Gregmal

And ironically enough those excited but stupid and buying XRP and possibly doing so directly from the company, making the company more valuable at the expense of their fanboys...lol

Ripple Labs is now just Ripple. Outside of what I assume you are capable of finding yourself(having deduced from your posting history a reasonable competency with sleuthing publicly available data) there really isn't a whole lot more out there than likely what you've already seen. Private market valuation range on Ripple is huge. Over the past 12 months shares have traded at anywhere from a $3B valuation to a $17B valuation. A big piece of the valuation is their holdings in XRP, which personally I would not pay for. It is pretty cool though being able to, in an unregulated manner, just dump your own crypto coin into the market for cash. That said, take a look at their financial backers and the folks who've participated in their funding rounds. Certainly nothing to sneeze at. They're probably more established with the big banks than any other crypto-ish outfit I'm aware of. I also believe if you're concerned with the 2019 Series C that there are IPO ratchets. All in all, its definitely not a 0, and there's been some rumor they'll IPO soon. If they IPO in this market you're looking at a $25B + valuation with ease. How long that lasts? Who the f knows. I'd look at this as something to be excited about with respect to Tetragon, not something to dislike. Especially if you arent ascribing much to it anyway.

That is my understanding. Basically everything w/ FINRA comes down to compensation and the offshoots of it. Disclosure, conflict of interest, ethical dealing, etc. That said, the 65 is easy and it probably costs $20k or so to setup an IA operation. If you are running more than 15 accounts you are likely well over $1M in AUM which should generate enough to make the official setup a worthwhile expense. There's a few things in the biz that you always want to remember. The first is CYA. If you're getting paid under the table you still have to file a tax return. If you file a tax return accurately a regulator has you dead to rights. They catch you doing shit improperly and they'll have no qualms about banning you for life. If its a wealthy Uncle who want to throw you 2/20 for his personal account, sure. But once you're dealing with multiple accounts always do it by the book. One bullshit customer complaint will do you in otherwise. And believe me, Ive met a ton of scumbags in the biz, but even the genuine and honest folks...it doesnt take much to run into issues with customer complaints. Buy a stock that goes down and all of a sudden they get amnesia and it was a UT, have one bad year after many good and all of a sudden the fees are unacceptable. Always protect yourself. The license and the RIA/IA status will help with that.

Any news for GEOS to trade up 30% since that day of forced selling? Only news I saw was the $6 to ~$8 move which in a round about way screamed, "ALWAYS TAKE ADVANTAGE OF FORCED SELLERS!"... I've trimmed position down again to about half; I think the rest I'll layer out of in the 8s. I would not be surprised to see a sale of the company though. The buyback was actually intentionally, or unintentionally, brilliantly timed as well. Sold the rest of this today. Also did the unthinkable. Shorted some Tesla. ~1% position.

The biggest pig in the CRISPR universe, has been set free and is now flying. As such, trimmed some EDIT.

I guess no one here remembers the late 60‘s Hippie generation. The Hippies were far more radical and socialist than the Millenials are now and look at where we are. Its funny but this is so true. On of my ex gf's father was a self proclaimed hippy. Really cool dude. Still smoked pot every Friday night and weekend, drank his Pinot Noir daily, listened to Eric Clapton and all that. Had all sorts of war stories from his days as a hippie. During the day he was an executive at a major insurance company with a nice big corner office on Lexington Ave....

Meanwhile how many other countries have started vaccinations? There is one area where the US is not resembling a first world country... https://www.thepharmaletter.com/in-brief/brief-fda-slammed-for-operation-turtle-speed-over-covid-1-vaccine-approval On one hand, the virus is oh sooo deadly we need to commandeer peoples lives and livelihoods, suspend common sense so we can cater to these clown scientists....and on the other, we're letting the bureaucrats and academics sit on their asses for 3 weeks and letting guys like Fauci criticize others for "rushing" LOL. You cant even make this kind of shit up.... Last time I checked, urgent, and rush, kind of go together. Instead, lets let everyone else vaccinate first while we sit around exercising our rights to be academics! What a total joke.

Quick glance, first thing that comes to mind is that you've got a lot of unnecessary overlap. Concentration is fine if you know what you're doing.

Sold another 1/3 of BEAM. When the fun stops, no one knows!

My core stuff really doesnt change much over time. I trade everything non core and a have a lot of different strategy stuff typically going on. But 60-70% core is wrapped up in MSG entities, HTL, PCYO, BRK, and recently added OMG. There's one more in there thats been such a POS I refuse to even mention it. Got a handful of bigger than 2% but sub 10% positions like AYR, ESRT, BAM, FRPH, GOOG, JBGS, SPG, CRISPR basket. Most other stuff changes so frequently its not worth listing.

Where do I buy this real estate ETF?

AYR was a noted outlier. It worked as a SPAC rather than traditional IPO due to regulatory burdens facing MJ companies. Very much a one off IMO. In fact I recall at the time, maybe 12-15 months ago, some of the biggest criticisms of it...was that it was a post deal SPAC. What a difference a year makes, eh?

Agree with the above, with one noted exception. Making money always feels good! But yea. Narratives are important but also realize that all these things are run by salesmen focused on promoting narratives. Always a star CEO, a "guy who led XYZ", etc. Up until this year, spac deals were always regarded as crap, typically PE exits that compensate the sponsor regardless, and totally screwed the retail investor. I would say theres no good or bad companies out there; looking it like that is a mistake, theres just good or bad setups. Ive found over the years to stick with the credible book runners or deals of size. Cantor has always been the leader in the space. But this year this bigger guys have really gotten into the game and thats less of an issue. It really doesnt matter right now.

From one of my headline feeds..... Oppenheimer analysts ups CRSP price target to $155 from $105, maintains OUTPERFORM rating. Current share price? $159... LOL We should put all the analysts together in a room with all the scientists and academics and see what comes out....

The best part about IB is if you call in to their "trade desk", you'll probably get the order in right as the internet login gets fixed.....in about an hour!

Any news for GEOS to trade up 30% since that day of forced selling? Only news I saw was the $6 to ~$8 move which in a round about way screamed, "ALWAYS TAKE ADVANTAGE OF FORCED SELLERS!"... I've trimmed position down again to about half; I think the rest I'll layer out of in the 8s. I would not be surprised to see a sale of the company though. The buyback was actually intentionally, or unintentionally, brilliantly timed as well.

Perhaps now, perhaps in 6 months, perhaps in a year or two we can revisit. When it comes to being in the market, the only thing that matters is putting yourself in position to being on the side of the trade that makes money. If folks were too distracted, or filled with fear, or grief stricken to invest, thats ok. As I always say, we all answer to our own P&L's. Perhaps down the line, when one is back in the office, or with their colleagues, bosses, patients, clients or whoever they answer to, they can take some time on their allotted lunch break to come back here and lecture me on trading family members for dollars....at which time I'll probably be at home, happily, with the wife and kids...mid 30s and all. Time is money. Who's really trading family for dollars? Whats spending the next 2 two decades doing a 9-5 worth? 80% of your kids lives as kids? Tisk, tisk.

Almost daily occurrence lately, trimmed more CRSP, BEAM, also a little RPTX and ESRT...still waiting for the bubble to burst.

Goldman to Florida!

I'm not slandering him but holy shit Sanjeev, how many times do we need to give people a break for making the same mistakes? I certainly dont mince words about guys like Einhorn who do it. I am sure he's a great guy. Why do you keep doing something that isn't working? Isn't it a travesty to have wasted what has literally been one of the most ridiculous periods of market prosperity in modern history!?! Where all you had to do was not be "that guy" FOR THE ENTIRE STRETCH! I made a point of distinguishing this from Sardar, who is just all around an awful person. Thats not Prem. But I still think its inexcusable to not adapt as a manager. Thats ultimately their entire job! How many shareholders would have preferred to have taken a 50% drawdown in 08 and then just rode the wave rather than continuously being plagued by this need to be the smartest guy in the market by timing the next temporary drawdown? Which honestly, we've had a bunch of those over the last decade and when they've happened, FRFH still has somehow managed to avoid reaping the benefit of them. Its not about blasting a good man, its about being accountable as a manager and learning from your mistakes. I've tried so many times to get myself to like this stock/company and briefly owned it I think in either 2013 or 14. But every time I try, I come back to the same thing, and that is very simply, that whatever you are trying to accomplish here, you can do elsewhere without the management risk.

Yup, I brought this up in the spring, and it was widely determined by the experts here not to be relevant to anything even though cycle threshold is 10000% relevant to everything regarding spread/severity of this "cold". Or that the vast majority of positives in the US would have been negatives in other countries.....

^ 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.