Gregmal

I've made standard adjustments over the course of the year but am largely holding or adding. As has been discussed in the APTS thread, the higher the shares can get the better the investment becomes from a risk perspective. Having basically doubled since the beginning of the year with only minimal dilution is huge. Now they've got a $200M credit line and $100M or so coming due from loans plus existing cash, so you figure the liquidity position is robust. Likely you get another preferred redemption of about $100M and an immaterial number of shares issued for the next few months. If the next major redemption is funded by share issuance at mid to high teens prices, even better. Same kind of thing just with different sub content for CLPR, CLI, and AIV. The stories just need to play out and simply by that they continue to get derisked.

ESPN any way you cut it is/was the dominant sports programming network. Its just horribly mismanaged and too political. Keep politics out of sports you dumb fucks LOL. And IMO will be spun out or sold but Im not really worried about it in the grand scheme of things anymore than owning MSG Networks. People always scrutinize the heck out these but if the programming/content is unique enough they'll just keep printing cash until its time to evolve. Whatever that may be. Like MSGE did, DIS can just take the low multiple, shitty valuation gobs of cash they get from the network and fund high growth, premium valuation investments in other places. Streaming will carry way more weight in terms of how this trades than ESPN individually and I expect DIS to remain strong there. They mentioned sports betting on the call today and I think if done correctly they are absolutely right that it can be integrated into the ESPN platform which will in turn bring in younger audience. We do believe that sports betting is a very significant opportunity for the Company, and it's all driven by the consumer. It's driven by the consumer, particularly the younger consumer that will replenish the sports fans over time and their desire to have gambling as part of their sports experience. It's not necessarily a lean-back, it's a little bit of a lean-forward type experience that they're looking for, and as we follow the consumer, we necessarily have to seriously consider getting into gambling in a bigger way, and ESPN is a perfect platform for this. We have done substantial research in terms of the impact to not only to ESPN brand, but the Disney brand in terms of consumers changing perceptions of the acceptability of gambling, and what we're finding is that there's a very significant isolation. Gambling does not have the cache now that it had, say 10 or 20 years ago, and we have some concerns as a Company about our ability to get in it without having a brand withdrawal. But I can tell you that given all the research that we've done recently, that that is not the case. It actually strengthens the brand of ESPN when you have a betting component, and it has no impact on the Disney brand. Therefore, to go after that demographic opportunity plus the, of course, not insignificant revenue implications, that is something that we're keenly interested in and are pursuing aggressively.

Disney is essentially a collection of trophies. I like owning trophies. I'll leave the whole quarreling about PEs and the "its expensive" stuff for others to play with.

Did I mention Disney has over 18,000 prime acres of undeveloped land around the parks? LOL Just kidding. I owned the name for a long time, on and off and sold it late 2019 or so. I dont regret missing the buy at $100 during covid because I did way better buying other stuff. But at this point in time I definitely think its worth trying to get back into as its one of the best positioned, large cap, low maintenance companies I am aware of in terms of its positioning for the future. They have a Netflix equivalent streaming biz thats early in its growth. Theme parks are irreplaceable, dominant, and have Herculean pricing power. They have the sports betting market in their crosshairs. Content is best in class. And yea, some great real estate. The brand is one of the best to ever exist. So theres a ton of things going for it and I think they benefit from not only reopening theme type stuff but also the trends in place pre covid. Would ideally like to pyramid into a bigger position but today was a good place to start at $160.

Started a little Disney.

yea. crap business. meme stock. huge retail shareholder base. likely gonna puke back to low-mid teens if the market gets wobbly IMO

Puts on SPCE and PLTR

It’s kind of ironic how the same people by and large who preached caring about and protecting others thru mask wearing and lockdowns basically sent the most vulnerable portion of the population to hell in a hand basket by voting for policies that any idiot with an IQ over 43 could have told you would have been disastrous. All because they didn’t like the other guys personality LOL. Not much sums up America better. My feelings >>>>>>your livelihood. However, if you’re smart and aware enough, it’s easy to mitigate this. I mean crude futures spent most of 2021 in backwardation because enough participants in the market believed the politicians and media with regard to the whole “transitory” narrative. Multi family still looks good. Land is good. Learn to love the stupidity of others and profit from it.

Salesmanship. There’s always suckers out there buying a good doomsday story.

I agree, be cautious. But do so in a way where you leave yourself in the game. Where you can win even in the caution isnt warranted. Here's Hussman...check out the long term record. https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/HSGFX

A good brand is worth its weight in gold and worth overpaying for. Elon Musk can sell flame-throwers and hats and do millions in revenue because of his brand value. You and I? Not so much. PTON is now a shittily run hardware company masquerading as SAAS with accelerating losses, and a pot committed management. I dont think the bottom is anywhere close to in yet, but thats why you size it small and just play with it til things settle down a bit.

Just wait til the new stimmy lottery starts. Break the law for your chance to win $450,000!

Yea I definitely think its wise to anchor your core net worth type money to things you can reasonably triangulate a valuation expectation for. However if nothing else, over the years I've come to appreciate the fact that the stuff no one can value many times offers a very asymmetric return profile and if you chuck a few peanuts at it early enough in the life cycle, whether it works or not you'll probably get a few jars of peanut butter out of it. The key is to just be early and ignore the voices of reason/cynicism*** if you believe the opportunity is special, and durable enough to play out. ***obviously on a selective basis and with prudent position sizing.

12/22 VIX $20 calls. Weird action in the VIX last few days despite rising market. Lotta toppy type signals with the TSLA/BTC stuff of the world. Kinda interesting.

The idea that something needs to generate cashflow in order to have value is one of there stupidest out there. It just needs to be desirable to others and scarce enough to produce a supply/demand imbalance. This is an $18M watch https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-newman-rolex-daytona-just-sold-17-million-world-record-2017-10 Just because you dont think its worth that doesnt mean its not worth $18M. Same applies everywhere else. The biggest problem people create for themselves when investing(or speculating or trying to make money, whatever the fuck we want to call it) is that they anchor too much to their biases. Dont really have a dog in the race. I own some BTC but I bought it before everyone was having these conversations so the cost to me is negligible and the upside is free.

Just when you think he cant outdo himself... https://seekingalpha.com/news/3766872-biden-reportedly-considering-shutdown-of-enbridges-line-5-oil-pipeline Oh, and to think his regime is using our tax dollars to pay people to research/study whether this would effect gas prices LOL....

Closed out the PTON trade. Got the expected follow through and the options are now basically at the money so time to call it a day.

Personally I’ve found there is something inherently present in the Harvard, Stamford, Penn or CFA and MBA types….maybe it’s a common personality trait or maybe it’s learned….but they underperform not by accident but because they’re all very good at figuring out the best risk adjusted way to maximize the amount of money they can extract for themselves from something. Taking risk presents risk. Why do that when you can caress a steady check and bonus with a built in excuse via mimicking the broader market?

The majority or folks should not be actively investing. Doing it successfully requires an almost debilitating mental focus that borders on obsession and if you’re not prepared to be in that place it’s a total waste of time. If you can do it though, you’d laugh at the notion of being in an etf or index fund.

The business results don’t need to be good or bad. They’re solid enough businesses managed by smart enough operators that the market isn’t going to sway hugely one way or the other on a q to q basis. Buybacks and cash pile will drive this. It is not a coincidence that since the buybacks have ramped the shares have too.

I think we re past the point of needing to analyze Berkshire for purposes other than entertainment value. She s good. And she ll be good. The prospects from here out are exciting.

^The short Ill cover next week. Let it settle over the weekend. Puts I took 4x my basis off and will see how the rest fare over the following month, with a short leash of course since still OTM.

MRNA seems to be getting into value investor territory!(sarcasm) Anyone else eagerly waiting for a thread to be started where our housing expert can enlighten us all on the future of investing? I'm sure there's at least some PTON investors who would find it compelling.

Eh it was a tricky trade though. Even the puts I would roll, they were just very expensive and unless you timed it right it was hard to really make the type of money you'd expect on the options. I still have the Jan $50 puts so we'll see where those open. Net/net outright shorting was basically a wash up until today because it whipped around every time some two bit hedge would try to pump it. But this is why you stalk stocks and just kind of wait for your setups. I thought Q2 was a mess and they were dishonest about a bunch of things but the desperate buyers of this still felt compelled to pay 105-110 the following day and even inexplicably bid this back up to near 120 on an announcement that they were making clothes LOL. The excuses for Q2 and the price cuts were so ridiculous that a Q3 miss(or worse guidance cut) would be devastating. So I felt Q3 would basically be make or break and had three browsers open all with limit orders 85, 80, 75, 72.5 all locked and loaded and at the first sign of movement hit 85/80. Didnt even read the release LOL. Didnt get filled at 85 but got 81. You had maybe 30 seconds to smash 80s. Read the release to confirm and smashed 75/70. This followed Z to an absolute T in term of post release trading. Constant bleed into the 8 pm close. Tomorrow should be fun as well.

Most should allow AH trading. Sometimes you might have to sign additional risk waivers/disclosures but for the most part I think its relatively easy to get permissions for.