Gregmal

^ well said. The man keeps playing everyone. Its an ego fest at this point. Its not deliberately a fuck you like at Biglari, but the overall lack of concern for shareholders is very much the same. If Prem Watsa wasnt once regarded as the "Warren Buffett of Canada", no one would give a shit about this name. In fact, thats pretty much the investment case at this point...one day Prem will right the ship....good luck

Am going through the book and starting my usual Sunday game planning for the week ahead. Figured I'd list some of the SPAC holdings here to 1) see if anyone else has thoughts on these, 2) help others interested get a handle on some names, and 3) give examples of some of the things discussed earlier in the thread. ACEVU, ACICU, CGROU, CFACU, CFIIU, ETACU, FUSEU, SRACU, FSRVU, FTIVU, LATNU, FRXU, LSAQ, SPNVU, CAPAU, IGACU, PTICU, SRSAU, OACBU Now take for instance one I didnt even see had a nice jump....CGROU....This was marketed as a marijuana focused SPAC led by the former CEO of Canopy Growth....and it's popping on rumor that its looking to merge with an Israeli Lidar startup.....I doubt anyone will complain, but that's just kind of how things are going in this space right now. Stable Road, SRACU I've sold a bunch of, but this one too, was supposed to be cannabis focused...not surprisingly it debuted during the cannabis phase 1 bubble....now looking to merge with a space travel company. In the current market, $10-10.2 is now kind of becoming $10.15-10.4. People are catching on. We're also seeing several, such as CFIIU and RBACU finding deals a couple months out of the gate, which is not only unusual, but also kind of brings in the possibility of not having to wait the typical 12-15 months for announcement. Its certainly a unique situation, probably not for everyone although if you really understand it, it should be given how asymmetric and low risk it is, and regarding how long it last...who knows. What people dont seem to understand is that their is literally unlimited institutional demand for these, even prior to the mania. Tell an institution with a conservative focus staring down 0-1% rates that they can park cash with a 2-5% potential short tern return and a guarantee return of principal and they're doing it all day. The biggest hurdle typically when it comes to launching these is finding the required number of shareholders, which IIRC is 300. Generally you'll have 80-90% of the offering taken down by a few institutions/hedgies. Now that Robinhood likes these, there's no telling how many and how long you'll continue seeing these brought to market.

This is the case for me, yes. i.e. I will only use margin if I can be sure that the price won't drop significantly causing a margin call. Now the thing that should provide a floor to the price ($10), is the redemption promise. Doing some due diligence, there is one thing that concerns me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_acquisition_company says: "Recent SPACs incorporated provisions that prevent public shareholders, acting alone or in concert, from exercising redemption rights in excess of 20% shareholding" Looking at one example recent IPO (Duddell Street Acquisition Corp): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1823466/000095010320021018/dp139545_424b4.htm says: "our ... articles of association provide that a public shareholder, together with ... any other person with whom such shareholder is acting as a “group” (as defined under Section 13 of the Exchange Act), will be restricted from redeeming its shares with respect to more than an aggregate of 20% of the shares sold in this offering" Isn't this a risk? Because let's say the company announces its merger, but the market doesn't like it and the share price fails to rise very much or at all, then could the company try to claim that you are in a "group", refuse the redemption, resulting in the price dropping well below $10? I dont really think that's something most need to be concerned with. I've never seen one go below $10 on a deal announcement, including ones only a couple months away from expiration. The subject you are referring to is largely meant to prevent a more recent phenomenon where you get people kind of colluding together at the last minute trying to get better terms, more warrants, etc. Even in these instances, by the time it gets to this type of situation, you've already had plenty of time to cash out in public markets. The landscape here does evolve, but usually its minimal. For instance things actually did start slowing down a but at the beginning of this year. They stopped during covid. I remember having an IPO suspended due to market conditions. And then things went bananas. Usually it just takes some tinkering. The most common way I have seen them do this over the years is adjustments on the warrants. Standard deal gives you 1/3 of a warrant. Ackmans deal is 1/9. I've seen others where things get a little slow offer 1/2 a warrant. So pay attention obviously, but dont overcomplicate it. Especially if your objective is simply to use the pre deal shell as a superior alternative to cash. If you're trading post deal, just remember to stay near the exit for when the music stops.

Every investment/speculation is a wager on where the puck is going. If it doesnt get there, it doesnt matter whether it was Sears, or Fairfax, or Bitcoin. If you want certainty, you'll pay significantly more than you needed to, just ask the folks who finally came to the conclusions that Amazon was a real investment a year or two ago.... End of the day, if you look for something that is event or catalyst driven, or possessing a multi year momentum runway...you target stuff like this. If you put lets say 1% of your assets in it, fundamentally, the worst case scenario is that you lose 1%...who gives a flying fuck? Whereas more often than not, and on the upside, you can make many multiples. $1,000 in BTC in 2016 is $20k today. $1000 in Fairfax in 2016 in $750. $1000 in Sears is worth $0. $1000 in Berkshire is worth $1,700. Who was investing? The words/adjectives people ascribe to "their style" of investing, ie, value, momentum, arbitrage, who gives a shit, its a means to and end, which is making money. Thats all that counts. Its even easier when you look at the $1000 in BTC that you could easily have peeled off significant "returns of capital" along the way and plowed that into more conventional investments. If you had $1000 in BTC in 2016 and today have $5000 in BTC, and $1000 positions in BRK, SPY, AAPL with proceeds from along the way....bubble bursts, BTC goes to 0...who cares? Still ahead of the game. And yea, BTC got to $20k in 2017 with retailers buying $100 at a clip and institutions basically barred from the asset class, or mocking it...Dimon, Buffett, etc. Now? We're just getting started and we're at $20k.

The answers to Lynch's theoretic query can be summed up in as little as 3 words and as many as one sentence. 3 words: supply and demand. bonus word: catalyst One sentence: take everything people apply to gold, and it applies to BTC but put on steroids, with one notation; replace the physical brick and mortar aspect with a digital one.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-05/crispr-gene-editing-shows-promise-in-blood-disease-study-updates

My guess is that when that happens it will look like some of the posts/posters on end of page 94/ start of page 95 of this thread....and that will mark another bottom. I always enjoy seeing the "I told you so's". They usually end up being a contrarian indicator.

Haha yea. I mean if thats the thought process just short 4-5 shares of TSLA for every 100 shares of BRK/b you buy on your own and not deal with Prem's antics.

Predicting trends(really just momentum), and especially behavior of the masses is actually quite easy once you figure out what to look for. If you are not in the markets to make money you should not be in the markets at all. If you are not able to adapt, well, you'll be like Einhorn, Pabrai, Klarman, Watsa, Tilson, Lampert, Cooperman, etc, etc, etc. I could go on and on. And while for most its comforting being in the same camp as all those guys and their current net worths, stalely quoting dated aphorisms from 50 year old books is often the biggest hurdle for folks to get over if they truly wish to consistently make money. The secret isn't quoting old books and 90 year old men, but maintaining flexibility and fluidity with respect to the current market and its conditions. Thats why Tepper is in a league of his own. "I know this is going to go up but I think its a bubble/scheme/poor valuation" is the dumbest thing I consistently hear from smart people. Either they are full of it, or just not cut out to invest. Because if you know something is going up, and you refuse to take advantage of it, thats stupidity.

Lots of money can be made in bubbles. And realistically, people call bubbles all the time but dont really even know what they're talking about until its too late. Same with recessions. Amazon was called a bubble stock its entire existence until the bubble callers got tired and just bought it about 3 years ago and now call it a legit investment. Tesla is still called a bubble. Who cares? I'm only interested in being on the side that makes money. I get no more satisfaction or money out of getting 10% on a long term held, vs a short term trade or merger arb, a loan, or flipping potatoes....only thing that matter is the P&L...and frankly, the folks who spend a decade missing out so they can have their 6-12 months of "I was right" can have it, I'd rather make money. This is another instance where the bubble can burst, my current BTC goes to zero, and I still have made out better than folks who sat on the sidelines scoffing and doing nothing.

Yup, and unless you have been to the sausage factory, you are prone to underestimate the inevitability of this continuing and accelerating. As more and more institutions begin to get in, which in large part simply means offering "product", this is going to get fun. Why? Because product sellers dont give one shit about price. Druckenmiller and friends might, although its hard to talk about valuations with something like this, but the institutions putting together a crypto ETF or BTC offering? $10k, $50k, $100k, $1M per coin? Makes no difference. They'll be buying as long as demand continues. Buying will beget more buying. Momo will take over. Real float is maybe 12M. I mean you dont even really have widespread, easy + direct access products for retail investors at the brokerages houses yet. And we already know this will work. Look at what indexing and ETF products did for FANGs...

There's few aspects that you kind of have to assess on a personal comfort level but generally speaking: 1) no. It makes zero sense IMO to assess a spac IPO on an individual basis, at least in terms of when I look back at years worth of buying them. I do look at the prospectus occasionally for a few things, but there's been ones where Ive said to myself, this looks boring, and demand is great and the end result is good, and ones where I've thought, this one is really exciting, and its been a dud. Ive never seen one, period, that hasn't provided the opportunity for at least a 2-3% exit, usually within a couple months. Back in the day, a lot of the institutional folks would simply sell the warrants and then down the line redeem the shares. Warrant was considered your "profit". I think the same logic applies to post iPO. You're really just banking on the mechanics of time value on the warrants separating from the pile of cash. You can, such as recently with something like RBACU, IPOA/B?now C I think or SPNVU look at the headliners there and conclude that its probably a safe bet the thing gets a nice pop on deal announcement. RBACU I remember being able to buying for a few weeks at 10.1 or less. Same for SPNVU until a couple weeks ago. If you're in it for the risk free 2-5% then it doesnt matter. If you are looking for a kick ass risk adjusted speculation, you have to be a bit more diligent and willing to pay the premium; ie usually those are trading at 10.4-11 on the units. The big thing now is to look for anything tech or green new deal marketable and then hope for a deal. Although the market is adjusting in that now almost all the ones IPO-ing are with that focus. They used to be very diverse in terms of their purposes. Latin American Construction focused, Distressed Housing, Life Science Royalties, etc. Now the prospectuses basically just say "tech" or "energy" and when the acquisition is announcements its kind of a reach but nobody cares. 2) For allocation purposes its tough and personally I just look at my available liquidity. You can put in for $50k and get all of it, or you can get $5k filled. Depends on demand obviously. In open market, I kind of weigh what my overall allocation looks like and also what opportunities are there, along with time horizon. I have no issues dumping these on the spot if I find a real investment and need the capital. If you stay disciplined in terms of buying close to $10 you obviously have minimal downside and the rare instance where maybe you have better use for the capital and take a 1% loss is more than made up for elsewhere. You can also just kind of trade the fluctuations. If a ran a "vagina fund" as I refer to them, of mostly super conservative objective, I'd probably just trade fluctuations on spac as you can pretty routinely clip .5-1.5/2% just trading these back and forth on market and supply/demand fluctuations.

Yea, that's basically what I do with the margin. As to the potential short term downside, I've been doing these for years and typically hold about a dozen at any given time, although with the spac boom of late they are being issued much more frequently and currently I'm sitting on closer to two dozen. I think the March meltdown is as good a proxy as any. From the ones I held, the biggest intraday decline was to 8.99 and most was 9.80s. Most of those ticks were opening trades on big gap downs and not more than a couple hundred shares. By the close all were within a % or so of the $10 mark.

Ive never reversed course in the same day either, but if your info processing/realization of the situation happens to change I see nothing wrong with adjusting. Generally speaking I try not to have any attachment to any company, period. Which does not mean you cant have long term holds, I have plenty of them...but the only objective is to make money. I can look at GOOG or BRK or many in between a see how they do well. With managers, there's too many layers of hard to account for variables. If you're bearish and you assume FRFH is a good way to play that but he still got it wrong, well that sucks and thats an added layer of risk. If I 'm bearish I rather leave the ball in my own hands with investments/instruments that assure if I am right, that I am rewarded. FRFH has dropped the ball there a few too many times for my liking.

I'm not up to date on my SPACs. What's the deal with PTICU? Nothing special. Last Proptech deal bought Porch which is a bit of a turd but I did alright with it. I have certain relationships with book runners for these and have been doing them for years(well before the spac mania started). Part of the deal is that its kind of pay to play. If they can count on you to take a few thousand shares you'll keep getting allocation; so I do. Its nearly impossible to lose money on just the units at a $10 price. What Ive found is there is almost a guaranteed 2-3% you'll make simply holding from IPO through day 50 when the warrants separate. So I do. Simple, and not worth overthinking.

Took down some PTICU IPO

I think doing it once is worth it as you get access to a great catalogue and then after that, once having familiarized yourself with the content, what works, how folks source ideas, etc, you should be able to take the training wheels off. Just my 2c.

Trimmed the GEOS and some more CRSP, paid down some margin and bought a little GS.

Its really not that outrageous, is it? Information changes, you reassess. Its also how you avoid sitting on a turd like this for 10 years hoping and praying while everyone else in the market feasts...

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3641411-cryptocurrency-indexes-coming-to-s-and-p-dow-jones-in-2021 This is one of the greatest front running opportunities Ive ever seen, happening in slow motion, right in front of everyones faces over the past 12 months and likely to continue for the next several years. The greater the popularity, the more the institutional demand, the tighter the free float gets, so on and so forth. As a wise man once said, to infinity, and beyond!

I second GEOS. Bought a little bit and followed Gregmal into this. It's great little trade sized at 1%. That's exactly what it should be, no more no less. Trade up 15-20%, dump it. Trade down, buy a little more. Liquidation is $11, but you know what they say about cigar butts. Sheet, man. I guess you know what I did with a nice chunk of my position today then....

I haven't had the issue yet as I've been lucky to locate and retain longer term tenants. But if I had the issue, I'd politely let the occupant know that they signed a lease that allows me(or my agents) right of entry to show it provided I give reasonable notice and if they dont like that, one of the benefits of all my units is that they have basements...go there for 15 minutes. Everything will be fine.

Added a few more GEOS, SWKH, OPK calls, sold a few more PSTH puts, and started some DKS.

I was bored and made a call to one of the guys at one of the trading desks at one of my clearing firms to ask about this and the response was that most likely the firm has inventory of said security on hand. Makes sense because Ive had orders filled for tickers on others exchanges without seeing a corresponding volume bump the same way I would if say I bought 500 shares of GRIF(just an example as its something you can clearly see your own volume in) or something in the open market.

Ive had it happen a few times. Was a pain because with some managed accounts we have outside compliance. They are big pussies and only worry about regulatory CYA stuff. So in the couple instances, IIRC, it was with Razer, Hamilton Thorne, and Xiaomi...I put the orders in through the trade desk and we get filled on the specific exchanges. And then a day later all of which are listed in the accounts as the US pink sheet ADRs. And the compliance guys are having a heart attack because "do you know how bad it looks to regulators buying pink sheet penny stocks!!!!!".....I never really got an answer why this occurs, and even after explaining to the tards in compliance that the businesses are all legit and that the ADRs are no big deal, it still continued being a headache. So yea, no idea why it happens, but it does. When selling its just the reverse process and equally no big deal, at least when dealing with the trade desk. Not sure how simple it would be if you are putting the order in yourself as the ADR is likely trading during different hours than the ticker on its native exchange.