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Comment by noonespecial | Hacker News Reader

The whole thing feels like shark-jumping if you ask me. I'd watch Nokia stock today and see if investors don't agree. I'm betting they do. I wish I knew a damn thing about investing, I'd short this one for sure.

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Like jumping from a burning platform to shark-infested waters?

... as Google hovered with their Android rescue helicopters?

Android and WP7 make no difference for Nokia. In fact WP7 is clearly a better deal as they can talk and negotiate with Microsoft's moneyhat and they become by far the foremost WP7 phone maker. They bring a lot of hardware expertise and knowledge to Microsoft's camp. Going with Android, they'd just get to get bent.

If their choice was to get out of software and choose between WP7 and Android, WP7 is a much better idea.

It seems that Nokia will "become by far the foremost WP7 phone maker" mostly because everyone else shuns it.

Err, what? HTC has 3 (4? Not sure) WP7 phones, LG has at least 2, Samsung has at least 1, Dell has 1, and those are just the ones that I know about. Are there any big exceptions here except Nokia, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson?

Arguing against fanboy conventional wisdom with mere facts? Sadly I don't think that's enough.

Oh man. Nokia goes from "the foremost phone maker" in the world to "by far the foremost WP7 phone maker".

What were they thinking?

To the extent people vote with their feet, don't they seem to prefer Symbian (even having never heard of it) over Windows phones?

He specified a North Sea rig in his memo. I don't know if he's aware (he is Canadian) but it's relatively common knowledge in this area that due to the low temperatures your life expectancy even if you make it into the water conscious and in one piece is under 15 minutes, less the further north you go. Sharks are the least of your worries.

In the worst North Sea rig disaster, Piper Alpha, there were six unlucky men who did jump from the rig, were rescued and were killed when the rescue boat got caught in a huge explosion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_Alpha

Interestingly, that's not because you'll get a thermal shock that will kill you. The body is surprisingly good at maintaining temperature for a while after being plunged in icy cold stuff. The problem is, it's so good at it, that it will block off the arteries to your legs and arms to stop them from leaking so much heat (better survive without limbs than die with them), and you'll drown because you can't swim. As far as hypothermia is concerned, you have about an hour before passing out due to hypothermia. But you have about 10 minutes if you're not wearing a life jacket.

http://mariovittone.com/2010/10/1-10-1/

It's down 7.8% this morning (pre-market), so you may be right.

Currently down -8.9%, with a massive spike in trading volume, on the Finnish and Swedish stock markets after a few hours of trading. However it opened more than 10% down so it's picked up a bit during trading

it haven't picked-up one bit, now down -13%.

Looked like it might stabilize around lunch, but closed down almost 15%!. Market definitely not liking this deal.

Layoffs have been announced. Sorry, I only have a reference from a spanish newspaper:

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2011/02/11/economia/1297426004...

Not only in Finland, but world wide.

Edit, from the same source, quoting Nokia's CEO: the reduction will be "substantial".

usually stocks go up when layoffs are announced...

Investing: Great if you can get a position in a market that is open when the news is announced and thus be there for the fall....but it sucks if you have to get in after the stock has declined and then you're hoping that the impact will take a couple days.

I wouldn't try to play something like this. I've done highly leveraged, highly speculative investing successfully in the past. But even then, I was making bets on the order of weeks and months, not minutes.

Do you think it is a sure thing that nokia will be down by %20 beyond the current price over the next year? IF you can make that argument mathematically, then it is soemthing worth investing in. (at least, this is the method I used. I can't say anything about nokia's valuation as I have never analyzed it. But I only invested in mathematically sure things that were consistent with the overall trend.)

PS- When I say "sure thing" I mean "presuming no black swan events". I know there is no really sure thing. I also used leverage and hedged to limit my downside.

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