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🍋 "Sociopathic Grandpa" Warren

🍋 "Sociopathic Grandpa" Warren

Short Squeez
April 08, 2022

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"If I believe that I am right, I will take it to the end of the earth until I am proven right." — Bill Ackman

Good morning and Happy Friday! Tiger Woods is back. Major sports gambling apps like DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM (have these guys heard of spaces?) are set to suffer huge losses if Tiger pulls off the biggest comeback of all time and wins The Masters. Pre-tournament odds for Tiger were right around 50-to-1. Trucking is back. Walmart is offering $110,000 starting salaries to truck drivers and expanding a program that trains existing workers to drive. So, I could either be a banking analyst or a trucker, and make the same money? Very cool...... Also, jobs are back! The US jobless claims fell to 166,000, the lowest level since 1968. Back then, the labor force was less than half the current size too, so this is a great sign of demand for workers.

Today's sponsor, InsideTracker's products have helped thousands of people with personalized recommendations for nutrition, supplements, and lifestyle. They're giving away a free e-book on longevity tips to Short Squeez readers.

1. Story of the Day: "Sociopathic Grandpa" Warren

Trouble in paradise? Billionaires seem to be dogging on each other, because even when you have more money than you know what to do with, stuff still annoys you. Peter Thiel recently called Warren Buffet, Jamie Dimon, and Larry Fink members of a "finance gerontocracy" that's against a "revolutionary youth movement" aka Bitcoin.

As the keynote speaker at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, Thiel blamed finance old-heads for Bitcoin's failure to reach $100,000. Thiel said, "What's it going to take for this to happen?" before throwing shade at the trio of crypto skeptics, calling Buffett a "sociopathic grandpa."

JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway did not say anything in response. A BlackRock spokesman also didn't comment on Thiel's statement but did point to Fink's recent shareholder letter that said a well-designed digital-payment system could be beneficial for international transactions, and decrease the risk of money laundering and corruption.

Thiel believes Bitcoin could reach a market cap similar to gold at $12 trillion, or even public equities at $115 trillion (gave yourself quite the range their boss). Thiel also called out Fed Chair Jerome Powell saying, "Mr. Powell - people like that - should be extremely grateful to Bitcoin because it's the last warning they are going to get. They've chosen to ignore it, and they will have to pay the consequences for that in the years ahead."

Short Squeez Takeaway: Bitcoin didn't really seem to be affected by the comments, likely because all crypto whales are down "networking" in Miami at the Bitcoin 2022 conference. Obviously, there's a case for crypto, and we've seen that in the rise in value and adoption over the past few years. Fundamentally though, the market seems to move more off Elon Musk tweets than anything else.

Source: Bloomberg, MarketWatch

2. Markets Rundown

Equity markets rebounded, like you after your last breakup champ! Markets are still figuring out what to make of the Fed minutes released yesterday, and crypto investors are (maybe) contemplating the old-heads' (referenced above) opinions on digital currency.

Movers & Shakers

(+) Sunshine Biopharma ($SBFM) +53% capitalizing on a recent announcement of the discovery of a successful mRNA treatment for breast and ovarian cancer.
(+) Momentus ($MNTS) +49% after a recent deal was reached with SpaceX, including launch agreements for four upcoming SpaceX Transporter missions.
(–) Aptinyx ($APTX) -49% after announcing its experimental treatment for painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy failed to meet its primary endpoint in a clinical trial.

3. Top Reads

Financiers flying SpaceX to space station on $55 million tickets (BB)
US industries hurt by Chinese "dumping" could get bigger payout (Fox)
Fuel traders are ditching storage as holding product could equal risk (BB)
WeWork CEO's 2021 compensation is almost 3x the year before (MW)
Mortgage bond market has to deal with Fed's quantitative tightening plans (WSJ)
Food investors should worry about Conagra inflation warning (WSJ)
UK joining salaries rise at fastest rate since at least 1997 (BB)
Fed's Bullard says policy is "behind the curve" (CNBC)
Belarus and Russia forced to pay foreign debts in rubles (BB)

A Message from InsiderTracker: What Blood Biomarkers are Associated with Aging?

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4. Book of the Day: The Big Long: How Going Big on an Outrageous Idea Transformed the Real Estate Industry

In 2008, with housing prices in free fall, even experienced investors wouldn’t touch the single-family rental (SFR) home market. It was too unmanageable, too hard to scale. According to the experts, SFR wasn’t even a real asset class.

But Doug Brien and Colin Wiel looked at the homes of the Bay Area’s working class communities and saw something else. They saw an opportunity not just to build a profitable business, but to transform residential real estate, establish SFR as a legitimate institutional investment, and restore devastated neighborhoods.

The Big Long is the story of how two friends defied pundits, doomsayers, and house-flippers to “go long” on a revolutionary business idea. Through FBI investigations, financial reversals, and a pandemic, they persevered to build the SFR industry’s pioneering company, Waypoint.

The Big Long shows that wealth and success don’t come from short-sale thinking and meme stocks but from committing to a vision and going BIG.

“Repeat after me: real estate provides the highest returns, the greatest values and the least risk.”

5. Short Squeez Picks

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The number of billionaires out there is unknown, but certainly growing
The other pressing issue: the loneliness epidemic

6. Daily Visual: Mining Bitcoin is Tougher than Ever

Jan 1, 2017 to April 4, 2022

Source: Axios

7. Daily Acumen: Swayed by Complexity

Computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra once wrote:

"Simplicity is the hallmark of truth— we should know better, but complexity continues to have a morbid attraction. When you give an academic audience a lecture that is crystal clear from alpha to omega, your audience feels cheated and leaves the lecture hall commenting to each other: That was rather trivial, wasn’t it?"

Complexity sells better.

Why?

Length is often the only thing signaling effort and thoughtfulness. Also, things you don’t understand create a mystique around people who do.

When you understand things I don’t, I have a hard time judging the limits of your knowledge in that field, which makes me more prone to taking your views at face value.