Really Blew it on RIM!

In order to cover my purchase of more AAPL shares I sold my stake in RIM at $47.80.  I admitted at the time that I wanted to go long on RIM, but I was uncomfortable with how much I had in the market, and how poor the ratings were on the new Blackberry Storm.

When earnings were announced on Thursday with bullish comments about their ‘best start ever’ start to the Christmas season and the fact that they beat their revised (and lowered) estimates, the stock rallied which had me leaving a 11.5% gain on the table!

“If I had infinite cash, I would go long on RIM, at the moment I just don’t think there is as much upside opportunity as with AAPL.” So I guess if I had ‘infinite cash’ I would be better off… but then again, I probably wouldn’t spend any time on the stock market.

I am not really upset about this gaffe however, and this is why:

1. RIM’s results have re-affirmed my view that the key player in the rapidly growing ‘mobile internet’ business, namely RIM and AAPL, are going to see limited impact as a result of market dive brought on by the credit crisis.
2. A 14% daily gain in the stock as a result of positive news shows that investors are willing to get back into stocks that indicate that they are less sensitive to the negative market conditions (i.e. when AAPL surprises in the next quarter with good results, I should see good gains!)
3. This shows that companies involved in the telecoms industry may have better resilience to market conditions than others.  Since my day job involves telecom, this might be a good thing.

While doing some Christmas shopping, I followed my friend Justin around to every single wireless store in the mall (I didn’t know there were so many), to see if we could find a Blackberry Storm we could actually try.  At the last store we tried (Bell) they had an early production version that they were not allowed to sell.  I gave it a try, and wasn’t really very impressed with the user interface.  The clicking screen is very much a gimmick I am afraid.

What I didn’t fail to notice was, every single store that got an allotment of the Storm were sold out.  Perhaps the desire for an ‘iPhone’ for those stuck on the Bell/Telus/Other-non-GSM networks (that can’t carry the iPhone, even a hacked one) due to contract obligations was enough to put aside bad reviews and fork out for a Storm.

I am VERY happy that RIM continues to do so well!