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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio candidates - Moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (2910)	1/31/2012 1:40:44 PM
From: DaYooper	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2955

Yes I agree AAPL has way outperformed Q and nearly every other stock over the last ten years. But it’s not a logical progression to say that means the GG strategy was flawed. Better to ask why the strategy didn’t correctly identify AAPL as a gorilla. The objective of our reading and writing here was always to find investments that would, due to their sustainable competitive advantage, outperform the market as whole. QCOM has done just that.

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (2910)	1/31/2012 6:38:49 PM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	5 Recommendations Respond to of 2955

Two thoughts, one general and one specific. People who focus overly much on the one book, The Gorilla Game, are missing most of what Geoffrey Moore has to offer. One could forget that book entirely and have some very valuable tools for analyzing companies. Trying to turn that insight into a cookie cutter investment approach was a mistake and ultimately not very useful if only because there are very, very few true pure gorillas and even when they seem to exist, they can be embedded in market conditions which make their position different than one would expect. QCOM has done OK despite all the push back, but RMBS turned into a litigation headache and never really got what they should have out of the technology. As for Apple, how exactly is that a candidate for Gorilla? To be sure, lots of us missed out on big investment returns with Apple, but what proprietary technology did they control? Yes, they have managed to bring out three product lines which either innovated a new category of consumer good or at least made it appealing for the first time. But, imitators have been soon to follow, so there doesn't appear to be any technology lock. Yes, they have done well at continually upping the bar so that competition was mostly playing catchup ... but how long can that really go on? What more is one going to do to an iPod that hasn't already been done? Aren't we getting to the point where a cheaper smartphone that is good enough is going to start taking market share from the latest and greatest smart phone? Not to mention that there are other strong players in that market too so that Apple themselves has areas of catchup to do. iPad is newest and the most dominant, but there are signs like the Kindle Fire that this might not last forever and lots of competition. Is iTV the next big wave or the exception? Just because it has been successful doesn't mean that it will be or that the reason for its success was being a gorilla.