ValueArb

No idea what happened here, but it sure seems like a self inflicted trainwreck by Bhargava to destroy a business he was buying before he finished buying it. Simplifying to the end of the story.

DWAC has broken over $50 since its PIPE fell apart. Seems like an easy short, but no idea what happens if Trump wins the election.

I wish Charlie was still alive for many better reasons, but today I wish it so some Moody's Analytics researcher would have to call him to say they are skeptical that he actually exists, and hopefully report his response! More seriously, good example of what paying attention to details can bring you when researching companies (though I expect few of the companies they red flagged to be publicly traded).

IIRC Satoshi supposedly had hundreds of different wallets containing BTC and AFAIK none have ever been touched. If that is true, he would have had to lose all the keys to every wallet.

It's impossible that Satoshi is alive or some of those BTCs would have been moved.

In general most every agency in the government hates crypto and Bitcoin, so if the NSA had Satoshi's private key they'd probably dump his position to drive BTC below $1K to punish the "criminals" using it. Alternate theory: They are holding on their Satoshi stake until BTC reaches $1M because they will need to liquidate it then to avoid a federal debt default. Lets just hope the NSA doesn't figure out how to crack BTC keys using quantum computers. The f*ckery they would inflict on the market would be legendary.

How to tell whether a conspiracy theory is likely false? 1) It depends on a government agency being competent and able to hide their activities with supernatural skill without a single actual participant telling anyone anything.

What’s the difference? You think Manila won’t react similarly?

This is an incredibly static analysis. People didn't starve in Kyiv despite a massive military attack that nearly surrounded the entire city and shut down air travel and made transport in and out of the city much harder and slower for months. First, cities contain large numbers of warehouses full of stores of foods and supplies, nothing is "just in time" delivery. Those stores soften the initial blow, then fairly quickly new transport is arranged and fuel and supplies delivered, both from the efforts of government but also just standard market responses. Another example is 9/11, where subways and public transport in Manhattan was shut down for days (and air travel in the US for almost a week excepting return flights) but nobody starved and there was no chaos, no widespread panic or riots. One more example is COVID where entire nations were shut down and transport became much more difficult. But people sheltered in their homes and fuel requirements plummeted. The idea that we are so dependent upon technology that any substantive failure would quickly lead to apocalyptic conditions is a common science fiction trope, but I'm at a loss to think of any compelling real world examples of it. Outside of direct military assault its apparently really hard to kill a large city population overnight. Hopefully compelling examples don't happen in our lifetimes.

When you look at the situation from a Chinese perspective, even if a liberal democratic China existed they'd have to be concerned about this scenario. They'd be investing in their navy, claiming/building island outposts to ring the South China Sea, and would be eager to recombine with Taiwan (but would pursue it in a far more friendly manner). We need to stop assuming every Chinese move is a step towards waging war with us or Taiwan, and consider whether they are merely steps towards being able to better defend themselves if we wage war on them.

I think these scenarios are more likely than outright invasion, especially because they require far fewer resources (and casualties). But the problem is the South China Sea, China's most important economic resource. If they blockade Taiwan, they have to be confident that none of its allies, three of the most powerful militaries in the world, won't attempt to lift the blockade, and they'll almost certainly be wrong. Its very unlikely that Japan or South Korea is going to countenance Chinese aggression even if the US does. But lets assume they all do. The blockade will immediately cut off most of China's own imports and exports. The CCP can't survive that for long. Taking individual islands is far more likely, but still risks blowback that blocks or greatly reduces trade. If Taiwan contests these takeovers, there will be air-strikes, naval battles, missiles flying and insurance for the commercial carriers in the South China Sea goes infinite. China does have an obsession with building or taking islands in the South China sea, but my belief is so far entirely defensive in nature. They want to be able to defend the sea because they know how terrible the consequences are if an adversary controls it and blockades them.

Martha Stewart was never convicted of insider trading, she was convicted of lying to a federal agent. If she had just told the agent to talk to her lawyer instead she would have never been convicted of anything and still be a public company CEO. So while we discuss the various ways to commit insider trading and to avoid committing insider trading on this thread, let's always remember, don't talk to the police!

Also a decent summary of "mis-appropriation theory" in insider trading. I suppose a thought experiment would be: If the US got rid of its current rules and replaced them with a simpler, “if you know about a merger that hasn’t been announced yet, it is illegal to trade the stock of the target”-style rule, would that change the average run-up? My guess is no: My guess is that the current hodgepodge of rules covers basically every practical situation, so expanding them wouldn’t have much effect.4 But I’m not sure.

There used to be a useful insider trade for Wall Street banks that had taxi data for rides to the Fed. The paper is “When Bankers Go to Hail: Insights into Fed–Bank Interactions from Taxi Data,” by Daniel Bradley, David Andrew Finer, Matthew Gustafson and Jared Williams, and I guess that makes sense: When the Fed is more worried about the economy, it meets with bankers more often, and measuring those meetings gives you some signal about the economy.

Scherr gave multiple reasons including Teslas high depreciation rates due to the price cuts, that Teslas are expensive to repair and it refused to give Hertz the customer discounts on repair parts discounts they get from other car makers, and lastly the higher accident rates (which all EVs have when being driven by unfamiliar drivers).

Once you get to 5% you have to start filing with the SEC and disclose intentions. When you get to 10% things start to get dicey, and companies will start instituting poison pills to make it suicidal for you to buy additional shares. Unfortunately our current securities laws do more to entrench boards than they do to protect shareholders or make the market efficient.

I've been hearing this for at least four years. I took my shot a couple years ago and my puts expired out of the money.

I agree with much of what you wrote, but Elon is clearly the most important founder of Tesla (and there is a legal settlement with the "real" founders giving him the right to the title "founder"). He was the only person willing to give the original two founders seed funding, hired its most important employee (JB Straubel, the CTO), and Tesla was only able to raise further funding because Elon lead every round. Most importantly, he was always heavily involved. He helped design the Roadster, and when the original CEO came up with a production plan for the Roadster that would have cost $250k/unit Elon fired him and took over, and saved the company by lowering those costs enough to price it at $80k. And then he led development of the Model S, which is really why Tesla became so valuable. That said, I agree he doesn't deserve any more stock, it's questionable whether he's still critical to their success, and he's heavily distracted with other projects and social media jihads.

Start at zero, and then carefully increase based on research. Typically this is what I do with balance sheets. 1) Accept most current assets at listed value, except for inventories and sometimes accounts receivable. Inventories I will haircut situationally, are they something that can be rapidly input into products and sold? If so I might take them at close to balance sheet value. I usually take accounts receivable at 100% but if the business or its customers seem sketchy (or they've had problems collecting) I'll haircut it. 2) Ignore all intangibles. 3) PPE I will go through by hand. Examples are improvements to leased property is a zero, but lab and computer equipment I might take at 50%. 4) Real estate I'll look for comps, as @thepupil said they can be held at some very old purchase prices and be worth far more today, even office buildings. 5) Collectible cars is just a sign that this isn't a management team that shares my capital allocation standards;)

But you apparently have to pay taxes on that $20,000 watch you had in your luggage even though you were planning to donate to charity;)

He already owned billions in stock and was the de facto founder of Tesla. If the board had given him a fraction of the 2018 option package, would he have not kept working at his brain-child that he has his ego wrapped up in? I doubt it very much. In reality most of Tesla's success since then was predestined because of market position and technology and the team at tesla, not because of extra efforts by a part-time employee. He already controls the company because he controls the board. And Tesla is just one of dozens of companies working on pattern matching models, which are colloquially called "AI" and which will never be alive or need "control". Giving him more stock doesn't affect what OpenAI does with their models, or anyone else.

You can't spend what you don't have and you can't build what you can't make. Where are they going to get all the washing machines they need to strip for military CPUs? Secondly, how long can Russia devote such a huge amount of their GDP to military spending without shrinking the economy and triggering internal unrest?

So you are saying we should have pulled out of the middle east when Osama Bin Laden made his first threats? My point on Russia is they are trapped, and we should not let them out of the trap. The fact they have a tiny GDP is important because it means that replacing the military equipment they are losing (esp. the most advanced) will take them years, if not decades. The only option we should give them is total withdrawal from Crimea and Donbas.

Thats a commercial flight, but not economy, looks like business class? Either way, impressive.