The biggest Wall Street news is, of course, Elon Musk’s buying of Twatter, the “town square” of social media .
“In order to secure the $12.5 billion margin loan on his Tesla shares, Musk gave a personal guarantee, according to Fortune, Here’s what that means: If Musk can’t repay the loan by selling shares of Tesla, banks could take Musk’s equity stake in Twitter, his 46% stake in SpaceX, or any personal assets.”
Fortune Magazine
If Tesla’s stock falls below 40%, Musk will face a margin call.
So Elon Musk bought 9.2% of Twatter (my favorite name for Twitter) and this past week made a non-binding offer for the company. A CEO who I know asked my opinion.
Taking Twitter private at $54.20 should be up to shareholders, not the board
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 14, 2022
The key issue here is whether a take-private transaction is able to unlock value or not. I seriously doubt it.
Forget that I think Twitter is a shitshow. Forget that I think Twitter is the dumpster of the ineffective, time-waster intellectual. I don’t see any value in Twitter other than in larping and getting off after a long boring day at work.
The people who voted with/for Elon, the 3 M followers, said that Elon’s taking over “will make it freer”. I doubt it, because I doubt Elon’s involvement in Twitter’s operations after he purportedly gets ownership of it. I am justified to complain about Twitter’s treatment of me on my nine years on the platform, nevertheless, I don’t see any real changes trickling down to your average user.
Still, taking- private transactions of large social media companies is largely untested. A bidding war appears to emerge:
“Thoma Bravo’s reported interest in a Twitter acquisition came the same day the social media company announced that it had adopted a “poison pill” policy that would allow shareholders to buy additional shares at a discount.”
Newsweek, 04-15-2022
No matter who ends up getting Twitter if the company sells itself, they won’t hold it for too long. What comes around, goes around.
P.S. I’m looking forward to Twatter cutting down my followers to 500 by next year.
Unless Elon buys it in which case we’ll hit 500K.
From the Wall Street Journal:
“Charli D’Amelio, who started posting videos of herself dancing on TikTok in 2019, brought in $17.5 Million last year, according to Forbes…By comparison, median pay for chief executives of S&P 500 companies was $13.4 million in 2020. Ms. D’Amelio’s compensation was higher than several CEOs of big publicly traded companies, including Exxon Mobil’s CEO Darren Woods ($15.6 million in 2020), Starbucks’s Kevin Johnson ($14.7 MM), Delta Airlines’s Ed Bastian ($13.1 MM) and McDonald’s Chris Kempczinski’s ($10.8 MM).
Charli’s older sister, Dixie brought in $10 MM. That rivals the pay of Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly. “
Joseph Pisani, The Wall Street Journal
“They’re really building business empires”, said Mae Karwowski, CEO and Founder of influencer marketing agency Obviously.
“Analysts say brands find the millions of followers of TikTok stars irresistible. Their followers are obsessive.” said Krishna Subramanian, CEO and co-founder of social media data company Captiv8. He said TikTok influencers at times have stronger followings than fans of Hollywood stars.”
WSJ
We should ask these girls about NY Resolutions (we gave up resolutions years ago) and I’m sure they will sell us some of their products.
SPACS Lord Chamath is portrayed in the first June issue of The New Yorker.
Of hedge-fund managers: “Let them get wiped out. Who cares? They don’t get to summer in the Hamptons? Who cares?” (He made both proclamations after he had become a venture capitalist and started a hedge fund; he has yachted off the Italian coast.)
"In 2019, when he was trying to persuade investors to support his first spac—for the space-tourism company Virgin Galactic—he met in New York with a group of mutual-fund managers and gave a dazzling speech about helping mankind reach for the heavens. It went unmentioned that Virgin Galactic had burned through nearly a billion dollars, and that in its fifteen-year history it had missed every major deadline that it had set for itself. Instead, Palihapitiya proclaimed that the company would likely earn enormous profits—and change the world." -The New Yorker
What else is there to say ? That this Joker slides on slime ?
“Having a great story, and knowing how to tell it, can be a quick way to get rich. “
The New Yorker
And now a quote from me:
People are stupid. You can always bet on people’s stupidity.
Don’t blame Chamath that he possibly is worth more than Michael Milken (whose net worth is $3.7 Bn). Blame yourselves and your own stupidity. At least Michael Milken is a genius. Chamath is the Joker of Silicon Valley.
The post The Joker of SPACS first appeared on Wall Street Financier: Notes from High Altitude©.]]>Succession is never easy at complex entities like Bridgewater. A stout Founder is always going to meet opposition.
Remember what Sadhguru said:
This is why we go against the grain of mediocrity in the society.
Now what’s with this movie: Star Trek Picard ?
From MIT Technology Review:
“A proposed new social network is hoping to entice millions of people to pay to get close to superstars of technology, business, and academia, according to a pitch deck (pdf) sent to MIT Technology Review. The nascent site, called Column, already has major connections, per the deck: …it has the support of Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel—who, however, denies it.
The presentation for Column, which describes it as “a social network to make us all smarter,” names businessman Aron Ping D’Souza as CEO and Thiel as a founding user.”
Angela Chen, MIT Tech Review
How it makes money
As well as the $100,000 stakes it plans to raise from early “equity holders,” brands and businesses would pay Column for their involvement. The site plans to generate revenue by what it calls “taxation”: taking a percentage of revenue made from subscriptions.”
MIT
Is this another elitist snub at the common folk ? You know, let’s keep it in the family…
I don’t know. But I won’t be paying them $100,000 to join their ranks. Count me out as an equity founding holder.
Because, for 7 years straight, I’ve been giving here the best “truths” about life and business, without having a “truth” button for you to click on. “Truth” is not a button in the pockets of the academic and business elites.
For all the clown show and virtue-signalling on Twitter and Facebook, at least you can see past the non-sense.
On this blog, I repeatedly warn about the perils of social media. (some people call Twitter “Twatter” for the garbage on that platform). I advised men to drastically reduce their social media exposure.
Here is what has been happening over the past year or two on Twitter: a phenomenon of pseudo-experts in men’s issues, “Twitter keyboard warriors”, if you will, burst into the scene.
“Keyboard” is an outdated term since these warrior bums mainly work their phones. Phone warriors is more apt. Now what are doing, these “keyboard/phone warriors” ? As the name implies, they tweet at 5000 words per hour their brain farts to the world. You might think that is OK, since it appears to be harmless (follow or don’t follow them is your choice.)
However, it is your time. Your attention.
You can never get back your time. If you sink it into the Twitter sewer following these people…
Your time is the most precious thing you have. Don’t give it away to a bum on social media. Tweeting or Instagram posting is not the same as writing.
How do you know if you are dealing with a Keyboard warrior ?
You take the most basic hints.
- What are this person’s credentials ? What has he written, been acknowledged for, or accomplished ? (no, that does NOT include the number of followers or likes, that’s what the trolls do!)
- How often does he(she) tweet ? If he goes at 5400 rpm… The keyboard warriors live their lives on social media. Their phone is their life. That’s what a phone warrior is. This is the basic test of who is a Twitter warrior. These people are wasting their lives away and they’ll take you with them if you let them.
And you can do your own list. *Garbage list* that it.
In the manosphere, the garbage list is long…too long in fact. If I listed their names here, these “redpill” jokers would get offended.
“ All sick and diseased people strive instinctively after a herd organization, out of a desire to shake off their sense of oppressive discomfort and weakness; the ascetic priest divines this instinct and promotes it; wherever a herd exists it is the instinct of weakness which has wished for the heard, and the cleverness of the priests which has organized it, for mark this:
By an equally natural necessity the strong strive as much for isolation as the weak for union…” –Friedrich Nietzsche -The Genealogy of Morals
I would never take someone serious who works social media for 30 hours a week. You are what you do. The phone bums have never held a serious job in their lives. I am the ONLY writer in the manosphere, perhaps the only one out there, who does not tell his readers to follow him on social media. That’s right. I said it before, it is enough you read my articles. You don’t need to follow me social media: I only keep it because if I didn’t have it they’d say I don’t have an Internet presence outside the blog.
*A Version of this article appeared on my Medium *general public consumption* blog.
The post Social Media’s trash pile first appeared on Wall Street Financier: Notes from High Altitude©.]]>