Comments Off on Short Apple & Long RIM: The Tech Pair Trade of the Decade

So far the only comment on my post about going long RIM is “good luck with that”. So far so good there.

My pet quip about value investing is that your investing thesis looks good if it passes what I call the “double idiot test”. That is, you get called an idiot for buying, and then you get called an idiot again for selling. Read more »

Comments Off on How to tell if a new TLD will succeed (and most won’t).

I just read Rick Spence’s “What’s in a name? It could be a fortune on the Internet“, (HT to HybridDomainer), which seemingly dials the needle back to (pick one), 2005 or 2007, or maybe 2010 and drinks the Kool-Aid every domainer has on an IV drip: the notion that fortune and success can be achieved simply by virtue of “owning the right names” (i.e How can we be bankrupt? Don’t we own TenMillionDollars.com?)

Only in this case, he’s talking about the seemingly impending new top-level-domains. “New domain names will rank above the current crop”, he gushes. Really? You mean now I get to defend my trademark in .www, .website, .bank, .toledo, .xxx and .FML ? Great! I think what we will see happen is a buyers’ strike in defensive names. It will become impossible to defend one’s names in all possible TLDs, brand owners will simply stop doing it, defensive registrations in new TLDs collapse, kicking out one of the two legs holding up most new TLDs (the other being speculative registrations). Read more »