thompr

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    • Fri Sep 12th 00:28 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Apple Investors: Fasten Your Seatbelts, Put On Helmets
      Neutrino,

      I'm with you. Zach Bass spends the majority of his time trying to explain what has already happened, and usually what he comes up with is either the simplest explanation he can find or some mumbo-jumbo about chart patterns that foretold the action.

      What he needs to be doing is giving up on this short or near term tea-leaf reading and determine the safest place to put his money for the LONG TERM. Then act on the plan and keep an eye on his assumptions. Oh sure, he will tell you that he does that while simultaneously limiting his risk ("capital preservation", he says) by hedging with options... but in the end, he always uses mumbo jumbo to support his assertions. And at the end of the day, 5 years from now, my assertion is that I will be better off staying long AAPL than trying to whip around with the trends in the chart. "Whipsaw", is more like it.

      Thompson
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    • Wed Aug 6th 19:33 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Global Reach of the First Million 3G iPhones
      @ some_guy, longapple, & mcmurachu

      Mcmurachu is right. And the references are:

      * At MacWorld 2007, when Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone, he claimed the goal was 10 million BY THE END OF calendar year 2008, thus giving Apple approximately a year and a half to make that goal.

      * At the July 2007 conference call, Tim Cook stated that the goal was 10 million IN CALENDAR YEAR 2008.

      I have video of Steve's reference and an audio copy of Tim Cook's.

      Let's stop blaming the media and each other in this. Apple themselves haven't had a consistent story. I think that everyone has pretty much moved to adopting the latest reference (Tim Cook's regarding calendar year 2008). Even Apple hasn't tried to set that straight. They have consistently assured the media that the goal will be met when asked. (If there was a problem with interpretation, Apple has had plenty of time to rectify it, but hasn't. Instead, they have reiterated.)

      Thompson
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    • Tue Jul 15th 06:08 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      UBS Analyst: Survey Shows 3G iPhone Poses Little Threat to BlackBerry
      < less than 5% of new buyers said they were replacing their BlackBerrys with iPhones>

      Hmmm. This is not a sufficient question to use to support the conclusion that RIM needn't worry. Since both RIM and AAPL are doing battle for control of a market that is in its infancy but is poised for rapid growth (smart phones rather than standard cell phones) both are needing to grab the new customers. Your question only "pokes at" what percentage of people that already have Blackberrys intend to buy iPhones, and even then you have failed to get that number. Since less than 10% of all people even own Blackberrys, it is still in the realm of possibility that RIM has just lost half of its customer base. Your method of data gathering fails to determine the proper denominator, because you have no data for how many Blackberry owners didn't show up in line to be sampled. Do you know what "conditional probabilities" are? Do you know how to relate them using "Bayes Theorem"? If the answer to these questions is "no", you should read up on them prior to drawing conclusions from statistics. You are not properly defining the sample space.

      So your conclusion has two problems: (1) it fails to determine the fraction of current Blackberry owners that are jumping ship, because it fails to account for the percent of random people that even own Blackberrys, and (2) even if RIM weren't losing many current customers (I doubt it, but if...) they still could be losing out on new customers. And given the expected growth in this segment, new customers are going to dwarf the current customers in fairly short order.

      A much better survey was completed by Change Wave Alliance, which actually poses the question "In the next 90 days, do you intend to purchase XXX brand of cell phone?" They have been capturing such statistics for years, and there has been significant correlation between the survey results and the ultimate market share numbers. If the results of the most recent Change Wave survey are to be taken seriously, RIM should be worried. Very worried, in fact.

      Considering the questions asked and sample mechanisms used by your survey versus Change Wave's, it seems to me that their conclusion (that RIM should worry) is much better supported than yours (that RIM should not worry).

      Thompson
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    • Tue Jun 24th 18:06 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Monday's Apple, General Market Fundamentals Favor Bears
      <I guess if we all had half a brain, and had ambition to become one of the richest people in the world, then we'd simply follow your advice, right? >

      Yes.

      <Damn Thompr, where have you been all my life? I'm gonna do it the Warren Buffet or John Henry way.>

      That's a great idea.

      <Then I can just sit back and watch the billions flow in. Thanks man!>

      Well, I wouldn't say that you will also have the performance the richest people in the world got, but putting their methods to use is a far cry better than giving any credence to the observations you made in this blog.

      Thompson
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    • Tue Jun 24th 12:29 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Monday's Apple, General Market Fundamentals Favor Bears
      Zach,

      Do you realize how useless the observations of the first 3 paragraphs are, at least in terms of applying them to the future, which is what investing (or trading) is all about?

      If any of these TA methods had any validity whatsoever, you would see more day traders on the list of richest people in the world. You do not.

      Thompson
      View article »
    • Tue Jun 3rd 12:15 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      .Me: Apple's Missing Link
      @DomainNameNews.com:

      The current service, which is referred to as ".Mac", actually uses the domain name "mac.com". Similarly, Apple could rebrand this service as ".Me" and use the domain name "me.com". If you look at the above article, this is actually the way it is proposed, i.e. that Apple registered the domain name "me.com" and that they intend to support a service that they are calling ".Me".

      While Montenegro has the rights to domain names ending in ".me" that is not the same as a blanket copyright on the term. In other words, it is perfectly fine for Apple to name a service ".Me". So your seeming argument against this article is quite misguided.

      Thompson
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    • Thu Apr 17th 11:20 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Wanted, Dead or Alive: The iPhone Killer
      <I wonder why Apple has taken so long to release the 3G phone.>

      You think they are just sitting on it? It's in development and needs certification from the FCC too.

      <How difficult can it be to make as compared to the 2G?>

      Very difficult. They had to put a whole new chip set in there and then make sure their battery life didn't go to hell. That last part there is not trivial by any means.

      <It's got to be strategy rather than manufacturing time or difficulty level.>

      I think you are wrong. Apple engineers are working their asses off to meet some sort of stringent Steve deadline. That is the way it always is at Apple.


      Thompson
      View article »
    • Mon Feb 25th 09:45 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Research in Motion: Unlike Apple, No Slowdown in Subscriber Growth
      <An Apple price drop to $299 is confirmation of the above.>

      You use RUMORS to CONFIRM speculation?!?

      Classic.

      You need to go back to J-school... assuming you ever went there to begin with.

      Thompson
      View article »
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