Today was a negative day on the markets and for our stock picks. In particular RIM was down 22%. Bank of America was down 2.0%, Wells Fargo was down 1.7%, Toll Brothers down 2.0%. Stantec was down 2.9% erasing most of its rather strange 4.1% increase from the prior day. The falling Canadian dollar cushioned the blow in my own portfolio somewhat but I was still down 0.7% overall. It was still quite a strong week.
Research in Motion is updated and rated highly speculative Weak Sell at $10.91.
It was interesting that the stock at first rose in after hours trading when it released earnings after the close on Thursday. But then fell hard as it was realized that it would begin discounting its monthly subscription fees to some customers and that these would not even apply to some customers on the Blackberry 10. That seemed to catch the market off guard. But as I did this update I noticed that our report from last June had stated at the end of our Outlook cell that “The Q1 report indicated there is pressure to reduce the subscription charges. That is ominous in itself.” So perhaps this should not have been such a big surprise.
This company and stock has of course been very volatile. After plummeting for about two years it did manage to rise over 100% from its lows of $6.22 reached in September.
I considered removing this stock from the list. The reason for that is that it is highly unpredictable. My methods are simply not suited to extremely speculative companies that have negative earnings.
I decided to keep the stock on the list as a highly speculative weak sell. That way it won’t affect my performance statistics since I measure performance based on the Buys and Sells and not the neutral ratings of weak sell and weak buy.
Warren Buffett has always said that he looks at hundreds of stocks and then ignores almost all of them except for a few that jump out at him as obvious bargains. He has been extraordinarily disciplined in simply ignoring companies that he finds too difficult to predict. That has famously included most technology companies. When RIM had positive trailing earnings it looked like a bargain based on its earnings. But of course it has been well known for some time that its future earnings and sales were very uncertain. Perhaps I should never have included it in the list here. I did rate it highly speculative.
When I originally started this web site in 1999, I was willing to put a rating on any company. However I learned fairly quickly that my methods and knowledge were simply not suited to a number of industries that were highly unpredictable and often featured negative earnings. Those included most of the entire resource space (mining, oil and gas, forestry, agricultural commodities). It also included all early stage research companies. And most penny stocks. I have largely excluded all those from this site over the years.
My goal is to make money and to identify winners to help you make money (but with no guarantees and at your own risk). If I can do that with the sub-set of companies for which my methods have a better chance of working, then that is fine. The experience with RIM is another reminder for me to stick with more predictable companies. No company is completely predictable. But some are simply unpredictable, at least for me.