text you have selected so make sure you select all the text once it is pasted in Word. Also you may need to re-start the Read a couple of times during. Just click Ctrl-F to find the last sentence read and select the rest of the text from there to continue.
Here`s how to get the Read function from Word:
http://bit.ly/UvuBX0
Hopefully this article will give the Android cheerleaders enough understanding about why NOK will never use that OS. The very, very valuable HERE (Navteq) that cost how many billions would become useless and a direct competitor or Google Maps. In 4 words: not going to happen.
Forecast growth: Endless http://www.navteq.com
http://seekingalpha.co...
I say 100 euros profit/device. So you are looking at 400m EUR. If the costs do not rise or drop that is still a loss making handset division. The other divisions are harder to evaluate as the numbers/prices and profit margins are hidden.
I would say buy after earnings unless you believe the earnings will significantly top estimates.
What was the price on that day? $9.36. Look at share price mid nov 2011, past q3 results? $6.50+ death of symbian priced in. I say objectively price should be past $7 today if not for manipulators.
Yes, Nokia looks certainly much better than a year ago, but it's far from perfect. I still have doubts regarding Nokia's ability to keep its phone division. Even if at the Q4 announcement Nokia won't have any losses at its phone division we can expect any tremendous profits either. The results are going to be around -50m and 50m which is simply ridiculous for a company of Nokia's size. On the long term it is not viable and sometimes tough decisions must be taken. I think that Q4 will be the answer to most of questions and conserns. We'll see if Mr Elop is on the right way.
The India Tax issue is more of a concern, as they can order trebble damages, bringing the tax bill to $500 M + 500Mx3= total 2Billion plus. That would be only a speedbump to Apple or Google, but could crush NOK if it comes to worst case. I also hear that a few well-placed bribes could make things go away completely, and NOK is not bound by US laws against Bribery. It's all very confusing at this point to me today, and I can see a drop to 3.8 0r lower this week. The question is, is this a buying opportunity, or should I take money off the table while I am still at a profit until this dies down. I really want to stay with NOK for 12-18 months. How low do you expect NOK to go before rebounding?
this actually reminds me of the Vodafone tax case in India.
http://reut.rs/11facXs
As an example of a company driven out of the country at one point in its history look at Coca Cola (Coke) and IBM who were driven out of the country by George Fernandez (who was a well known socialist). Things happen in Asia which you sometimes start scratching your head about to make sense - but there are always deeper wrinkles in that story that are tied to the push and pull game between the politicians and the industry.
There is a very nice British series "The Story of India" by Michael Wood
http://bit.ly/XN4POC
that is worth watching. Sometimes history gives you a deeper insight into investing :)
India is trying to distance itself from the Russian influenced policies that kept India from so much progress over the last 20 years. They have a lot of well educated people there, but the best have left India for better opportunities in the UK as well as the US.
Unfortunately if I'm right and it gaps up 3-10 cents then I have lost a buying opportunity as I do not buy when markets are closed.
Fundamentally, economic factors (negative sentiments) will be in full effect before Q4 earning. You need to pay attention to these chain of events which is most likely created by big institutions to place your bets.
You should follow your gut instincts Charles. Putting aside trend , technical and fundamental analysis.
I haven't sold any of my position. My 10th and last position Dec. 11th P/S 3.78 @ 3000shares. It was purchased w/ 30% margin hoping for a parabolic move in the year 2013. LONG NOK. Good Luck.
I loaded my NOK trading position today @$4.07 in average (roughly 1/5 of my core position).
My key take is this graph, NOK in mid October (18th) during last Earning report. The price went up during the week leading to the earnings and then dropped back to base level after the earnings. I am planning to get fully vested in my trading position for that ascend:
http://bit.ly/11dHiar
Now, the easy way to make money is to sell before the earnings, and bag the profits. But if the prize does not drop, then one looses even better profits. I am pretty confident that the earnings will not disappoint. The market psychology is nevertheless always wayward. So I will probably sell 50% of my trading position just before the earnings call, and hold on to the rest.
Thru the earnings, I am going to hold on to my core portfolio (averaged a bit below $3) no matter what.
That is, my swing trading philosophy is to execute several trades of smaller profit so that profits add up over time instead of trying to master only a few trades of larger returns.
My NOK long core position is a different story, it is meant to be a multi x bagger.
On Schwab, Bid 4.04 Ask 4.07 so up also. Just not as much.
Closed 4.05, so if you want in, you can maybe get in at 4.05 after hours if lucky. I personally want to wait for 3.8, maybe 3.85 for my next entry point, but I am already in 4k shares @ 4.67, and 1600 more @ 4.81
my current Tech limit is $20k so I am already a bit Tech heavy for diversification, but NOK was just too good.
No way would NOK want to alienate MSFT right now.
I too am likely to take half my 3.67 position off the table before earnings, as there is no way NOK can make everyone happy. The "analysts" will all jump on NOK if NOK misses their expectations, and all the "Cheerleaders" will sell low right after IMO. that will be the buying opportunity I think I am looking for, not down to 3.8, but likely below 4 as the events unfold. Still, I am in NOK for 12-18 months unless something really ugly happens.
Which is not to say I won't do some trading along with my Long position.
I'm Luke Tomasello and I'm long Nokia .... ;-)
I have two large core holdings, one in my trading account and one in my ROTH. My price target for these blocks is $8
I also day trade Nokia frequently in fairly large blocks. These blocks I often flip for .05 - .35.
With regard to today's news about the tax audit, I was immediately concerned, but I quickly noticed the stock recovering a tad, then even going up a penny in After Hours. This hints to me that part of the movement was simply the gravity of a down market and that NOK will likely shake off this tax blemish. However, if story balloons even more, then all bets are off.
I am very happy with both Elop and the current trajectory of Nokia and especially the Lumia. The new aluminium Lumia is a beautiful phone and should quite all the "too heavy" jabber that you hear by the nay saying analysts (you now have a choice.)
I've been patiently waiting for my 920 class device to appear on Verizon, and I refuse to settle for an 822. My hunch is that maybe the aluminium follow-on 920 phone *could* be the phone that ends up on Verizon.
In addition to my $NOK, I also have long $INTC and $MSFT positions on which I write covered calls to enhance yield. I also hold EA, although I'm not sure why...
I'll come back to this party maybe tomorrow morning, I need to take the old lady out for the evening!
PS. Good idea Charles
At the moment Nokia is up 1.5~2% in Finland. Tomorrow won't be bad. Nokia is one of the most resilient stocks I have followed, I feel pretty "safe" with a relatively high average price.
As to Q4 earnings, I am still on the fence. I plan to swing trade at least half of my positions before the earnings. I suspect that there will be a tank before earnings as nonbelievers take profit before the call. I agree that the expectation is so high now that it's good for the stock. The results will likely be a mix of goods and bads (number of phones sold, good; margin, bad), so the stock will become extremely volatile after the call.
For example now is a great opportunity for me to buy back my april 20th $3 AMD puts for a small profit and turn around and use the money to sell the Feb 13 $3.50 put.
UP:
- India launch
- Partnership with Avanade
DOWN:
- patent suite by Taiwan TPK display company
- tax evasion accusation by India govt.
- rumour of cheaper iPhone?
Will it continue its descent to Jan 24th earnings or is it same ol same ol 'til then?
Low: 3.85
High: 3.98
13 cents X 3000 shares = $390.
Put in a limit sell @ 4.05 for the day.
Trying not to be greedy.
CrazyJoys ( http://bit.ly/13iTsNA ) reports Nokia is being sued for 4 billion USD, but the actual number is only USD 4.28 million.
The truth can be found here at Reuters: http://reut.rs/UWKYJf
PS. I posted over at CrazyJoys and asked them to correct their story, but my post is in the moderation queue. I suggest you guys do the same.
Any way, thanks for checking OW.
"Nokia seems to be hijacking traffic on some of its phones, grabbing your HTTPS data unencrypted".
http://tnw.co/WtUmRw
Also, we might be seeing some shaking of the tree, to get the weak out, so that the dark overlords can buy some stock for cheap before the earnings...
Any opinions?
A nice little $2k savings for you!
First and foremost. I personally don't think a sudden announcement of Lumia sales in china/India will evolve. It's never been Nokia's style. If china mobile or some other website does, it will be greeted with a big yawn and skepticism. The media is in a frenzy to hyper critique Nokia as evidenced by the Spanish interview with Elop. Since when has a company had to clarify an interview by its CEO? I also don't think Elop will announce Lumia 920 units shipped during the JAN 24th conference call.
Trading Nokia NOW prior to earnings is anyone's guess. The prime time to trade Nokia would be around 2 weeks prior to MWC. We know Nokia will be announcing a whole lot of new devices at MWC, along with new partnerships. I.e. buy the rumors, sell the news.
When I have more time this weekend, I'll chime in on my thoughts about Nokia's quarterly report.
Editorial: I'm starting to like Elop more and more. You have to believe that Elop threw us a bone by pre-releasing numbers. Even Elop saw the crap that was going on the last 2 days. Hopefully this is a new leaf in Nokia's game plan... start releasing sales (units) numbers as soon as they become material. This will be extremely beneficial when China and India 8/920 sales kick in. Shorts will have to abandon their positions or risk losing 10-20% in a single day. Major short squeeze will occur at the $5 mark.
Oh, I am Mike and am long NOK ;)
Caught me without any bullets ready, so I have to wait till Friday to move funds into my stock account. Friday is also the day that the shorts will be trying to push it down, though not as hard as the Jan 18 Options expiration. IMO it may keep testing that 3.74 support level through Friday, then start rebounding next week. My outlook has changed though. I had expected some selling after the 6K filing, but now that we have had our consolidation, I believe that NOK can only climb from whatever bottom it sets this week. The shaky people have already capitulated, and probably at a loss so it will be a month before they can buy back in-right around the World Congress which is Nokia's big event. Historically they skip the CES like this year, to make their next product announcement at the WC. That is when I expect them to announce a 10 in Tablet for release around May (If they can get the chips by then).
1) You don't have to use it as leverage but it is nice when you have the money elsewhere but need to make a trade now.
2) It allows your broker to put the money in your account immediately when you sell something rather than wait 3 days for the trade to settle.
2 days down in US, and 3rd straight day in Helsinki @2.88 Euros, -3.87%, as I write this very early Thursday. I am going to hold off adding for now. Also I am divided if I should take a loss on the 1k ADRs bought @3.90 Wed, or wait a few more days and see, or just add it to my long term core.
Helsinki is just catching up with NYSE, it will rebound around EUR 2.89-2.9 and wait for WS to open
If there are not enough buyers at these levels, shorters will push the stock towards $3.6, and then we'd need to see carefully what happens.
$4 is a decent bet provided volume supports the bounce idea
The patent suite issue is equally troublesome for the same aforementioned reasons, time wise, it can drag on and become more deteriorating to the share price than any damages that could be awarded.
The tree was shaken and some speculative money fled. Nokia must find a bottom from which to build a base and draw in new speculative trader flows or new investors. As a speculative trade it relies heavily on sentiment and the sentiment which had gotten quite positive has now turned. The stock price needs to survive this long enough for earnings to pass and shed some light on whether or not the previous bullish sentiment was justifiable. There are a multitude of positive forward catalysts; however they have been muted by fear which works well against bullish speculation.
As far as the approaching earnings; being honest, what we won't see is a profit and we also will not see the band aide of device sells plug up the gunshot wound of spending and costs. What we can hear is better than expected sales on all devices and lower than expected loss per share and possibly good news out of NSN.
Those could provide a relief rally especially after a huge sell off, but there's the problem, there is a lot of time between now and earnings and the stock could continue to go lower. There is also the possibility that the losses are greater than expected and unit sales of feature phones or smartphones or both disappoint.
I can make a bear and a bull case (which you should always be able to do no matter the situation) but I decided at the start of the year I'd make no further moves in NOK until after earnings, I still hold to that.
other divisions being equal, how many smartphones does Nokia really need to sell to break even?
I can see it selling 7-9million this quarter. Next quarter will be pivotal. it WILL need to have full availability across its target markets. These stockouts are very unhelpful and once next gen competitor phones start hitting the market, its negative impact on nokia will increase.
Greg Sullivan: Windows Phone has 5% market share, "selling like hotcakes in China"
http://shar.es/4CxZm
Microsoft executives are pretty hyped about Windows Phone sales at the minute.
While they are not revealing exact sales figures, we have already had Steve Ballmer talking about sales being 4 to 5 times higher at the end of last year.
Now we have Greg Sullivan, Senior Marketing Manager at Microsoft, in an interview with PCMag also delivering encouraging news.
He told PCMag Windows Phone 8 handsets were "selling like hotcakes in China," and that the OS was also gaining success with Nokia’s Windows Phones in the U.S.
He also repeated Ballmer’s statements that sales were five times higher for the last week of December when compared with a year earlier.
"The sales trends are there for Windows Phone," Sullivan said. "They are going in the right directly absolutely and strongly."
"There’s sales momentum, carrier momentum, and app momentum, with 125,000 apps," Sullivan noted.
He also revealed that Windows Phones now had 5% market share, presumably of the world-wide market, and said focus groups found consumers were now more often considering buying one, helped by a robust marketing campaign.
"With Windows Phone 8, we’re in this for the long haul," Sullivan said. "We used to think about Windows as software on a PC, but it’s also on the server and in the cloud and in Skybox and other services even Xbox. Windows is not only Windows and Windows Phone. It’s across all parts of Microsoft."
Windows 8/RT/Phone by MSFT. <-------------
I like underdogs and history has proven MSFT likes to come from behind and nip you in the butt. Office suite took down competitors like Wordperfect and Lotus 123, Xbox took down Nintendo and Sony, Windows NT server took down Novell Netware and Linux for 75 percent of the Enterprise Server market.
Windows xp/7 together own close to 75% of the Operating systems market http://bit.ly/KPoXUJ, anyone remember OS/2?
As you can see, MSFT does real well coming from behind. It was caught dozing behind the wheel with the Tablet and smartphone market , Along with Nokia. But it is not to late for them, never say never
Thats my main reason for believing in NOK.
Nokia is already rumored to come out with a couple of WinRT based tablets and once the Haswell chipsets from Intel come out I am sure they will build a Windows 8 Pro Tablet that can run all legacy windows programs and last at least 8 hours without charging.
Has anyone looked at this http://bit.ly/UYnp2z , Its a real big touchscreen computer, What would prevent Nokia from incorporating this kind of tech and building a LCD TV? Now that would give Apple TV and Google TV a run for the money.
The only thing you have to add to this setup are some Kinect sensors and its the future. No need to go up to that monitor and touch it. All you got to do is sit on your couch and start pointing in thin air.
Just before a major release from Nokia that exceeds expectations on most accounts, the stock price takes a major nose dive as COINCEIDENTALLY the company becomes under attack by events that could have easily transpired weeks and even months ago. Your choices are 1) pure coincidence 2) someone made well timed calls to all the right friends in India and China or 3) Jesus likes to play stock market. I'm gonna pretty much rule out 1&3 ;-)
Of course I’m just joking; the cascading of events is purely coincidental; that is as long as Nokia is found to have dodged taxes and fined a hefty sum and did in fact violate a patent and forced to pay substantial licensing fees and massive one time upfront payment. By the time either of those becomes a reality I doubt anyone will remember or care. Enjoy the nice rip boys, and take some off the table and buy yourself a sweater!
Anyhow, I'm not going to cash out until all this euphoria is going to settle down. It's obvious that there is way too much movement on the market and it's being completely deregulated for a couple of days. Hard to predict the next NOK's movement. Unfortunately there is still no coverage of NOK on sites and channels like CNBC...
What do you think about the Q4 numbers, i am not so overwhelmed with 6,9 million smartphones. Ashaline is better than i expected and NSN still strong.
http://bit.ly/XRKYO9
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...
It's too soon Jim; it’s too soon.... :-(
Maybe nobody will watch it, crap; I'm going to bed ;-)
Yeah, kind of like the kiss of death eh?
Nokia (NOK): Investors purchased almost 29,000 April 4.50 puts, mostly for $0.71 and $0.72, looking for the shares to push lower. NOK rose 17 percent to $4.38.
http://yhoo.it/11jHgOi
Well, while I feared an earnings warning, I didn't expect this. A little while ago I took profits on most of my NOK holdings in my trading IRA account and bought the January $4/$4.50 bull call options spread for 11 cents, reasoning that if NOK bombed I could only lose 11 cents per share, and if it finished the January options period at $4.50, I would have a four bagger. I also kept a few thousand shares long in my Roth IRA account which is now up 50% over the last 6 months purely based on trading in and out of NOK stock (no options.) Would have been better to buy and hold, but, oh well. Profit beats loss any day.
Over the last two days I was a bit dispirited as I had expected a slow rise into earnings and with the two down days was now expecting the $4/$4.50 bull call spread to expire worthless. Since the value of the short January $4.50 calls was now next to worthless, I bought them all back to make my position longer, and balanced a bit with some February $4 puts in case of further slippage.
(I had kind of suspected the Indian tax thing was a contrived put up job, because there was also heavy call option activity in NOK.)
This morning I quickly sold the remaining long shares in my ROTH in the premarket for an average of $4.49 with the intention of buying them back for less later on if possible,.
The bull call spread now looks very positive and will break even on January 19th at $4.11, however, since the bull call spread is no longer a spread, I will probably start to take some profits when options trading opens today, and put the rest on offer if NOK spikes higher to $4.70 this morning.
My prediction is that NOK hits a short term high at 10:00 a.m. today, but who really knows what will happen with short covering, or if the stock approaches the magical $5.
The earnings "warning" is positive, but not completely euphoric as there is a kind of warning that things may not be that great in the next quarter. Now what we want to know is whether there will be a dividend this year.
1:30 p.m. Well my prediction about the 10:00 a.m high was off, but I sold off all my January $4 calls for an average of about 45 cents, so happy with that. I am also short a stack of January $4 puts that I had sold for 12 cents per share, and it seems pretty likely that they will pay off in full too. My April $3.50 short puts also look fine and I will keep them. I am also long an April $4.50/$5 bull call spread that is looking a lot more promising now than it was a couple of days ago.
Having lost money on the way down via LEAP put and call spreads, I had cashed out on the short legs of the spreads below $2.20, increased my long option positions, and had a nice ride up over the last couple of months that had taken my overall NOK dealing firmly into green ink territory.This spike today has made NOK into a major winner for me, and I hope for others.
There is also a case to be made at this point that possibly Stephen Elop is not the goofy incompetent Microsoft lackey who does not understand the phone business, which has been a common theme of posters here on SA. NOK isn't out of the woods yet, but we MIGHT be seeing the beginning of competent management with better things to come. Certainly something to think about.
An announcement of a NSN spin off, for example, might be good.
http://bit.ly/VN19JR
As you know we got a clue today with the Q4 smartphone number release. 4.4 Lumias, 6.6M total smartphones. This started the momentum back up again.
BUT what the Wall Street Journal notes which many tech publications are leaving out since it is not in the press release:
http://on.wsj.com/WvAWvA
"But the Finnish handset maker still expects its main devices and services unit to record a fall in net sales in the fourth quarter of 2012, to €3.9 billion ($5.10 billion) from €6 billion a year earlier, with total device shipments projected at 86.3 million units, down from 113.5 million."
That is a 35% drop and 27.2 million fewer units. That is not just Lumia or smartphone units.
There were no activation numbers only "sales". Activation is more important because it shows a unit off the retailer shelf and in the hands of a consumer. Also, Elop claimed supply constraint due to parts shortage which affected "other phone makers" as well. We shall see if that is true as other makers report.
If i look to the ASP it goes up from 155 EUR to 185 EUR so my guessing "ONLY " arround 2 million 920 + 820, and there are also Lumia 510 sales from india inside these 4,4 million Lumias.
I had my own forecast of 8-9 million smartphones and a slight loss, so the numbers are mixed for me. At the moment Nokia is fair valued in my opinion and still have a great growing chance.
But i will wait untill the final Q4 numbers, if they show weakness 5-10% lower than today i am back . For the moment i dont see news that push Nokia higher.
Just for some information. I sold 1000 shares a last week for 4.17 and bought it all back yesterday for 3.70. Lets say I was grinning ear to ear this morning.
At this point all the NOK shares I own are completely paid with money made from sellling NOK high and buying low. So essentially my average price is $0 per share.
You will have to pry these shares from my cold dead hands!!!
Long NOK!
As of now, I have moved my position over to $RIMM as I think there is a similar upside in $RIMM.
Job well done!
Preliminary outlook for the first quarter 2013:
http://bit.ly/VN19JR
Nokia expects its non-IFRS Devices & Services operating margin in the first quarter 2013 to be approximately negative 2 percent, plus or minus four percentage points. This outlook is based on Nokia's expectations regarding a number of factors, including:
- competitive industry dynamics continuing to negatively affect the Smart Devices and Mobile Phones business units;
- the first quarter being a seasonally weak quarter;
- consumer demand, particularly for our Lumia and Asha smartphones;
- continued ramp up for our new Lumia smartphones;
- expected cost reductions under Devices & Services' restructuring program; and
- the macroeconomic environment.
Nokia expects Location & Commerce non-IFRS operating margin in the first quarter 2013 to be negative due to lower recognized revenue from internal sales, which carry higher gross margin, and to a lesser extent by a negative mix shift within external sales.
Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks expect Nokia Siemens Networks non-IFRS operating margin in the first quarter 2013 to be approximately positive 3 percent, plus or minus four percentage points. This outlook is based on Nokia Siemens Networks' expectations regarding a number of factors, including:
- competitive industry dynamics;
- the first quarter being a seasonally weak quarter;
- product and regional mix;
- expected continued improvement under Nokia Siemens Networks' restructuring program; and
- the macroeconomic environment.
Nokia will provide more details when it reports fourth quarter and full year 2012 results on January 24, 2013.
Nokia will be hosting a conference call today at 13:30 UK time (8:30 EST).
The dial-in number for media (listen only - the question and answer session will be limited to financial analysts and investors only) is +1 706 634 5012. Conference ID: 86914019.
The dial-in number for financial analysts and investors is US: +1 888 636 1561. Conference ID: 86914019. UK: +44 1452 560 299. Conference ID: 87088764.
A replay of the call will be available soon after the call completion. The replay number is US: +1 800 585 8367. Conference ID: 86914019. UK: +44 1452 55 0000. Conference ID: 87088764.
Apple's Tim Cook Has Talks With China Mobile: Little Expected As A Result http://onforb.es/WvGwOt
Should sell or keep the remaining half of my trade position (acquired yesterday for cheap)?
I am long with my larger core holding in any case...
Thanks for everyone here in SA NOK community. Everyday learning something new.
Long NOK in my core position...
You undoubtedly made money so how can that be bad. Use some of that money to buy into dips, which will inevitably happen in a stock with a Beta of 1.6. (1.0 is neutral) After twice taking profits of a dollar/share or so, now I am playing with at least $2.00 of "House Money. That of course means I can buy in, take a 10% profit or loss, and still be happy. You now have an overall positive position, so you can set tighter Stop Losses safely. Enjoy your day.
If Charters are right, tomorrow will open higher, then drop as the big short squeeze happened today. I would not be buying early in the day myself, but pick your own poison.
Yeah, I decided to take the money, and wait for the next dip, be it at lower or higher baseline. Like you said, with this volatility, the opportunity keeps on repeating...
This article in Forbes wants you to believe that this is bullish for Walmart and Apple and bearish for ATT and Nokia on the low end.
First of all the upfront cost is from 400 to 600, then $45/month, clearly they do not understand where the consumer crowd in the U.S. that uses prepaid phones comes from. They are not dodging a contract; at least 70% just can't afford to put 400 to 600 on a phone!
They are on a budget, they want a $40 to $100 phone and a $20 to $30 phone bill, and who is this bootleg company providing the service? Is it 4G-LTE and what’s the coverage? Is this literally and figuratively Apples to apples?
What it sounds like to me is the iPhone 5 making huge sales volume but also killing the iPhone 4 (just like everyone warned them it would) so now they've got to get creative on how to move excess inventory because nobody wants a 4x when they can have a 5. Look forward to the same issue with the iPads, the iPad mini is crushing the numbers and will likely be crushing its siblings into margin dust! I've not even heard anyone mention iPod numbers, they could also disappoint. Apple had a huge product refresh and its likely (2) of those products will have to pull the wagon if they are going to beat (which they will likely do, but at what cost?)
Then we have Intel making real inroads into mobile with the Lenovo K900 http://bit.ly/VNnnsM
4.45 +0.70 (18.67%)
After Hours: 4.50 +0.05 (1.12%)
Share is overbought, I'd say the share will correct today towards $4.2, or maybe resist around $4.4 today and drop on Monday.
To summarize, the company holds a patent portfolio that is truly industry leading as it trails only Microsoft in total number of issued patents yet surpasses Microsoft and all others by a large margin when it comes to strategic importance and technological innovation. This is apparent in the fact that Nokia holds approximately 19% of all patents considered essential to mobile 4G/LTE technology. The ability of Nokia to maintain such a consistently high success rate while asserting and defending claims against multiple competitors for a variety of different technologies in numerous continents shows the true dominance of their patented technology. Annual IPR revenue will be about $600, despite this significant amount of free cash flow, the staggering truth is that patent monetization was not a major emphasis of Nokia management until recent quarters when Elop began to push active monetization of the patent portfolio. To this end, the first major manifestation of this approach was the lawsuit filed against Rimm, Viewsonic and HTC which in May 2012. The IPR revenues resulting from the settlement if these suits will begin to materially impact revenue by Q4 of this year and combine that with the potential of licensing settlements for the other major Android manufactures and annual IPR revenue could very easily surpass $1 billion by early 2014.
And while many investors would rather not fathom this situation, if the Nokia turnaround proves to be short-lived and in a worst case scenario Nokia approaches bankruptcy, it seems plausible that Nokia would follow the path of Nortel/Motorola and sell their patents to the highest bidder in an auction based sale. In such an event, it would appear that in n identical auction setup with the same companies bidding on the patents, Nokia garner substantially more than Nortel (4.5) or Motorola (5.5) as its portfolio is sustainably superior in every conceivable valuation metric, it seems plausible to assume that at the very least Nok would sell for the 4.5 garnered by Nortel however, even in such a discounted scenario investors must remember that 4.5 is a substantial floor for a company with a market cap of only 12 billion.
Very briefly, the second article deals with my assertion that most many mobile markets outside if the US and UK are still in their infancy and as such feature-phones will continue to make up a majority of device sales in such places. In particular, I focus on gigantic opportunity this allows Nokia in India which is the world’s second largest mobile market and due to a variety of factors from a lack of complete lack of mobile centric infrastructure to extremely low per capita income, the majority of users have no desire in smartphones as evidenced by the prevalence of the feature phone which still makes up 90% of units sold.
As some of you may remember, I mentioned that Navteq and the mobile mapping market encompassed my third and final area of upside for Nokia and as such I had completed a rather detailed article on the subject about two weeks after I published the patents article but after having it sent back multiple times by SA editors do to length restrictions I became pretty annoyed and decided that I would return to it at a later date. However, this plan changed after the Apple-Maps debacle which convinced me that mobile mapping was a lot more complicated than I originally surmised and since very little reliable research exists regarding the complex processes that underlie these services. I have spent a good amount of time researching the entire process from the ground up and attempting to provide analysis in what was supposed to be a 2K-4K word article but became a 22K word document packed with data and findings which lead to the conclusion that Navteq maps is poised to bring back the glory days of Nokia. Hoping to have it published by Monday market open Monday but who knows with SA sometimes!
If it wasn’t obvious, I would advise you to hold the stock as the upside is astronomical!
Thank you very much. Your patent article is absolutely golden, high quality research. I revisit it often, and point to it often as a reference here in SA.
Looking forward to your new research articles.
Thanks,.
Seppo
-And its going to be 4 separate parts as i finally just decided to stop fighting it and just oblige the SA editors haha
Read more: http://bit.ly/11myQFH
Everyone needs to understand that investors and analyst cannot come up with actual growth rates of a company. I'm a bit skeptical of analysts' earnings estimates because all opinions are pretty much pre-mature and should be taken with a grain of salt until quarterly earning are presented. You have to look deep down inside if you really believe in Nokia's growth, management, product and turnaround which will lead you to reasonable expectations. I've been so caught up with technical analysis this past 3 months that I forgot the true nature of investing is through fundamentals. Technical analysis does not attempt to measure a company's intrinsic value. I need to use more of a subjective valuation technique to truly judge the contributions of a company's management such as Nokia. My bottom line is, doing your own "due diligence" with help from a few authors/commenters of SA will convert you to be a long holder of this gem of a stock. Thank you Charles and everyone involved in this Instablog. LONG NOKIA : )
Yep, you've got to separate your investment fundamentals from your trading technicals but using a little technical know-how can help find entry/exit points for both.
Sorry Luke : )
A proper Exit strategy is more important than finding an entry point IMO. Not just a Price Target, or a Time Target, but a combination of them with fundamentals. Technicals are Historical patterns, and as such help you track investments once made. An example can be found in REIT's. Some drop After dividends, some Before. If you study past patterns, you can often decide whether tis better to collect the div, or bail a day or 2 before. While crude, that is just one use of Technical Analysis. While I'm no fan of "Chart Patterns" like "Head and Shoulders", Certain technicals should be looked at, even if with a jaundiced eye.
The most important "Fundamental" IMO, is the attitude and outlook of the decision makers within a company. Often a CEO will lose a business because he/she is more focused on the Stock Value than the customer. Certain "Boards" continually hire inept people while others seem to hit winner after winner. This is as "Fundamental" as it gets.
I made my own forecast and hoped NOKIA / MSFT get a larger part from the market and after that they show profit / turnarround.
With the actual numbers they simple total miss my goal and instead win marketshare they lost marketshare with there smartphonebusiness.
The good thing is that they seems to stop burning cash and have now more time. I am not so pessimistic like Sail..., but i really dont like the salesnumbers.
I would prefer much more 8-9 million sold and a slight loss. With that marketshare i think we dont see 6$ this year. Increased sales and solved short supply will be compensated with lower prices ( at sample some reduced from 649 EUR to 549 EUR )
I would think that the low sales were more due to intentional and component supply issues (as stated by Elop in yesterdays conf call). Now, if that is the case, and I am sure they are now ramping up the production to meet the demand. And with the improved, already at this volume level profitable, cost structure, off we go :)
http://bit.ly/11mWaDp
are you aware that Nokia is going to start ramping their Lumia 920 sales to China Mobile (700 million customers, with CU subsidizing over $4 billion for CY13) and India (25% of the world population)?
Most long term investors are in Nokia for a stabilization of the business NOT growth. Once stabilization occurs, Nokia will be in the $6-7 range, once growth kicks in $8-10.
Also, most long term investors are invested in Nokia for the whole company (NSN, Navteq, Patents, Devices) not just for their smartphone division, which explains your short sightedness.
Lots of ups and downs. Shorts pull the shares down and if there is any good news before options expiration, there is a pop upwards ie short squeeze.
My advice is to find a way to profit from this.
I sell covered calls and cash secured puts. Thats is my way of making a buck of the high VIX
My mainproblem with the numbers is.
WP 7/ 7,5 NOK sold 1 / 2 / 4/ 2.6 million
WP 8 so far arround 2 million if we see the same " growing " the 2013 numbers will be.
4 million WP8 in Q1 8 million in Q2 and arround 6 million in Q3.
My original expectations a few month ago was at least 50% higher.
The good surprise at the moment is that Nokia stop/ reduced burning cash but for the future they must increase sales and market share.
I simple dont see an increased market share in the Q4 numbers and thats a problem for my original investment idea. I thought that NOK make the turnarround with volume..but at the moment this volume is not there.
Thats all that we need to see in the short term. I predict $8 share price before the end of this year.
I will look to the Q4 numbers in 2 weeks, exspecially breakeven inclusive or exclusive one time payments.
But with 8$ / share we talk about a 25 billion company, if you remove the cash NOK should generate at least 1,5 billion profit.
If NOK/ MSFT really solved there supply issues and increase there marketshare i am back without a doubt, but for the last quarter i dont see that. I have no problem to be back on a higher price for NOK if i see a confirmation that they grab marketshare. IF NOK / MSFT is a real longterm success there are many points to jump in and out.
Which institutional investors are going to risk investing in $NOK if it gets to $5? That is a target for some funds but they will look at fundamentals not speculative buying before risking their investors cash or retirement contributions. I would like to see someone make an unemotional case here.
Guess latest arround 5$ there will be bigger resistance, not surprised if the chart looks between 4,80 and 5,50 like the chart between 2,50 and 3,50
However, I had just started watching CNBC, and my wife was so impressed by the CEO of Wachovia coming on and telling some bald-faced lies that I bought about 1k $ of Wachovia and that was the last time I ever listened to either Cramer or my Wife on investing. I escaped down about 50%. I had not been doing any research for several months, as I was working 2 deals. One was the U/S company, the other was an acquaintance who had developed (or thought he had), a security device for generating a new PIN number for every ATM transaction. It was like the little security buttons for logging onto online games. Push the button, and it generates a random code number that has to be entered after your PIN #. There were some big companies (Banks) interested in it, but he needed some more startup money. It may have been a success if the banks had not been so distracted trying to survive. Fortunately, I didn't invest, and the banks gave him about 3-4 mil just before Lehman went under. It still lays there forgotten. The U/S company got bought out from under me, so I was in cash and stayed there until summer of 09. The programmer moved to NY and I lost track of him. Essentially I dodged a bullet, not by being smart, but by being lucky. Escaping the Crash with minimal damage was more a function of my long term strategy of investing in companies that I knew not only the owners of, but the medical field that I knew. People still needed healthcare, and I was almost debt free.
As much as I like to chase the price, I have been telling myself to be patient to wait for a better deal.
As a small fish, I've made rushed mistakes several times, and I regretted it every time. It is very hard to avoid them. This time I am prepared to miss out the gain from $4.75 to $5. while remaining hopeful to see NOK in the $4.40 - $4.50 range again.
Well said . Some guy in Omaha said "I would rather sell a day early than a day late" Similar can be true of buying I do believe.
What a difference a day has made within just the last week.
If you have a target price of $7-$8 in a year, a day or 2 should still be OK IMO. NOK has a Beta of 1.6, which is to say, it has about a 50/50 chance of going up as down on any given day. My math is no more exact than "Analysts" estimates.
This was a contrarian trade, I felt like Mr. Market had discounted Nokia to a point where it was priced to go out of business and be reduced to the OTC as it dissolves at the then price of $1.70 (that was my original entry). I felt that Nokia could last longer than 52wks (my longest measuring stick for trades) and that in that much time some of the negative sentiment that drove the price too low would come off and allow the stock to rise.
As a contrarian trade, I measure sentiment; I’m measuring what is difficult to measure because it cannot be found on the balance sheet and can be misunderstood on a chart. If it could be quantitatively verified; that side of the trade would be overly crowded and the move muted. It is a mistake to assume that the market is correcting it’s over discounting of Nokia. The market does not know what Nokia is worth because Nokia does not know what they are worth. They are transitioning into a company of a different size and focus and the markets they are selling goods and service in are changing because of global demand and changes. The stock price is going higher because it now looks like Nokia is substantially further away from bankruptcy and OTC demise than the market priced it for at a low of 1.63 (if I recall).
The market likes to sell sentiment. If the traders are mostly bearish, the market will churn out negative articles, negative analysts, and negative pundits. The hardest thing for a company in this type of situation is to change the sentiment. At some point, Nokia will be held captive by its balance sheet and will be priced based on what it’s worth. My bet is that we are still a long way from figuring that out and the market will continue to trade sentiment until that happens. There is still more negative sentiment for Nokia than there is positive amongst wall street professionals. Although there will be many pull backs and sell offs, I still believe that the upside in Nokia is a better bet than the downside. My original target for Nokia was $4 by Jan 2013. I was not right, nor did I look to be right, the target was a number I felt comfortable selling at. It was my measuring stick. I felt that this was how much negative sentiment could come off. It is January therefore I must reassess and figure how much sentiment is still worth trading on the long side.
Now comes the part of contrarian trading I love the most, “the digging in of the heels”. You see all the analysts and pundits that had labeled Nokia a trash stock, must now sound smart by scientifically explaining why it still went from $1.63 to $4.50+ and how it’s still a better “short” or “sell”. Market sentiment is very powerful, the sentiment in Nokia is not bullish, it is just less bearish. There are fewer bearish articles, talk show hosts and pundits bashing Nokia. The stock has less weight on its back and has risen because it was never worth $1.63, only negative sentiment held it there. We have not seen a sentiment change, not yet. The most positive catalysts are still ahead of the stock. Lumia China sales, further NSN expansion into LTE network build outs; Nokia pipeline filling with new Lumia’s, new tablet, surprises exclusive for Verizon’s…this is a long term transition of market sentiment from bearish to bullish. Right now the bears have dug their heels in deep and this is good for the bulls. The stock is still only rising because it has less negative sentiment holding it down. We have not yet seen the stock make a run based purely on positive catalysts like gaining substantial market share, increasing margin or grabbing large enterprise customers. At some point if Nokia is successful, the story will stop being about how they are doing “less bad”, and become about how they are rewarding share holders and moving the market with game changing products and potential market disruptors.
All of this will of course be “hype” and the sentiment will be bullish and therefore the contrarian trade will become betting against Nokia but that’s getting too far ahead (and not really my game). My point is that we are a long way from Nokia trading on fundamentals, it is trading on sentiment, at some point if it trades higher long enough it will turn sentiment into momentum this happens when the bears either tern bulls or stop selling or shorting. If Nokia can become a pure momentum play it will get massive wall street participation (bears are not against making money on the long side).
I think this will happen in 2013 if you can get back to back profitable quarters (either Q4 2012 + Q1 2013) or (Q2 2013 + Q3 2013). It could also happen if you can get the price to break above $5 and close above $5 and continue to close above it for two additional sessions. I don’t have a price target for this stock. The shares I own are house money and I’d like to see where this one goes but I reserve the right to add to the position or dump it depending on the stock, company or market; however, I am still long Nokia in both stock (now houses money) and call options (been houses money for a long time).
Nokia Expected to Be Profitable Throughout 2013
http://bloom.bg/UWizpv
The Finns take lots of pride in Nokia and Finland is not Norway, or the US, or Germany. I feel the Finns would work for free or even bring their own money to sustain Nokia. It's a matter of pride! And emotions are the stuff extraordinary things are made of...!
Good luck! :-)
If you have some time, can you talk a bit about the magical $5 number and what's likely to happen? I mean, will institutional investors rush out and load up, or is there a cooling off period to see if it's real.
PS, write a damn article would ya?
To add to one of the catalysts for Nokia in the later half of cy13, look for Nokia and sprint to work on a large deal. Every time Nokia's NSN division has expanded/built a telcos network, they have followed up with the release of new phones, e.g. China Mobile, AT&T, India, etc,.
Note that Sprint just announced at CES, that their 4G LTE network is expanding significantly across all of the US(built by Nokia). More importantly, Sprint will soon be doing away with subsidies. Hence, it will be imperative that device makers have their 'A' game when it comes to building lost cost phones... Game, set and match for Nokia. If this business model takes hold, then look for Verizon and AT&T to follow suit.
Another thing to consider. Nokia's NSN division gives them an advantage when it comes down to behind the doors negotiations on business. Think Nokia's coup of getting their Lumia line into China Mobile was luck? I'm sure NSN had a big factor in the arrangement. Apple must be crying foul.
"More importantly, Sprint will soon be doing away with subsidies."
Yeah, and this will be a big problem for Apple.. And if they drop their prices, that's yet another can of worms for Apple.
WRT China Mobile... Apple's been trying to secure that deal since 2008 and all the while China Mobile has been pushing Apple for revenue sharing. Mr. Cook was again at China Mobile Thursday and we heard nothing of a deal (still kind of soon.) But if Apple fails to strike a deal with China Mobile AGAIN, look for Apple's price per share to again drop (as confidence drops,) and it could help boost Nokia's stock price (less competition in China.)
And it may go without saying, but I also believe Apple's recent troubles are playing into Nokia's recovery.
Some high-end users will be looking for a new phone to replace their aging iPhone and the high-end Nokia phones are sexy and beautiful - they will play in that market nicely.
Great point
sure thing ;-)
I loved the one "Apple-Long" writer saying that the 920 was only good for Pumping Iron with. How many times is he going to pump that 243 grams difference before he gets tired, turns the phone on, and says Ut-Oh <g>
Myself had a forecast for Q4 sales and a targetprice for NOK , at the moment i see NOK as a hold but decided to stay at the sideline untill i see improvements volume / marketshare.
How is the availibility of the 920 arround the world ? At least here in germany its still less / not available.
most phones in UK tend to be available on all carriers on pay as you go and contract, and have a completely unlocked price also.
now that we know more about Nokia's lumia shortfalls, it is still sad to see that there is only real availability on EE as a contract. I hope within a couple of months this situation has changed.
The most desireable time to own a L920 was in November. each month brings us a month closer to the 'next big thing'. It will be pretty pointless to see L920s fully available everywhere once galaxy s4 releases (and rumours are pointing towards an early launch for the new iphone also).
I am happy to see its stock price rise of course, but i'm still disappointed in the total sales - however I do agree with the common bullish sentiment on this forum.
As a relative stock 'newbie' - I wonder if we should remember 3 weeks before Q1 2013 announcement to ensure we are adequately positioned for the next 'positive' stock warning. I really doubt its sales will decline though that is what nokia's earning guidance indicated.
In 3-4 weeks i have read the Q4 numbers and know the WP8 marketshare for january....than i rethink :)
http://reut.rs/VVmiz8
Guess we need a few quarterly results to see how many NSN is worth. NSN was the whole time a looser and only turn to profitability since a few quarters.
IF Nokia and Siemens believe in success there is no reason to sell, and if they have doubts you would not generate enough during a spin off...we will see.
But a rumour could help NOK to go up, at the moment i hope it come back a bit :)
The Question might be how many give Nokia to China mobile, there might be a price to get the 700 million consumers.
In my many years in Medicine, when it came to X-Ray machines, CT, MRI and other areas, Siemens was the "Standard of the Industry" like IBM, no one was ever fired for buying Siemens. Even Nokia's bad days couldn't hold Siemens down forever.
I know still a bunch of people that work daily with NSN , Fujitzu Siemens....
I would not say that Siemens dont sold NSN if the price is right.
If that is good or bad for NOK depends on the price..
turtledividend has sent me a message asking to create an instablog on quarterly earnings. I think it`s a good idea but I'm not the guy you want to write a good intro on the topic, and even then, I would most likely just be a reader, not a contributor, and I'm not just being modest. So go ahead peeps and create a Nokia instablog on quarterly earnings and send us the invite.
In fact anyone can create an instablog on any topic and invite anyone. You don`t get any $ for page-views but as you can tell, they tend to be more peaceful and informative, and the creator has the privilege to delete any comment. If there are too many blogs, however, comments and ideas can become scattered and the blog, diminished in value IMO.
That is one of the criticisms I had of the article "concept": you get a rehashed opinion designed to upset and generate comments to increase page-views. No one is happy except the author when he/she receives his money. The commenters can become pit one against the other in a pissing contest. I was hoping for a gathering of ideas designed to help everyone who took the time to read and add their 2 cents. I'm quite happy with the result.
I am pleased to say I have not deleted one comment to date in this blog. I guess it helps when the stock you spend so much time following and writing about starts to bear fruit. If we were all meeting in person, I am sure there would be many hand shakes and hugs and taps on the shoulders congratulating each other on our investment/ speculative choice.
Cheers all!
If you want to give me about 3 companies to study earnings of Charles, I'll give it a shot. No point in digging too deep into Nokia as they have turned around 180 Degrees since 2nd Q that their previous filings have little bearing on the current company.
If you had an extra $2k and access to another $6k in credit at 5.99% interest, would you buy another 3k shares of NOK or just say no, it's not worth the risk, it would make my portfolio too concentrated, etc.
I appreciate your input.
In any case, I would advice against using any borrowed money for investing in stocks. Beating 6% is difficult, and the risk will be high by definition.
NOK is my biggest long holding, MSFT second largest.
If you still want leverage, I would prefer options instead, so that your maximum loss is 100% but not more. When I use options I select mostly slightly in-the-money options with an expiration of 5-7 months ahead.
With this you could buy about 300 January 2014 $7 calls for 50 cents each, that would represent 30,000 shares. I would not hold these options until expiry, but if the stock moves up sharply over the next 3 months as many expect (hope), then you could double you money (or if you don't double it you could make 40% or 50%). At that point you could probably sell the $10 calls to form a bull call spread and get most of your initial outlay back. If NOK ended January '14 at $10 a share or better (that's a big IF), you would then show a profit of about $75,000.
If NOK didn't accelerate over the next 3 months, you would be able to sell out the options position and recoup most or maybe some of your outlay.
If NOK doesn't do as well as we all hope, you might lose your $15,000, but you would still have the other $45,000 in your account.
Or you could sell half your NOK holdings and try this approach with 150 $7 call options and have a shot at turning $7,500 into $37,500, but I would not borrow the $6,000 or try this trade on margin if it represents a large part of your portfolio.
NOK is certainly at an interesting point. If you have faith in Elop's vision and abilities to manage the company successfully, then we could be right at the start of something very big indeed. On the other hand, maybe not. Remember that NOK may do very well, but still get killed by the macroeconomic situation if the politicans screw up.
[I am not an investment professional and this should not be construed as investment advice, just a theoretical discussion.]
Buy 200 January 2014 $3/$4 bull call spreads for 65 cents per. This will cost $13,000 and return $20,000 if NOK > = $4 on expiration in January 2014. Break even point would be $3.65.
Below $3 you would lose $13,000 but here's the thing. How much would you lose if you kept the 3,500 shares and they were below $3 in January 2014. You would lose $1.70 per share give or take, so that would be about $6,000 (mental arithmetic) you would lose, but if the stock went below $3 you would lose more.
Now, if my mental arithmetic is right, you would sell 3500 shares for $16,500 at the current price, so after you bought your options you would have $3,500 cash left versus the $10,500 in stock you would have if the stock fell to $3.
So by doing this $13,000 options trade versus holding on to the shares, you only really have $7000 at risk and you will make a very nice profit even if the stock FALLS 20% from its current valuation.
On the other hand the profit you will make will be only 50%, about the same as you would have if you kept the stock and it went up to about $7, so any gain over $7 will be missed.
Of course you could combine the two suggested trades (this post and the one before) to try to get the best of both worlds.
By buying 2 $3/$4 Jan 2014 spreads for every one long $7 Jan 2014 call, you would still make 10 cents per share if the stock remained higher than $4 in January 14 while still having a shot at huge gains if the stock takes off.
Your break even point for the combo would be $3.90.
Of course with options, as with stocks, it is judicious to set stops to prevent disastrous losses. It is also generally useful to buy into a long strategy on a pullback so as to get in cheaper.
Sorry for boring anyone who is not interested in options.
If I were you I would consider "safe" banks like Wells Fargo (WFC), JP Morgan (http://bit.ly/HUd5zi); or, in commodities Alcoa (http://bit.ly/pifhdN) or US Steel (X). WFC could easy go to $38/40, JPM could go to $55/58 while AA could go up to $16 in a year or so. IMO, these are safe bets (plus most of these banks including BAC are expected to start paying additional dividends which is icing on the cake). If you want to play on speculation within banks I think BAC (Bank of America) would be your best and safest bet (given that the housing market is on the mend and BAC and other banks have reached major settlements to this date). Bank of America be anywhere between $14 and $18+ in 2013 if things improve at a pace that they are improving currently.
Considering housing you could buy the builders Pulte, etc.
Just my 2 cents on what I would consider as good bets.
It works nice for me and 80% in a few months are more than good, but I never would recommend it at the moment.
But like i said before i want a confirmation that WP8 get more marketshare, i believe that NOK only can make a real turnarround and another 100% if they grab marketshare from IOS and the DROIDs.
If Nokia dips heavily than you can use your spare money to buy some more.
Rookie, I hope your options scenario helps someone after you took all that time and effort. I have never used options. They are an alien being to me. I've read about them at one time, but do not grasp the concept fully. It seems to me that money can be made without risking the whole amount, leverage, however leverage is a double edge sword and it should swing both ways. Ouch.
I was not intending on putting borrowed money in harms way unless it's almost a sure thing, and as you have pointed out, NOK seems positive but even if it does everything right, events out of its control can slow or screw things up. I guess I'm just a greedy human who finds it hard to resist the temptation of potential "riches" on the one hand. On the other hand I value my sleep and serenity more.
I don't think I will borrow money to speculate.
Say, if you sell 1000 NOK today and get ~$4700, you can not use that cash to buy more NOK until after 3 days settling period. But if you have an extra $6k cash always idling on your account as a 'buffer', you can buy more NOK already tomorrow if the PPS were to dip. This is due to the fact that from the regulatory point of view you did not use the proceeds to buy more rather than idle cash (which had already settled). From your point of view your balance never dips below $6k and you are safe, not risking borrowed money.
In a sense the 6% interest in a cost of doing business for you :)
Again, I am not an expert or financial advisor, so do your due diligence and double check with a certified financial professional before committing.
Regarding settlement period, how the ultra fast computer traders get around this inconvenience?