In the face of soaring complacency and optimism I am lightening up some equity positions and taking profits. To the left we see the VIX at near lowest levels since just prior to the onset of the GFC. With markets challenging their all-time highs, I would feel more comfortable with an ascending VIX, not a descending one.
This tells me that confidence and complacency are high. I am also seeing a lot of scorn directed at those who seem to agree with me, combined with numerous rationalizations on why the markets have nowhere to go but up. For instance, some guy on twitter has deemed thisĀ “crass contrarianism” as “silly”, and people are pretty eager to agree.
So it’s time for me to take some profits off the table, including RIM – thanks for the easiest double+ ever. I once again made my cardinal investing error and wished I had bought more. I also lightened up a few of my Euro indexes and took profits on Portugal Telecom.
I should also mention I sold some of my beloved Tucows. I had a small position in another trading account I decided to liquidate for a tidy gain but I am still long and strong a much larger position within my RRSPs and plan to keep adding there when the circumstances present themselves.
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Briefly, RIMM blew out expectations today with 2.9B in revenues and an adjusted net loss narrowed to .27/share. Expectations were for .47/share loss on 2.45B in revenues. Blackberry sales were stronger than expected and the company added 100M in net cash.
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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 »
Actually I’ve been long Research In Motion for a few weeks now, I started writing this post at the time but forgot to publish it until tonight when somebody commented on my earlier “Ultimate Buy Signal for RIM?” post.
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I have long since thought that RIM was going through an unprecedented bout of negativity which has had it on my “watch list” for months. Contrarians love this type of stock, John Templeton always tried to “buy at the point of maximum pessimism” (there is a good book by that title, and you may also enjoy reading “Investing The Templeton Way”.)
Sir Templeton earned his wings as a legendary value investor by borrowing $40,000 from his boss during the nadir of the Great Depression and using it to purchase shares of every single company trading under $1. The rest is history.
These days the legends have different names, like Prem Watsa, who already owned a significant stake in RIM and then went ahead and doubled down. Read more »