Drawing of the Day

I identify with the guy on the left.

25 Pictures with Deep meaning 🧵

1. Just enjoy it pic.twitter.com/LwZmH2KqBM

— The Adventurous Soul (@TAdventurousoul) August 12, 2025

Social Security Nostrum Undermined

In one of his usual tweets slamming the Trump Administration, Mark Cuban undermines a Democratic nostrum for social security funding:

You do realize that social security is returning the money you pay out of your paycheck ?

And the administration said they would not reduce payments in any way

You good with making it harder for seniors to confirm the bank accounts ? Potentially leading to them not be able to…

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) March 19, 2025

Social Security payroll taxes are imposed upon wages, salaries, and other earned income up to a ceiling of $176,100 in 2025. The employee pays 6.2%, or $10,918.20 into the SS system, and the employer matches the tax so that a total of $21,836.40 is credited to the employee. When he retires, the employee gets his money back, plus a return, as Mark Cuban says.

Some liberals want to eliminate the tax ceiling so that executives who make, say, $2 million, will remit payroll taxes of $248,000. Left unsaid is their advocacy of a ceiling on benefits; the millionaire retiree won't get his money back in order to keep the system solvent.

The problem with the liberal solution is that Social Security will stand revealed as just another welfare program, another transfer from rich to poor. Social Security was never sold as a transfer program but originated by FDR as a retirement program where participants received benefits proportionate to their contributions.

Although I disagree with most of what Mark Cuban says, give him credit for acknowledging a truth about Social Security that many on his "side" won't acknowledge.

Twitter Be Gone

After moving Tesla and SpaceX to Texas, Elon Musk has completed his divorce from California by moving X (Twitter) headquarters to Austin:

The light goes out on Market Street

Twitter, now known as X, is expected to close its San Francisco headquarters this month, leaving behind the Mid-Market neighborhood it has called home since 2012. The company is reportedly moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas, but plans to relocate its San Francisco employees to San José and Palo Alto, where it has already listed job openings.

The departure is another blow to a city that has been buffeted by high-profile business departures and that once held up Twitter as a key part of its revival. Downtown San Francisco’s vacancy rates have ballooned as tech companies slashed their real estate expenses and halted office expansion plans as the pandemic has relented.

Confronted with a falloff in foot traffic, major retailers such as Nordstrom and Anthropologie also shut their stores amid heightened concerns about crime, theft, vandalism, drug use and homelessness.

X is the second-largest tenant in the Mid-Market neighborhood, leasing 457,793 square feet, according to CoStar, which tracks real estate trends. Vacancy rates in Mid-Market are at their highest in decades at 62%, according to CBRE.

California is so invested in its Progressive politics that it rather let megabillion employers like Tesla depart than change its ways.

(In an infamous exchange, California Progressive Congresswoman Lorena Gonzalez tweeted “F—k Elon Musk” in 2020 when Musk threatened to move Tesla because of California's COVID lockdown rules.) He responded "exactly" and Tesla departed for Texas.

IMHO, the biggest loss to California is privately held SpaceX, which is the leading American space exploration company. Its current valuation is estimated to be $210 billion, and $1 trillion is well within reach after it goes public.

On the other hand Twitter's valuation has fallen from $44 billion to an estimated $19 billion. (He can't admit this to the bankers and investors, but IMHO Elon Musk's primary objective wasn't to make money from the purchase but to make Twitter a free-speech platform.)

Although the Musk family of companies retains substantial operations in California, the loss of their headquarters is a blow to the tax base. Not only do headquarters support a host of ancillary businesses (hotels, printers, law firms, banks, etc. etc.) repatriated international income and intangible income such as royalties and licenses are attributable to the state of the company's residence.

Progressives rather lose the tax base upon which their carbon-free equality-of-result dreams depend than admit they are wrong. Unfortunately, when the majority of the people of California realize that, it will be too late.

The Banks Aren't X-ing X

(WSJ photo)

When Elon Musk bought Twitter in October, 2022, for $44 billion, most financial observers opined that he substantially overpaid for the stock.

Twitter had been a giant in social media. It was unrivaled as the nation's water cooler, where everyone went for the latest news and opinions on the events of the day. Although it attracted millions of eyeballs every day, Twitter couldn't figure out how to monetize the traffic. Neither selling ads or subscriptions generated revenue to justify a $44 billion valuation.

Twitter also came under fire during the Trump Presidency as it began censoring "misinformation" that turned out to be accurate, yet allowed through information that was later shown to be untrue. The bias all went in one direction, against conservatives and for liberals.

Elon Musk believed that he could make Twitter profitable, but I doubt that his primary motivation was investment, i.e., that it would be a slam-dunk turnaround winner. IMHO, his motivation was equally to create one of the few free-speech platforms that would be widely read. Elon Musk also has a provocative streak, and the purchase of an entity that the Progressives thought they controlled was guaranteed to infuriate them. As I wrote last year

Elon Musk's current net worth has been estimated at $241 billion. His purchase of Twitter was, IMHO, for both investment and personal enjoyment, and he seems to be deriving immense pleasure from seizing control of the Progressives' playground and reminding them daily that he has it. Losing 11% of his net worth on something that interests him is not the best outcome, but he can afford it.

Nearly two years after Twitter (rechristened "X") was taken private, the Wall Street Journal reported on X's financial status:

The $13 billion that Elon Musk borrowed to buy Twitter has turned into the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-09 financial crisis...

The banks that agreed to underwrite a deal that even Musk said was overvalued did so largely because the allure of banking the world’s richest person was too attractive to pass up, according to people involved in the deal. Musk and other investors ponied up around $30 billion to buy the company, giving the banks some cushion in case things were to go wrong.

The banks—which also include Barclays, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, BNP Paribas, Mizuho and Société Générale—have been able to collect hefty interest payments from the X loans. They are generally for seven to eight years and carry rates several percentage points above the benchmark for investment-grade companies. And the banks could still ultimately be made whole if X is able to cover its interest obligations and repay the principal when the loans mature...

But nearly two years after Musk’s acquisition, X’s business is still struggling to climb out of the deep hole it fell into under his ownership—the company last year said its value had fallen by more than half, to around $19 billion.

While data indicate that use of the app rose amid the explosion of political news in recent weeks, there isn’t evidence that that is translating to a meaningful recovery in the advertising revenue that long sustained the revenues of the company, which pre-Musk struggled to maintain profits. Musk has gone from telling advertisers who fled the platform to “go f— yourself” to suing them and a trade group this month, claiming they illegally conspired to boycott X. The group has said it plans to rebut the claims in court.

Servicing the loans isn’t helping X’s financial health. Even before rates stopped rising, Musk said its annual interest payments total around $1.5 billion.

Banks typically have a number of legal ways to force X to make good on principal and interest. However, IMHO, they're being patient because they have their eyes on a bigger prize--upcoming financing and/or public offerings involving SpaceX, Tesla, and other Musk-controlled entities.

The deal presents a Catch-22 for the banks. On one hand, they are eager to be well-positioned to work with Musk and his six companies that range from electric-vehicle maker Tesla to Neuralink and xAI. Many view a possible initial public offering of Musk’s rocket company SpaceX or his Starlink satellite business as a fee-generating event that they don’t want to miss out on.

Elon doesn't forget those who stuck by him and who crossed him.

The Academy Oversteps and Begins to Pay the Price

Bill Ackman, 57, is a hedge-fund billionaire who made his fortune by taking unconventional short and long positions.

He always gives interesting business-related interviews on CNBC, and that, frankly, was the extent of my knowledge about him.

Until he took issue with the December 5th performance of Harvard then-President Claudine Gay before Congress on the subject of anti-semitism and free speech at Harvard, his alma mater.

The scales had fallen from his eyes:

Twenty-four hours after Hamas attacked Israel, Mr. Ackman “saw students supporting terrorists—Harvard students, no less.” With astonishment that hardened into outrage, Mr. Ackman witnessed 34 student groups at his alma mater “come out to say that Israel is solely responsible for the most heinous acts we’ve seen in modern history.”

Harvard wasn’t the only American campus where students railed against Israel and at Jewish classmates. But Harvard was the place to which Mr. Ackman, an “absolutely loyal alum in all respects,” had given $50 million over the years. “I lecture at the university multiple times a year,” he says, adding that he’s on the dean’s advisory board. Observing the protests, and the Harvard administration’s refusal to curb them, he mounted a mutiny of donors, calling on them to help drive Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, from her job. He feared that her continued presence at the helm would lead angry donors to stop giving. “I am personally aware of more than a billion dollars of terminated donations from a small group of Harvard’s most generous Jewish and non-Jewish alumni,” he wrote on Dec. 10.

Ms. Gay’s resignation on Jan. 2 was a result of her maladministration as well as of convincing accusations of plagiarism in her academic writings.

After reviewing Claudine Gay's, as well as MIT President Sally Kornbluth's and Penn President Liz Magill's, testimony before Congress, Mr. Ackman came to believe that their tepid response to student groups' calls for genocide against Jews was attributable to the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) practices that have pervaded campuses nationwide. On January 2nd he tweeted: [bold added]

Under DEI, one’s degree of oppression is determined based upon where one resides on a so-called intersectional pyramid of oppression where whites, Jews, and Asians are deemed oppressors, and a subset of people of color, LGBTQ people, and/or women are deemed to be oppressed. Under this ideology which is the philosophical underpinning of DEI as advanced by Ibram X. Kendi and others, one is either an anti-racist or a racist. There is no such thing as being “not racist.”

Under DEI’s ideology, any policy, program, educational system, economic system, grading system, admission policy, (and even climate change due its disparate impact on geographies and the people that live there), etc. that leads to unequal outcomes among people of different skin colors is deemed racist.

As a result, according to DEI, capitalism is racist, Advanced Placement exams are racist, IQ tests are racist, corporations are racist, or in other words, any merit-based program, system, or organization which has or generates outcomes for different races that are at variance with the proportion these different races represent in the population at large is by definition racist under DEI’s ideology.

In order to be deemed anti-racist, one must personally take action to reverse any unequal outcomes in society. The DEI movement, which has permeated many universities, corporations, and state, local and federal governments, is designed to be the anti-racist engine to transform society from its currently structurally racist state to an anti-racist one.

Claudine Gay's resignation on January 2nd was only the first battle in what may well turn out to be a long cultural war between wokeness and traditional values. Claudine Gay not only was criticized for her actions as Harvard President but for alleged instances of plagiarism on her scholarly work.

Neri Oxman (WSJ photo)

The Business Insider then accused Bill Ackman's wife, Neri Oxman, for plagiarism on her 2010 doctoral dissertation at MIT. Ms. Oxman apologized.

Bill Ackman, convinced that the source of the Business Insider report was someone(s) at MIT, vowed to develop AI tools to examine a broad swath of MIT dissertations and publications for plagiarism.

Circling back to the three-presidents testimony before Congress on December 5th, MIT President Kornbluth is the only one of the three who still holds office, Penn's Liz Magill having resigned on December 9th. It would be surprising if she lasts out the year.

After the break is the text of Bill Ackman's January 2nd tweet.


 

Regulators Gotta Protect Themselves, Too

SEC headquarters (WSJ photo)

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which is the powerful agency that makes financial rules and enforces them, is the victim of a fake tweet that purportedly approved exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that hold bitcoin.

Bitcoin briefly jumped to near $48,000 before [SEC Chair Gary] Gensler said on the social-media network that the message was “unauthorized” and that the SEC “has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products.” The agency later posted that its account was “compromised.”

“It’s a hack,” a spokeswoman for the SEC said.

Bitcoin prices rose above $48,000 after the tweet then fell below $46,000 after the SEC disavowed it. As of today, the fault doesn't appear to be X's (Twitter's) but was due to the theft of the SEC's login credentials.

Nevertheless, it's embarrassing that powerful government agencies like the SEC, IRS, and FBI have security breaches that give the impression of incompetence and even untrustworthiness.

Update: SEC Approves Bitcoin ETFs

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission voted Wednesday to allow mainstream investors to buy and sell bitcoin as easily as stocks and mutual funds, a decision hailed by the industry as a game changer.

Talking about Elon's Talking, Again

On Wednesday afternoon I flipped to CNBC to watch Fast Money and Mad Money, the shows that recap the stock market activity for the day. Instead of the expected fare there was Elon Musk being interviewed by Andrew Sorkin, a reporter for NBC/CNBC/MSNBC. I could not look away.



The most widely remarked-upon section of the 93-minute interview occurred when Elon Musk told advertisers who pulled their ads from X (formerly Twitter) to "go f--- yourself," uncensored on live TV.

The expletive was Elon's reaction to alleged anti-Semitism on a Musk tweet and the alleged placement of corporate advertisements next to pro-Nazi statements on X. He is suing those who made those (fraudulent, he says) accusations and heaping opprobrium on advertisers who believe them. I don't want to get into the merits of the claims themselves except to say that, for the moment, I give Elon Musk the benefit of the doubt that neither he nor X are anti-Semitic.

Speaking of the F-word, some of my former business associates said to me decades ago that their goal in life was to amass "F-you" money, that is, a nest egg sufficient enough not to fear telling off an employer before walking out the door. As we noted four months ago, Elon Musk's total investment in X represents 10-15% of his net worth. Losing that amount will hurt him, but not enough to silence him. When we're talking about F-you money, that's what we're talking about.

Local Boys' 15 Minutes of Fame

I drive by the Hawaiian Rent-All sign nearly every day when I go back to the Islands. On the corner of Beretania and McCully, it's on the way to the H-1 on-ramp that's closest to my parents' house.

Long known for its silly puns (think Dad jokes), the sign recently has included political humor. The latest Hawaiian Rent-All sign went viral this week when it criticized President Biden for his Maui speech (representative tweet at bottom).

The store's owners, the Jung brothers, get a chuckle out of me when they're at their best. I suppose I'll now have to treat their humor with more respect.

#HawaiianRentAll, known online for its witty signage, changed its business' storefront to send #Biden a message

They also noted on @facebook that "sympathy is better than contrived empathy," and told Biden, "It's not always about you"#mauistrong#MauiWildfires #MauiFires pic.twitter.com/aeKg2CBIFU

— JustCallMeYoYo (@but75455972) August 26, 2023

MIscellaneous Thoughts on Twitter X

I liked them better when they were Twitter and Comcast

1) For all its baggage "Twitter" had widespread brand awareness. It's puzzling why Elon Musk would abandon the valuable name for the nondescript "X."

2) The new "X" icon is easily confused with the Xfinity logo.

3) The Musk haters seem to rejoice with every report about how much Twitter's value has fallen from the $44 billion purchase price. His own stake is about $26.5 billion--$20 billion cash plus $6.5 billion of loans guaranteed by Tesla stock.

4) Elon Musk's current net worth has been estimated at $241 billion. His purchase of Twitter was, IMHO, for both investment and personal enjoyment, and he seems to be deriving immense pleasure from seizing control of the Progressives' playground and reminding them daily that he has it. Losing 11% of his net worth on something that interests him is not the best outcome, but he can afford it.

5) Installing the flashing "X" sign atop the Twitter building resulted in squeals of protest. It bothered residents at night and was put in without a permit. (Related: San Francisco required a permit for Twitter employees to sleep in the office.) Elon Musk took the sign down a few days later.

The satyrical Babylon Bee has the fake-but-true report:

In an ongoing dispute regarding the new illuminated "X" sign installed atop the former Twitter headquarters, city officials have now demanded Elon Musk have the sign removed because it is distressing to the people who are pooping on the sidewalk outside.

"The sign makes public defecation far too stressful," said San Francisco Mayor London Breed. "Our citizens have the right to feel totally at ease when they are dropping their pants and laying cable in the streets. That infernal ‘X' sign is causing them too much stress to have the peaceful public pooping experience they deserve."

...San Francisco's leaders continue to maintain the presence of Musk's new sign is "highly disturbing" and disrupting the city's normal flow of public defecation, unprosecuted theft, and randomly discarded drug syringes. Removal of the sign, officials say, will allow the city to return to the status quo.

"Be the House"

(NY Post image)

One common characteristic of getting older is that people become more conservative--politically, culturally, and financially. As life's expiration date approaches, this perspective makes sense.

Older people, including your humble blogger, are less willing to take chances because they have more to protect. If a risky bet turns out wrong, recovery--physical and financial--is difficult and sometimes impossible.

That's why Elon Musk is unique. At 51, his enterprises and his wealth are an order of magnitude bigger than they were ten years ago, yet he's still willing to bet the farm to fulfill his vision(s):

In the span of 24 hours this past week, Elon Musk made three very big bets with three very different companies, together showing his penchant to plow ahead despite sizable risks.

Between Wednesday and Thursday evenings, he stripped celebrities, journalists and other high-profile users of their free, legacy verification on Twitter, risking a VIP revolt on the social-media platform. He promised that the electric-car maker Tesla Inc. increase; green up pointing triangle would chase sales volume at the expense of profitability. And he launched SpaceX’s first of its kind giant space rocket, which exploded on the way to the heavens.

Making big bets doesn't mean that Elon Musk isn't aware of the risks:

“If the odds are probably in your favor, you should make as many decisions as possible within the bounds of what is executable,” Mr. Musk said a few years ago. “This is like being the house in Vegas. Probability is the most powerful force in the universe, which is why the house always wins. Be the house.”

Although he's one of the richest people in the world, amassing wealth was not the goal, just a means to get to his destination. Elon Musk's aspirations are grand indeed: interplanetary space travel, efficient autonomous transportation, and a platform for the free-wheeling exchange of ideas.

Along the way Elon Musk doesn't care how foolish he looks to others. Blowing up a rocketship to find out whether it functions (without hurting anybody) is a necessary step on the way to Mars, and crashing cars is the price for making millions of authomobiles self-driving.

Wealth often induces billionaires to become philanthropists and lift individuals out of poverty. Elon Musk's way of using his wealth, IMHO, will enrich humanity's future.

Making Nice in Palo Alto

(Mercury News photo)

It's not as noteworthy as the lion lying down with the lamb, but the most prominent businessman and one of the most prominent politicians in the U.S. made nice today:

Tesla has decided to base its engineering headquarters in Palo Alto at a former Hewlett-Packard site, the company’s top boss Elon Musk announced on Wednesday.

Musk made the announcement in Palo Alto during an unusual joint appearance with Gov. Gavin Newsom. The pair have sparred in the past over California’s business climate...California and its political establishment...were jolted in 2021 when Tesla decided to decamp its headquarters from the Golden State and move the company’s corporate offices to Texas.

Both men have attracted attention by making public statements that inflame political activists on the left and right. But they didn't get to where they were by passing up opportunities to make a win-win deal.

IMHO, the "real" Gavin Newsom and the "real" Elon Musk are both shrewd, calculating individuals who measure both the short- and long-term consequences of their actions. The next time they issue a provocative tweet that makes you cheer or sputter, that's exactly what they wanted you to do.

San Francisco: Pay Taxes and Employ People, Get Strangled by Regulation

Twitter employee catching 140 winks (Econ Times)

In yet another example of strangulation by regulation the City of San Francisco has told Twitter to fix its building permit so that employees can sleep at the office:

Officials found two beds last month in the tech company’s eighth and ninth floor conference rooms after an investigation triggered by a Forbes report about workers sleeping in the office amid long work hours after Elon Musk’s takeover. Multiple people who read the story complained to the city, alleging the rooms were converted illegally.

Twitter could be subject to fines for having an improper permit, but that has not yet been determined. Officials want to conduct a final inspection if the permit is not revised and Twitter must remove the beds.

Speaking as one who used to work around the clock on mergers, audits, and strategic plans, I appreciated employers who made it more comfortable to sleep in the office (as they undoubtedly appreciated our efforts to complete projects on time).

I'm glad I'm no longer working in a City that requires a permit to put a bed in an office but deems it perfectly fine to put a sleeping bag and tent on a sidewalk, and have $75,000 of social services delivered to boot.

Nary a Tweet

I recall the uproar when Elon Musk was letting go 3,000 people from Twitter, today Google is firing 12,000 people but not a word from MSM 😄

— حسن سجواني 🇦🇪 Hassan Sajwani (@HSajwanization) January 20, 2023

A Lot Further to Fall

The Bay Area economic outlook is gloomy as tech companies, including some big names, announce thousands of job cuts:

Tech companies are eyeing layoffs that will eliminate jobs for thousands more workers in the Bay Area, a brutal new round of terminations poised to jolt the owner of the Facebook app, Amazon and Juul Labs.

All told, tech companies have decided to chop 2,564 more Bay Area jobs, according to official notices that the firms sent to the state labor agency.

The tech and biotech job cuts in the Bay Area: well over 10,000 in October, November and December, according to this news organization’s review of numerous WARN letters to the state Employment Development Department.

Are 10,000 jobs a lot? Numerically speaking, 10,000 is "only" 0.4% of total employment in the SF-Oakland-Hayward triangle of 2.5 million. But the impact is much greater than the direct numbers indicate.

Loss of higher-income tech jobs affects the economy more than the loss of lower-paid ones.

Companies cut back on other expenses, e.g., travel, conferences, restaurants, supplies, before turning to layoffs. Lowering these other expenses affects thousands of supporting companies and their employees in the region.

The real estate market, already slowed by higher interest rates, continues to spiral down as more residents have difficulty making rent or loan payments.

Elon Musk has shown that Twitter could lay off more than half its 7,500 employees and still function. If that's indicative of the bloat in other tech companies, employment has a lot further to fall.

Waiting for My Money

My investment in May.

For a company that ranks between #160 and #165 in market capitalization Twitter punches far above its weight. (How many investors are familiar with all of the following: American Electric Power, Amphenol, KLA, Synopsis, Edwards Life Sciences, and Sysco?)

Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter on Friday. His plans for the media platform are a mystery, and even his plans to make a plan (Elon Musk Is Forming Circle of Advisers as He Reimagines Twitter) capture headlines.

Today's value: better than most investments
that I've made this year.

Having last composed a tweet in 2021 and checking others' tweets once a week, I wouldn't shed a tear if Twitter disappeared. Nevertheless, I am interested to see if Elon Musk comes up with a new angle.

Meanwhile, I'm waiting for my money for the takeover and promise not to spend it all in one place.

It's Only the End of the Beginning

Yesterday Elon Musk threw in the towel on his effort to back out of his agreement to buy Twitter. He will go ahead at the full $54.20 per share ($44 billion):

Elon Musk has offered to close his acquisition of Twitter Inc. on the terms he originally agreed to, a sudden and unexpected comedown for the billionaire entrepreneur that could end a monthslong battle he waged to get out of the $44 billion deal...

Twitter confirmed receipt of the letter and said it intends to close the transaction at the original price of $54.20 a share.

Your humble investor-blogger had bought a few TWTR shares for $51 in May and had given up hope of turning a profit. Although the purchase agreement was supposedly ironclad, Elon Musk was the richest man in the world. At the very minimum his expensive lawyers and bankers could get Twitter to cut the price, but he abruptly conceded.

Did he finally see value in Twitter that had escaped the notice of everyone else?

And what exactly is "X"?

Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2022

You can love him or hate him, but it's very difficult to ignore Elon Musk.

Cutting Back

Other tech stocks show how far TWTR
could fall without a deal. (WSJ)

I rationalized last week's purchase of Twitter shares as entertainment, which has to be the consolation since it's already turned out to be a bad investment.

Early Friday morning Elon Musk tweeted that the $44 billion acquisition was "on hold": [bold added]

Elon Musk said his planned acquisition of Twitter Inc. was “temporarily on hold” because of concerns about fake accounts, a surprise twist that jolted investors and raised questions about his willingness to go through with the $44 billion transaction...

The initial announcement was unorthodox not just in its timing and format, but because Mr. Musk referenced a recent Twitter disclosure about fake and spam accounts that it has made consistently for years—and because Mr. Musk has already signed an agreement for the purchase and waived detailed due diligence on the deal.

The sudden shake-up fueled questions about whether Mr. Musk is committed to a deal that was struck amid a sharp decline in technology stocks that has made Twitter less valuable on paper than it was a month ago when he made his offer of $54.20 a share. Twitter shares, which were already trading well below that level, closed down 9.7% in afternoon trading at $40.70...

It couldn’t be determined if the latest tweets were a negotiating tactic to abandon the transaction or reprice the deal.

Elon Musk reportedly must pay a penalty of $1 billion if he cancels the Twitter deal. A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that a final price under $53 per share will more than cover that expense.

It would be entirely rational for Elon Musk to renegotiate, especially since Twitter's valuation without the acquisition in today's falling market could well be around $25. Assuming that the final price will be $35, I will take a beating on my purchase at $51. (The reassessed expected value is $32.46, above right.)

I'll be cutting back on double-shot lattes to make up the difference.

Now That's Being Truly Rich

Twitter HQ is on Market Street but may not
be for long, hints Elon Musk (Chron photo)

A Federal district judge refused to solve Donald Trump's problem.

May 6, 2022: Trump’s lawsuit against Twitter over account suspension gets rejected by S.F. federal judge [bold added]

Trump provided no evidence that the social media platform had colluded with congressional Democrats to violate his constitutional rights.

Twitter permanently suspended Trump’s account two days after the Jan. 6 mob attack, citing posts to his 88.7 million followers that the company said posed a risk of further violence. Joined by five supporters whose accounts were also revoked, Trump argued that the action interfered with his freedom of speech and sought restoration of his account and damages.

But U.S. District Judge James Donato noted that the First Amendment applies only to the government, not private parties like Twitter, and said Trump and his fellow plaintiffs had failed to plausibly allege any government involvement in their suspensions.

But Donald Trump has the richest man in the world as a supporter, at least on this matter, who will buy Twitter and give Mr. Trump what he wants.

May 10, 2022: Elon Musk Says He Would Reverse Donald Trump’s Twitter Ban

Elon Musk said he would reverse Twitter Inc.’s ban on former President Donald Trump...Mr. Musk also said that Twitter suffers from a politically left-leaning bias and that the social-media company “needs to be much more evenhanded.” He partly linked those political leanings to Twitter being based in San Francisco.

The billionaire entrepreneur, who has likened Twitter to the public square and a forum for the exchange of ideas, reiterated his desire for several changes at the platform, including eliminating bots and scams. He also doubled down on plans for Twitter’s software code to be made open source so it can be widely viewed and people can recommend changes. “You really want transparency to build trust,” he said.

If something that he doesn't own is annoying him, Elon Musk just buys it. Then he can fix or bury it so that it stops being annoying.

Elon Musk shows us what it means to be truly rich.

Twitter: It's the Entertainment

So much for investing discipline.

After averring that I would stay away from trading stocks in general because of market volatility, or that buying Twitter specifically was too risky, I bought some TWTR on Thursday at $51. (It closed at $49.80 on Friday.)

In my defense, Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter looks very likely now that he's secured $7 billion from other equity investors. In fact $51 (actually $51.28) seems like a "fair" valuation based on a $54.50 acquisition price and a 90% probability of execution. The risk of loss is much lower than it was a month ago.

The second reason is that this was hardly an "investment." TWTR is less than 0.1% of the portfolio and the purchase was more to be kept apprised of shareholder communiqués than to make a killing. It's very rare that a small fry can be an arbitrageur.

Besides, I spend more on entertainment, and frankly after more than 40 years of being in the stock market I've never seen any story that's been more entertaining.

pic.twitter.com/TW2lLQakE5

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 7, 2022

Twitter: Fun to Watch But Not to Invest

Elon Musk gave a TED presentation on Thursday in
Vancouver. Twitter questions begin 11 minutes in.

Elon Musk sucked the air out of the trading room on Thursday with his offer to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share.

Elon Musk went full-on corporate raider a week into his rolling clash with Twitter Inc., offering a $43 billion bid for the company and warning he might sell his stake in the service if rebuffed.

The Thursday offer was the latest in a will-he-or-won’t-he saga between the world’s richest person and the social-media service. The offer was at once serious—Mr. Musk disclosed it in a federal filing—and at the same time tinged with humor, as the offer was for $54.20 per share, a barely veiled marijuana reference...

The offer of $54.20 a share represented a 54% premium over the day before he began investing in Twitter, and a 38% premium over the day before his investment was publicly announced. Over the past year, Twitter’s shares have traded as high as $73.34.

The stock market currently values Twitter (TWTR) at about $35 billion. The platform's content attracts millions of eyeballs as a go-to place both for breaking news and unfiltered communication from entertainment, political, sports, and wealthy celebrities.

However, Twitter has struggled to "monetize" this popularity through ads or subscriptions. Today the stock trades 8% above its November, 2013 IPO close of $41.65, the worst return of any social media company.

Your humble blogger took a flyer on the stock back in 2016 when the price dipped to $16 per share. (See chart below.)

Twitter then, as now, had no earnings and a large footprint. But it had potential upside at $16 per share. A $10-$12 billion valuation in 2016 was a relatively inexpensive price to pay for a company to acquire a readily existing user base.

An acquisition never happened, but Twitter's visibility increased markedly from 2016 to 2020 because of President Trump. I sold one-third of the stake when the price had doubled to $33 in 2018 and got out completely at $54.20 (I like to sell and Elon likes to buy at that price) in February, 2021 after the Tweeter-in-Chief had been kicked off the platform.

It's going to be fun watching the proceedings between Elon Musk and Twitter, but I won't be buying into the stock at its current level. There's risk of a 25-30% drop if a deal doesn't go through, and a new investment would take the fun out of it.