Spekulatius

I am not sure if the headline reasoning is correct, but it seems funny that BTC is down almost 10% because it now turns out it is less useful for frauders than thought. El Salvador is a bad example, because they cant even support their own currency. They work with the USD standard, so they have nothing to lose by allowing bitcoin or whatever else. It remains to be seen what other countries do. Looking at the chart, if the ~31k Maginot line doesn't hold, I think BTC could easily fall to ~18k rather quick (which was consolidation zone on the way up). Regardless of the merit of BTC, i find the interplay of the crowds psychology and the prices quite fascinating. It's great asset to study, because there are no real fundamentals to speak of, just supply and demand based on mass psychology. Edit: other explanation for the bitcoin decline could be that the WSB meme crowd moved back from crypto into stocks. I think there is some interplay here between the two as I suspect quite a few players move between those asset classes towards whatever has momentum currently.

It should be noted. that El Salvador is one of the few countries, who doesn’t have it‘s own currency any more, they dollarized their economy 20 years ago. I don’t recall why, I think their own currency was so trashed, that it became unviable.

^ For that very reason, I sold my BABA shares, but kept my HK 9988.HK shares when I reduced my position a few days ago. The possible delisting is just another issue on the horizon. I think if I decide to increase my position in these Chinese companies, I am just going to buy either SoftBank or Naspers and call it a day.

One of the reasons he stepped down from his CEO role at AMZN, imo: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/07/jeff-bezos-to-fly-on-blue-origin-first-passenger-flight-in-july.html

@given2invest has a good summary of the deal here:

@cubsfan and @Castanza This is actually very valuable information. I never thought of SPLK software category having an extremely wide moat. That changes the thesis for the better, despite the somewhat ugly looking financials.

Is this really that complex? seems to me that he has some leftover cash and rather then returning it, he creates a new structure with some incentives for existing tontards to participate in that one too. In a way, that a great way to reward shareholders if you like Ackmann. If you don’t there is no reason to hold trust units at a premium to liquidation value to begin with. Now, I says an Vivendi shareholder need to find out if the distribution of UMG is indeed taxable. it seems that for Bollore (which owns ~27%) everything is fine either way (owners of more than 5% pay no tax) but for us peons, this could be a taxable event. I sort of smell mother screw job here where Bollore dings the Vivendi shares and the uses weakness to buy up more. Vivendi itself has been buying back shares last week and it seems that their buybacks have picked up. Hopefully, the tax issue will be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Vivendi has become a well run outfit, a bit like IAC in way, as they acquire stakes in fixer uppers business and then restructure them and then sell them off.

Thanks for the color. SPLK for me is particularly egregious because they have high dilution (5-6% annually) while not growing all that much. Other serial diluters are PLTR, WDAY, ESTC and I am sure there are many more. At least those have been growing at a recent clip, while SPLK has not. NOW is actually reasonably attractive here and I think I might enter a smallish position on a correction. They are superbly managed should be able to keep growing for quite some time.

Yes, I am slowly raising cash when fair value is approached and I am not finding much to buy. I have been adding a tiny bit of VRTX and MRK. I see it more reflective of the jack if opportunities than a big macro call.

10% interest rates are not a problem for the vast majority of the company if the inflation rate is 10% too. 10% interest rates with 5% inflation, now that is a problem. You need to go no further than Mexico to see what this looks like (also Mexico is not quite there, but was close enough a short time ago).

LOL, he makes his comeback at exactly the right time. He should probably hail in with Andrew Fastow and bring the band together again.

Sold some more ABEV and the remainder of my GD. (I am keeping my defense exposure in LHX, NOC and LMT) Sold off my few shares in OGN (MRK spinoff)

Vivendi VIV.PA is the direct owner (BOL. PA and ODET.PA benefit via VIV.PA) and it got a big yawn from VIV.PA, judging by the share price movement. I find this a bit odd, might add to my VIV.PA, which seems to be the best way playing this. Edit - what is the purpose of owning UMG via Ackman's SPAC when you can own it later when VIV. PA spins it off in September?

I guess Boswell does not like their shares to get stuck in this “expert market” that none one really knows how it will function. That’s why they published their annual report. The results for 2020 sort of stink though.

This entity with 2X$625M=$1.25B in capital seems too small to be solution for the regulatory issues that Ant capital is having. The CCP stated initially when Ant was filing their IPO paperwork, that Ant was running a covert lending operation without having any capital or license to do so, and distributing their risk to banks. If $1.3B in capital is enough to levitate the financial risk, this would have been a nothing burger. I think this is not the end of the story - it is possible that Ant is doing more JV’s with other bank, or the whole regulatory issue was just a pretense for something else. Again, we don’t know and this is just another Russian doll in the BABA conglomerate.

Hopefully, Vivendi get’s a nice Pop. I am not sure why they go the SPAC route, because they already got approval from shareholders for a regular IPO/ spin-off.

I am tracking this one too, as they are getting some traction on the cloud conversion, but how can you justify the out of control SBC? They had about $180M in SBC on ~$500M in revenues so that's ~36%. Those are not old grants either - their quarterly dilution was only ~1.1M shares, so I am guessing they must be handing out new grants a lower strike prices like confetti. No position.

Why would anyone with a clear mind pay 57% of gross proceeds to investment bankers for an IPO? In that case, they should have sold the Company privately. The listing in HK while operating in Singapore does not quite make sense either in above context. Even though HK has deeper capital markets than Singapore. My hunch is the IPO was overpriced and they needed to pay the investment bankers dearly to dump this one investors. This just looks smells really fishy.

I know it's simplified, but IFP is essentially trading with the lumber futures, at least directionally: We are also seeing that both charts have diverged starting in 2020 as the lumber futures have risen much more than IFP itself. This makes sense because lumber futures are short term bet while IFP buy nature is long term bet. So you should by IFP: 1) if IFP reduces the duration of the bet by paying special dividends ( thesis busted by the acquisition). 2) lumber futures stabilize or start to rise again while the gap between IFP's price and lumber futures prices persists. It seems to me that betting against the prevailing trend (which is down) in lumber futures is a losing proposition if you are trading IFP. Maybe there is a way to hedge with a put on lumber futures and going long IFP.

Looks like the Apes are winning:

Is it just me, or does it looks like lumber is going down:

Here is mother recent talk. Druckenmiller here gives actually a bit of trading advice: 1) He exits when he figures his thesis is wrong 2) He Never uses stop loss. Is anyone using Toggle AI and if so, what is the experience? Today, IB has a Webinar today about Toggle AI around lunch time, so if it is quiet at work, I might give it a listen.

It is that simple.

There is probably some truth in this. Now that crypto has crashed (somewhat) all the WSB stocks are rocking. Coincidence? A year ago, I would say yes it is coincidence, but now I think there is a herd of sheep that likes to set money on fire moving from one popular trade to the next.

Sold my ABEV in my tax deferred accounts today.