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Remember Herbalife (HLF)? That was the firm engaged in some very, very sketchy sales practices (basically a giant pyramid scheme) that Bill Ackman had shorted. His archenemy, Carl Icahn, went into a very public war with Ackman, since Icahn was very long HLF. Eventually, Ackman couldn’t take it anymore, and he gave up the fight right near the peak.
You are probably acquainted with this phrase:
“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”
Well, you may have trouble believing this, but the same holds true for my predictions. Some of them (well, most of them) take longer to play out than I hoped, but, sooner or later, they DO transpire.
I offer this morning as Exhibit A in that respect this very fresh headline:
Birkenstock came public less than a year ago. For a while, it was doing great, I suppose because of its well-established brand. Recently, however, it’s been falling apart. This is a good example of why one should avoid newer stocks without much price history. I strongly suspect most buyers of this stock had simply embraced the narrative that, “Hey, I like Birkenstocks! They’re comfy!” and left it at that.
Last week was good from end to end (in spite of a stupid holiday robbing us of Monday – – but let’s be fair, holidays like Labor Day can’t be as respected and important as Juneteenth). Yesterday was also good. Today as well. I’m starting to get nervous at all this goodness.
One of my many short ideas which is thriving is General Motors (GM, duh) whose puts, sadly, I sold at a nice profit last week for one and only one reason: because they expire in November. Dumb, huh? But I went into some kind of silly purification ritual in which I didn’t want anything expiring this year.
We got our big bounce yesterday, and we got a smaller version of it this morning. Across the board, the price levels that had represented support until last Thursday now represent resistance.
