Who needs crypto? HKD - this small Hong Kong based financial / business services company IPO’ed around $8 and was trading $10 about two weeks ago. Then it ran to $45, which seems like a lot, but is hard to see on the chart. A few days later it kept going, hitting $400. Today it broke thru $500 near the end of the day and halted 3 times limit up before trading just shy of $1000 shortly after the close.
That’s a 100x return in two weeks. I wasn’t involved until buying the end of day breakout at $550 and selling most of my shares on the way up to $900, with a few shares of house money still riding. This was a responsibly small position to begin with, sad to say, and definitely no endorsement of this type of trading.
A CA applied math student applied himself admirably to the meme frenzy and walked off with over $100M in profits from Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY)'s inexplicable rally from $5’s to $30.
A 20-year-old university student has made a roughly $110mn gain by selling a stake in struggling retailer Bed Bath & Beyond, after its stock price soared during a month of frenzied trading reminiscent of last year’s meme stock boom.
Freeman amassed his more than 6 per cent position via Freeman Capital Management, a fund registered in the cowboy town of Sheridan, Wyoming, according to the filings. He said he raised money from friends and family and believed the ailing company could restructure its debt.
That’s an even crazier gamble than what DFV pulled off with Gamestop calls. The idea that you’d bet (or even have access to) $25MM of friends-and-family money for this kind of gamble…
At least in DFV’s case, he was making a semi-plausible bet that was wildly overshot by the meme-craze making him rich. He just managed to cash a $50k lottery ticket for $40MM (where more realistic odds would have put him at 5-10x gains than the insane run he had due to the meme takeoff)
Ryan the GME CEO, who sparked this BBBY surge by filing his large stock position as well as call options in the $60-80 price range, suggesting he had very high hopes for the stock. Yesterday he dumped it all in the $20-30 range, including the options -
The Twitter merger is almost done, with every indication pointing to the deal closing on Friday for $54.20. The stock still trades about 0.5% cheaper, $53.90ish, and tomorrow appears to be the last day it will trade. Long and recently more long!
Facebook sure took a beating recently, down 25% in the after hours on earnings, just over $100 now. That’s from $350 at the start of the year - ouch! How’s the Metaverse working out for you?
Revenues up, earnings up, only a slight miss of “analysts’ expectations”. 20% seems like an overreaction. On the other hand, the stock price itself has always been an overreaction.
But now we know what to expect if and when Amazon announces an unexpected Prime Day event. If they announce two, look out below!
Amazon became an unfortunate first when its market value reached $879 billion on Wednesday, down from a high of $1.88 trillion in July 2021. It’s the first public company ever to lose over $1 trillion in market value, according to Bloomberg.
Amazon isn’t the only company feeling the impact of a shaky economy and a return to life outside the home after the initial COVID-19 lockdowns. Microsoft’s market valuepeaked at around $2.5 trillion and sits at $1.78 trillion at the time of this writing. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, reached just over $1 trillion in value in August 2021 and now sits at about $285 billion. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down more than 8% since the start of 2022 but has been lower at times this year.
2022 Q4, total returns. “At least I wasn’t in crypto”
Many stocks recovered somewhat from their lows in Q3, although many riskier tech stocks, lead by TSLA, fell further. Gold did well, while fixed income suffered slightly.
Yeah, Exxon, Chevron, etc did well, but Armand Hammer’s the man. Paranoid … maybe, but that doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. And one heck of a run in 2022.
ETA: “was the man.” I knew he was dead, but did not realize it was that long ago.
He had great name for lovers of puns. Here’s what Wikipedia says about his name
Hammer originally said that his father had named him after a character, Armand Duval, in La Dame aux Camélias , a novel by Alexandre Dumas. According to other sources, Hammer later was said to be named after the “arm and hammer” graphic symbol of the SLP, in which his father had a leadership role.[16] Late in his life, Hammer confirmed that this was indeed the origin of his given name.[1]: 16
He got so tired of people asking him if he owned Arm and Hammer baking soda that he bought enough of an interest in the company to get a seat on the board.
Banks are under stress as SI a crypto heavy bank is being liquidated and SPY member and previously a $15B mkt cap Silicon Valley Bank SIVB crashed -70% when they suffered large interest rate losses on their bonds and mortgages, tried and failed to raise extra equity, and triggered a run on the bank as prominent VCs told their clients to pull their cash out ASAP.
I was short very late to both SI and SIVB but am doing well on those. Crypto is a one off, but I bet there are lots of normal banks with big losses on their boring bonds and mortgage from the rapid, and rising Fed rates and future rate expectations.
And SIVB got seized by the FDIC less than 6 hours after the post above. They’d are expected to go bankrupt this weekend and wipe out all their shareholders and half their bonds as well. Depositors are probably ok, but those over $250k (the average account was $4M, it’s business bank mostly) will have to wait longer for things to get sorted.
The moves in other risky banks were dramatic and I traded them poorly, but I held my SIVB short and it’s likely to be a zero in pretty quick order. Other possibly distressed banks include SBNY FRC PACW WAL, and maybe also ZION SCHW too.
Any characteristics in common among these shaky banks? I’d imagine most banks have a sizable amount of 10-year treasuries under water in their books. What is unique at these banks?
–TIA
