Saturday, December 30, 2017

Herbalife and Bill Ackman in furious agreement

Today Bill Ackman announced that Pershing Square was settling an insider trading securities class action. To quote:

Pershing Square and Valeant have agreed to split the $290 million total settlement such that Pershing Square will pay $193.75 million and Valeant will pay $96.25 million. 

But Mr Ackman seems to think that a settlement of approximately $200 million does not say anything at all about the legitimacy of the case. Again to quote:
“We continue to believe the case had absolutely no merit,” said Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman. “We decided, however, that it was in the best interest of our investors to settle the case now instead of continuing to spend substantial time and resources pursuing the litigation.”
Herbalife - who previously settled a case for a roughly $200 million payment - is of course in full agreement.

I think it is the first time Mr Ackman and Herbalife have agreed on anything.

So let us savour it.




John


Monday, December 25, 2017

The Urban Dictionary is surprisingly up-to-date: nocoiner edition

Nocoiner is a person who has no Bitcoin. Nocoiners (usually Socialists, Lawyers or MBA Economists ) are people who missed their opportunity to buy Bitcoin at a low price because they thought it was a scam, and who is now bitter at having missed out. The nocoiner takes out his or her bitterness on Bitcoin Hodlers, by constantly claiming that Bitcoin will crash, is a scam, is a bubble, or other types of easily refuted FUD. Nocoiners have little to no computer skills or imagination; even when they see the price of Bitcoin go up and its adoption spread they consider all Bitcoin users to be in a collective delusion, with only themselves as the ones who can see what is happening. This attitude comes from being steeped in the elitist priest cultures found at Harvard, Yale and Columbia, where anyone who is not part of their clique is treated with suspicion by default. The worst nocoiners are tenured academics and goldbugs. Nocoiners believe that the world owes them everything they want because they are part of an elite; they are hysterical liars, brats, prostitutes and losers.
I'm pretty sure Emin is a Nocoiner. Yesterday he made a Tweet about how Bitcoin going up was just a fad, and that a crash was inevitable. He's always talking Bitcoin down; if he had Bitcoin, he would never trash his own stash.

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Why settle for just one bubble?


Step 1. Be a marijuana thing.
Step 2. Be a bitcoin thing.
Step 3. ...
Step 4. Profit!