Buy-and-hold, Thiel, & 1MBD
The fight for Peloton, other stuff on Meta, and is justice being served?
Good afternoon! You look so good today :)
I’m really enjoying greasing the wheels on this Substack newsletter & don’t forget to write back with any comments ❤️
Startup
Did someone say exercise?
To be honest, I am thinking about buying shares of Peloton. I’ll be waiting for some more news and poking about a bit more in the coming days and weeks. At this time, I’m only doing buy-and-hold investing. I don’t think that the stock will do particularly well in the short-run, but because of how bearish many people are on the stock’s short-term returns (& recent bids for takeover) I think it is a good idea to buy now and hold. Also, this is a given, but please do not hold my very primitive investing opinions with any weight lol.
I think the stock will probably rise significantly when and if an acquisition deal is finalised. I’m not sure how long that will be though. Personally, I am more bullish on an Amazon takeover. Although they have not had extensive experience with the health and exercise industry, I do think they have the expertise to develop Peloton’s technological USP better than Nike. Without perpetual innovative uses of technology, I think that Peloton will fall into oblivion in the sea of numerous exercise regiments.
Chaos at Facebook.
I am also thinking about buying and holding Meta stock. Likewise, I think in the short term, it is not done well and I think it can go lower, but their technology is too ingrained around us for it to not persevere —at least in the medium-term. I think Thiel is planning to end his career sooner than to wait for Meta to go back up, so that is why he is jumping ship. But I do think that Zuckerburg still has the zeal to go on for quite a while. I think recent news reports on Meta are a little overly apocalyptic.
I think the stock still has space to go down a little bit, but not for much longer. I would buy within the next 2-3 months.
Also, I do think Thiel’s departure will be good for Meta in the long-run as a social media company. Having that controversy that is not good no matter which way the pendulum of popular opinion swings. It seems to me that Zuckerburg is just ripping the bandaid off and getting all the difficult news out of the way at once. If I’m right, that is pretty smart Zuck!
More on Thiel.
Peter Thiel steps down as Board of Directors to focus on politics. This reminds me a piece I read about a year ago about Peter Thiel and the Stanford Review, talking about the correlation of contrarian thinking and successful entrepreneurship. This is interesting to revisit.
The story notes how Thiel used the Stanford Review as a breeding ground for successful founders and made rewarding investments on its members.
The discomfort of not-fitting-in never troubled Thiel. This prolonged his contrarian tendencies which contributed to his success as an entrepreneur and investor. I do think that this needs to be balanced with acceptance of some given dogmas to maximise results in life. However, I think the right balance leans closer to the contrarian end.
Will the rich win again?
So someone from Goldman finally goes on trial for 1MDB. It seems the 1MDB money-laundering scheme also helped finance “The Wolf of Wall Street,” which I find quite hilarious, and I guess it makes sense they would make a movie to glamourise investment banking life.
On top of my dislike of the movie for various other reasons, this only adds to my ever-brewing discontent about it being harmful misinformation for college students…
But I guess that is for them to figure out themselves.
Investment banking is only looking more and more glum.
Why do you even need a yacht?
Apparently 3,000 Dutch people signed up to throw rotten eggs at Jeff Bezo’s mega yacht…
“Network effects”?
Crypto has created a funny corollary of traditionally known “network effects”: more people joining a network that lots of people are already using.
In the crypto world, there are now “token effects”: people joining a network that lots of people are expected to use in the future.
…and that is it for today!
Resources I consulted in the writing of this newsletter:
Hurtado, Patricia & Natarajan, Sridhar. “This Is the Only Goldman Banker Standing Trial for 1MDB.” Bloomberg, February 8, 2022.
Levine, Matt. “Hedge Fund Managers Are Expensive.” Money Stuff. Bloomberg, February 7, 2022.
Murphy, Hannah & Stacey, Kiran. “Peter Thiel plans to leave board of Facebook owner Meta.” Financial Times, February 7, 2022.
Ryan, Jennifer & Adinarayan, Thyagaraju. “Peloton Soars After Reports of Takeover Interest.” Bloomberg, February 7, 2022.
Further exploration:
Graham, Benjamin. The Intelligent Investor. New York, HarperCollins Books, 1973.
Granato, Andrew. “How Peter Thiel and the Stanford Review Built a Silicon Valley Empire.” Stanford Politics, November 27, 2017.
Wright, Tom & Hope, Bradley. Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World. Paris, Hachette Books, 2018.
Thanks for sticking with me today, and I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day filled with patience and self-love.
Until next time,
Angeline