Today is a weird day with a lot of bizarre stuff going on in the markets and the world. I’m going with a “Lightning Round” style note today. I’m on Real Vision’s Daily Briefing today at 4 pm ET. You can watch it on YouTube or the Real Vision site.
Donald Trump launched a SPAC for his new “Truth” social media business. The stock with the symbol DWAC has traded up over 300% with over $400 million shares traded. Yes, you read that correctly. Not fake news.
And on the same day, We Work also has (finally) gone public also via a SPAC with the symbol WE. The market cap of We Work is $9 billion just a tad short of the $47 billion “valuation” with the last Softbank investment.
Tesla reported earnings last night which were mostly in line with expectations. Normally Tesla earnings calls are filled with insane comments and unrealistic prognostications by Elon Musk. It felt weird not having that psycho on the call. The amount of short-term options with TSLA today is bonkers. Gamma squeezes to the moon until Full Self Driving is banned which will have the stock look like a Plaid going 120mph off a cliff.
I had someone randomly DM me on Twitter who was promoting his books, games, and videos for kids focused on teaching them about Bitcoin. One of the books/video’s is titled Goodnight Bitcoin. It’s just absurd.
Pay Pal on the rumor of spending $40 billion to take over Pinterest has shed $30.5 billion in market cap!
Facebook is rumored it will change its name next week as Mark Zuckerberg wants to rebrand the company as a metaverse company rather than a social media company. Two takeaways, first I’m not going to be wearing goggles to put me into the “metaverse” and second, Congress and the FTC won’t care what the company is called as they have a target on the company after the WSJ stories from the whistleblower. Adding to the pain for Zuck is a story eBay founder and billionaire Pierre Omidyar is financially backing Frances Haugen the whistleblower. Gotta love it when billionaires get into spats.
It was revealed that on March 23, 2020, when the Fed was announcing unprecedented stimulus uncovered with an email warning Fed officials might want to avoid unnecessary trading for a few months as the Fed dived deeper into markets, the Board of Governors’ ethics unit suggested. This message was also passed along to regional bank presidents by their own ethics officers. “Oh sorry, I missed THAT email.”
The Boston Celtics game televised in China was canceled after their center Enes Kanter in a video voiced his support for Tibetan independence. He said “Brutal dictator of China, Xi Jinping, I have a message for you and your henchmen,” said in the video. “Free Tibet, Free Tibet, Free Tibet.” I hope world war 3 can be averted.
The markets are mixed today with what has been working Energy and Financials are taking a breather. Rates remain on the rise yet tech is not noticing it today at least not yet. Commodities are weak across the board. Retail stocks are up today and I believe this will be a fertile area for shorts as the supply chain constraints become very clear headed into the holiday season. Mega cap tech was weak yesterday and up today. The bounce which was stronger than I expected might be running low on fuel.
trade ideas
Here’s a few trades: Covering shorts: CVNA +3% (bounced with good Auto Nation report), COST -8% (stop), IWC (Microcap) +0.5% (no momentum up or down). I am adding another 1% to recent short ideas: XOM, OXY, APA, XOP.