S2N Spotlight
I believe in MicroStrategy; we are witnessing one of the most transparent Ponzi schemes in modern history, perpetuated by the ineffable Michael Saylor. As a chart connoisseur, this one is quite spectacular.
I will get to the Ponzi shortly, but first a little bit of foreplay.
According to the official price close of MicroStrategy on Wednesday, 20th of November 2024, its stock traded the second highest value of volume on the entire US stock market (blue line). If you include after-hours trading, it was the stock with the most value traded. Does anyone know what products they sell? Yesterday I mentioned the stock was trading at 3x the value of its Bitcoin holding. What the hell is going on?
For some perspective, this is how some assets are correlated to Bitcoin on a rolling 1-year basis. What is Bitcoin? Is it a stock, currency, or a store of wealth? By looking at the rolling correlation, you would say its a bit of everything at different points in time, but mostly a stock.
The part that has stood out to me that got me thinking about MicroStrategy being a Ponzi was the way Saylor speaks about Bitcoin Yield. I have been in business a long time, and I know when people create a language based on buzzwords and complexity, you should be wary. I usually write these letters quite dispassionately, with the odd one getting me a little excited. For some reason I am quite triggered. It could be because I sold all my Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Cardano 3 months ago, mainly for cash flow reasons. However, I do believe my main gripe is because of the mania we are currently witnessing.
The image below is taken from MicroStrategy’s website today. We all know that Bitcoin has no yield unless you are mining it or acting as a validator of blocks of transactions on the blockchain. Let me try and explain what is going on.
When you issue stock, the number of shares in circulation increases, and usually so do the assets and the earnings derived from the assets. What Saylor and his company are doing is using a lethal mix of equity and debt to go and buy more Bitcoin and measure the difference between the share dilution with the accretion that comes from issuing stock at a premium to NAV as Bitcoin “Yield”.
This whole “scheme” is predicated on Bitcoin prices going up. The 5-year assumption used for their financial engineering alchemy and sales pitch is a paltry 25% per annum for the next 5 years. To the unsuspecting, greedy, or uninformed investor, they probably think they are actually earning a yield.
I think the money shot is shorting MSTR and going long BTC.
S2N Observations
It looks like the end-of-year Chocolate party is about to throwback to 1980 inflationary heydey times. In 1980, inflation was above 14%. Gee, I wish I caught this trend.
Finally, something a little different. I constantly refer to risk-adjusted returns in these letters as the gold standard. Despite me hammering on about the bubble territory we are in on so many different asset classes, the Sharpe ratio of many of these has been quite stunning over the last 5 years. Risk has been handsomely rewarded. Not sure it will be able to maintain this going forward.
S2N Screener Alerts
The Mexican stock market is clearly feeling the Trump effect with 8 down days in a row; it has only happened 31x in 37 years.
It seems that commodities are getting quite the bid of late. Wheat futures price action is pretty wild; another 3 sigma up day.
Performance Review
For those who are new to the letter, the shading is Z-Score adjusted so that only moves bigger than usual for the symbol are highlighted.