[Omnitech]

If Obama is willing to sick the IRS on his political rivals. Dirty pool between companies is not far fetched.

Of course there is "dirty pool between companies". But there are also laws that prohibit much of that, they just need to be enforced.

Re: Obama "sicking the IRS on political rivals" - that's the right-wing spin.

The reality is: The IRS is simply paying extra attention to members of organizations whose founding principles revolve around the idea that they are "over taxed", many of whom actually think personal income tax is a violation of their imagined constitutional rights. (Which is why they call themselves the "Tea Party", duh.)

It has nothing to do with "targeting political rivals", it's a matter of paying attention to people associated with organizations who think the IRS should be abolished, among other things.

[chrispdm1]

The reality is: The IRS is simply paying extra attention to members of organizations whose founding principles revolve around the idea that they are "over taxed", many of whom actually think personal income tax is a violation of their imagined constitutional rights. (Which is why they call themselves the "Tea Party", duh.)

That's not reality, that's the left wing spin. The truth is that the public will never find out the actual reality.

As far as the shorts on BBRY, I'm thinking myself that now is probably the time to buy BBRY, right before the quarter earnings comes out. If its any bit above Wall st expectation (which they have beaten the last 2 quarters and initial reports look good from a few analysts), it should bump the price up a buck or 2 which may be enough to start a short squeeze, which will drive it up further. In another month, I think BBRY could easily be above $20. What's it now $14? Then things could get interesting, A short squeeze and price increase on a major company like BBRY would be front page tech news for a little while, people seeing those stories and reports will start to realize that maybe BBRY is worth checking out for their next phone, a lot of free publicity for BBRY. Might be enough to start the ball rolling, people start coming to BB10, devs start realizing there is money to be made in apps, BBRY gains market share back, likely at Apple's expense.
If Apple releases a new OS this fall and it has the usual hiccups that new OS's have, they will hve a lot more high profile news stories directed against it than would BBRY, because of their high standing in the market currently. People may jump ship and go with an OS that has things ironed out, hopefully 10.2 is all the ironing out that BBRY will need to attract people. Reboots seam to be history with 10.1.0.2354, multiple alarms coming, etc.
Things could easily fall into place for BBRY the next year or so. People think that Apple and Android are too big to fall, but those same people didn't see BBRY falling the way they did after 2008. It's extremely volatile out there, a couple years of success don't seem to matter anymore. Things change quickly.

[bekkay]

People dismiss the shorts as being stupid. They aren't fools. It's different when you have a bunch of amateurs but these are big investors. They might not win this one but they are playing their side with more than just a hunch.

Posted via CB10

Moreover, people tend to dismiss shorts as being something evil, whereas shorters are other stockholders' best friends. No one has as much of an incentive to scrutinize a company as shorters do.

[bekkay]

People were saying the same thing about the Netflix, First Solar, Tesla, Green Mountain etc. Just bc there is a huge short interest doesn't mean they know something longs don't. As it's been proven over and over their "research" may be completely wrong.

I'm not saying that will def happen with BBRY, but it's possible they are completely off base about this stock too.

That's right. Both sides (short and long) can be wrong. To an equal extent.

[potatoman3]

That's right. Both sides (short and long) can be wrong. To an equal extent.

Technically shorts can be infinitely more wrong than longs.

Posted via CB10

[BBNation]

My point earlier was all recent short squeezed stock's interest did not reduce much even after prices went up 100% to 300%. It is possible that earlier shorts covered but then new ones added within weeks/days ? So these shorts must have some tricks such as high margin return for calls/puts or something. More than 35% sold shares short meaning if less then 10% were sold the price would have been close to $20 already. How come no knows the real reason for the confidence of shorts and such high interest rate even after bb10 release, multiple products, services, cash balance, IP valuation, security mandates, etc.

[Zarpan]

My point earlier was all recent short squeezed stock's interest did not reduce much even after prices went up 100% to 300%. It is possible that earlier shorts covered but then new ones added within weeks/days ? So these shorts must have some tricks such as high margin return for calls/puts or something. More than 35% sold shares short meaning if less then 10% were sold the price would have been close to $20 already. How come no knows the real reason for the confidence of shorts and such high interest rate even after bb10 release, multiple products, services, cash balance, IP valuation, security mandates, etc.

To your first point - once the stock has increased in price by 100% to 300%, it actually becomes more attractive for people to short the stock if you have doubts about the long-term viability of the company.

Take Tesla - The short argument revolves around Tesla's valuation and their ability to transition into a mass-market company with healthy margins. Their last earnings report was quite good, but doesn't really do much to indicate whether they can sell hundreds of thousands of cars per year at 20-ish percent margins.

Now the stock is at $100 with a 10% annual borrowing rate compared to $50 with a 50% annual borrowing rate before. If I was negative long-term about the company, I'd probably be more inclined to short it now compared to before.

As for BlackBerry - there hasn't been any actual data released that tilts the argument about the long-term future of the company heavily in one direction. We have only one month of partial sales reported for BB10 so far, and the annual borrowing rate is under 10%, which allows the shorts to keep waiting for more news one way or another.

[peter9477]

Technically shorts can be infinitely more wrong than longs.

It would be better to say "theoretically" instead of "technically" or "practically."

Even then, in theory there's really no chance the stock price could rise "to infinity". Even at astronomically high levels (e.g. millions per share), at some point the offered price would be so high that a sufficient number of shares would be offered for sale.

Quick sanity check: how much money is there in the world? Offer it all, however much it is, and someone will (obviously) take the offer to close your short position. After all the seller would now own everything on the planet, except for those shares...

That's just silly though, so obviously a deal would be made at a much lower price, or the shorter would somehow escape from the whole trap by declaring bankruptcy, or whatever it takes. They'd lose everything they had, but never an infinite amount.

(And no, I don't really think anyone needed that explained :-) ... I just thought I'd write something on the matter after having seen too many posts talking about the "infinite" potential downside to shorting.)

[greggebhardt]

Shorting Blackberry is not near as profitable as it used to be but there is still some opportunity to be had if you know what you are doing.

[savingblackberry]

BBRY management is clueless about how to play the wall street people, very qualified and outstanding nerds at BBRY but they are useless at managing public companies. IR and PR people are a joke at BBRY. For business success, technical excellence is not sufficient, you need street smarts, and BBRY has none so shorts have their way. What BBRY needs is a couple of people who can counter the shorts effectively and then we see a price multiple times in the $40-60 range right away (that could move substantially higher) and all that negativity surrounding BBRY disappear. BBRY has all the goods, just needs a street savvy team.

[savingblackberry]

BBRY could announce a strategic partnership and the stock can jump to $40 in no time, shorting is very dangerous.

[kfh227]

BBRY could announce a strategic partnership and the stock can jump to $40 in no time, shorting is very dangerous.

IBM Watson + BB10 would be nice.

Fwiw. If anyone buys bbry, I hope it's ibm.

Posted via CB10

[BBNation]

Found one Shorter

Real Money's View on Apple - CNBC