Elon Musk the Albatross

Published: Thu 26 May 2022
Updated: Tue 22 November 2022
By steve

In Markets.

Thursday 26, May 2022

A chart to strike terror into the heart of any trader

Terra (USDT) price vs time

The tendency of all organizations to become self-serving

This is about how criminal, and other enterprises, tend to degrade in their morality over time. The author makes the case that organizations become focussed on their own survival, above everything, eventually, without regard to the harm done to others. It seems to me that the more disruption, though painful, is probably the answer.

Why Syndicates Trend to the Extreme Over Time

Musk and Levine

Matt Levine jokes that Musk compels him to write about the twists and turns of his dealings, even when Levine is supposed to be on holiday. Levine is like the Ancient Mariner of Coleridge’s poem: compelled to roam the world telling the story of a terrible event to whoever meets him. I guess that the dead albatross has been reincarnated as Elon Musk. Anyway, there is another thrilling episode that came out today, “Elon Calls Off His Margin Loan”. In it, Levine explains that method that billionaires usually choose to fund their hobbies, borrowing against the shares they hold in the company they founded (or pretended to found, in Musk’s case), doesn’t cut the mustard in this case, because Telsa’s share price has fallen too far. Although Levine is not so crass as to explicitly point it out, it seems clear to me that the conclusion of the analysis is that the Tesla share price is going nowhere but down. In fact, in anticipation of selling, Musk has probably bought puts, to protect him against a fall, but the act of buying puts will drive down the price as the marketmaker counterparties delta-hedge their risk.

I am not a fortune teller, but I see nothing but pain and suffering for the legions of Tesla Fanbois out there. Maybe I’m completely wrong, but I think that Musk thinks a lot more about his financial security than theirs, even though a utilitarian would surely do the opposite.

Wrap

The recession is over again. The Fed is not going to tighten, and will drag out QT, so the good times are going to roll again. Well, that’s what the markets decided today, but I don’t know if that’s 100% certain. The NDX was up 3%, which tells you everything you need to know. Risk assets have got their head.

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gpg

I wasted a lot of time today trying to get gpg to work. The problem is that there are too many gpgs for windows, and they look for the database in different places. Git will simply use a built-in gpg if you’re not careful, which will confuse the hell out of you.

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