Forseeable Future
Hi Jim -
The investing strategy that Tom and I laid out for wireless companies is pretty detailed and could obviously be very different than what many people choose to use. It is covered somewhat in the book and was also discussed to some detail on Unstrung in the course of the column. The fact that we couldn't explain it within the space of the Qualcomm piece is one downside to online articles - the context may be lost or never read in the first place. For instance, what we obviously failed to communicate in the piece is to account for analyst sentiment on the company, a force that can be hard to fight.
But to the point of your question, I think 6-12 months is not an unusual amount of time to reverse course/opinion on wireless investments - analysts can move at 2x-3x this rate. Certainly in times of intense regulatory activity, entire business strategies can be changed overnight. Having such a relatively short timeframe doesn't preclude an investor from forming a 5 - 10 year outlook on a company, I would only argue that they must revisit their analysis/outlook at least every 6 months to 1 year to see if it still holds.
Honestly, I don't think anyone has good, actionable visibility for purposes of wireless investing beyond about 2 years - including me. Some can get the big things right but miss the details, and just as often the other way around. But I don't think this hurts investors - its more important to be in touch with the near term trends than guess where things will be 10 years from now.
Btw - the book is for the business shelf, and does not discuss Qualcomm as an investment. It would therefore not be appropriate to discuss my opinions on the company, past or present, in this manner.
Maybe with more time and in a future post, I can go into more detail about what things I saw developing that led to my "reversal". And in case anyone is wondering, it wasn't from any inside info.
Dave
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