Also, wasn't your thesis earlier that the economic damage that has already occurred due to the lockdown would be so much worse than most people are expecting but aren't priced in because people just don't know? And this damage will show up in earnings and shock the investors? 1.5 quarters from now would be mid-to-late October. So are you revising this earlier theory or is there some reason we won't see the damage from the lockdown in April in Q2 earnings?

Yes, as in I run a profitable business after working many years in finance and you do neither.



We aren't in normal circumstances though, are we?


More positive sentiment than negative, obviously. The market is an auction. Prices go up when people want equities and go down when they don't. Right now, people want equities more than not--> prices rise. That means as much about the true value of equities as a hot run of cards means towards a donkey's true level of skill.

It is, by all metrics.


Yep, it was then too. With the estimated GDP contractions that have taken place, it's more overvalued than it was pre-corona, and getting more overvalued by the day.

It will, in the medium-long term. In the short-run, market cap is nothing more than price speculation via auction. If you had slightly better than horrible reading comprehension, you would understand the difference.




I don't know anything to a certainty. We are dealing with the real world here, not a business analysis case you found on the internet. Many things can happen.

That's my highest probability scenario, ceteris paribus.

I am positioned correctly based on my investment strategy. I don't invest in 'the market.' I invest in undervalued companies. As soon as I find one, I will invest in it. My prediction about what will happen to the market has zero effect on my quest for undervalued companies.

You don't invest at all, do you?



It's the least likely outcome.

I think this brings up an interesting question. There were plenty of bears pre corona saying it had to crater. And here we are even with corona with the market doing not so bad and Nasdaq hitting all-time highs.

The question is, would it be higher or lower right now if corona never happened? I think there is a good case for lower since the massive stimulus and Fed actions are more powerful than we all really understand and without that the markets would have to fend for themselves. Thing is that stimulus isn't going away anytime soon.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything but thanks for sharing. I'm glad your business is profitable and hope all's well with your business during these difficult economic times.

We're never in normal times - I'm not saying you should or should not speculate, the point is more that you shouldn't speculate based on your hunches about the market without explicitly acknowledging it as such. The main reason is that when you're knowingly speculating, you should be constantly re-evaluating your thesis and examining returns from your speculation separately from the return on your passive portfolio, whereas if this just becomes the norm, you're never forced to confront whether any given thesis is correct, nor whether your speculation adds any value. For instance, if your normal passive portfolio would otherwise be long equity, but you're actually all cash, your active portfolio, is effectively being short everything in your passive portfolio. So if you separate out your overall portfolio like this (and you don't have to do this explicitly, you can just create a benchmark), what happened over the past couple of months is that your passive portfolio was up, while your active portfolio was down. This way, you hold yourself accountable.

With that said, if you feel your ownership stake in your business (and possibly related career prospects) is at an elevated level of risk due to the overall economic situation, it may be advisable to reduce risk elsewhere. Maybe the total amount involved here is trivial and nothing really matters. Hard to give any concrete advice without knowing more about your personal circumstances.

I think you're comparing apples to oranges. Long term bull markets have the intrinsic and recursive property of overvaluing equity. I don't think the coronavirus has had the same effect that a traditional market correction would have had. Coronavirus was a market tank based on huge drops in revenue and an event-horizon solvency crisis that was temporarily thwarted by stimulus. My opinion is that companies have restructured themselves to deal with that but the market hasn't corrected in the way it really needed to, so equities are still way overvalued.

The market currently wants coronavirus to be a short-term plunge followed by a return to ATH and beyond. I think that is highly unlikely.

I broke BYND which ended up 25x

as for being a "struggling bear", I've been documented as long in the trading thread for quite a while.

I don’t think this is accurate. Maybe some people feel that way, but the market is never wrong. What is interesting is the high level of conviction people have about conflicting explanations of the rally.

I agree it is interesting. It is good exercise to sort out the reasoning behind these explanations.

If I misrepresent posters please correct.

— TS gives one reason. Retail money pumping it up. Might seem silly at first. However, we see a lot of people that draw good pay still working and being able to continue contributions to their 401ks. A lot of people just index. Qualitative judgment, not far fetched at all.

— candybar, grim, etc. S&P being the market weight index it is, the companies that drive the index earnings long term are not impacted very much. If you look at market breadth maybe things aren’t so good overall.

— one of mine. Cost of Equity has declined thus valuations have risen.

— another one of mine. Many companies are finding they can reduce costs by having more workers work from home.

— Everyone. Fiscal and monetary stimulus have pumped up prices.

One idea I work off of is that the stock market very often prices in very bad outcomes when faced with events that affect earnings. For instance life insurers got whacked really hard due to fears of COVID-19 killing people. As that risk has diminished, stocks have risen. Market priced in a pretty bad scenario with COVID-19 and the actual consequences of the virus aren’t as bad as what was priced in. Severe market declines present huge opportunities to make money.

The real pile-in is a fact, not even opinion, let alone silly. Here are the facts we have:

- Buybacks (the only net purchasers in the market in the long run) are down substantially
- Daily active retail traders had soared 4x to record highs a month ago, who knows where they are now.
- Surveys of fund managers and other professional show approximately ~70% believe we're going back through lows and only 10% believe this is a new bull market. The data we have (incomplete) shows that they aren't net purchasers
- Retails are >85% of the option $ volume, and the put call ratio fell to near record lows a few weeks ago, showing that retail is highly bullish.
- Stocks like AAL have data showing truly insane retail pile ins, from near zero to millions of holders in two weeks. The site with the data is down now but I'll post it later.

It's the driver of this rip and nothing else. 2200->2600 or so was stimulus, but beyond that has been driven by the greatest retail inflow ever as 3 billion people were stuck at home for 6+ weeks. They also piled into crap stocks and big name tech - the very stuff that's up.

Also just a lurker, but TS calls have made me money, even relative to the S&P. Please dont ban him. He can be a douche sometimes but who cares? This isnt a customer service industry, its about being right more often than not.

The change in the discount rate definitely matters and it's something I've talked about from the very beginning. Also, I think I was the first one to point out that increased retail activity was bullish - I think most people were looking at it as a bearish sign at the time. I'm open to the possibility that it's starting to move the market right now. If the retail starts to seriously move the market in aggregate, that can be even more bullish because this means institutions are lagging the overall market. In that market, your performance is going depend heavily on how bullish you are and this increasingly moves institutional money away from cautious managers to reckless ones. That's how the retail really moves the market - we haven't seen anything like that yet this cycle.

This is the risk premium thing we talked about - the risk premium should rise during times of uncertainty. Because the future is less certain, equity is more risky (not just in the sense that the expected outcome is bad, but in the sense that the expected deviation from the expected outcome is higher) and higher-risk assets should command a higher risk premium.

"It's the driver of this rip and nothing else. "

This is what people gripe about. You can get into a long pointless debate or blow it off however is convenient to do so. Not into pointless internet debates too much myself.

Tooth was recently caught lying about is TSLA wins, and now he's lying about me. Show me ONE post showing where I'm bullish pre-Corona. You can't. My first bullish post was on 2/28, and no, that wasn't my one-and-only entry.

Besides that, you'll see I wasn't this mega bullish since Dec18/Jan19, back when Tooth was crying "bear market" and calling me a "gambling cuck" for being long. How did that work out for you, Tooth? History seems to have a of repeating itself.

If anyone is perma anything, it's Tooth. Here's permabear Tooth eating losses pre-Corona in Dec 19:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=1511

Then as we know, he's been doubling down on shorts even near the lows, calling for -40% to -70% by EOY, <2600 by May month-end, ATH not before 2027. Does this guy even trade?!

And now he wants to revise history and make us believe he was bullish. LOL. Show us posts were you were bullish during rally before 3000. You said "short 2840" followed by "cover your shorts (for a loss)" after MRNA news. Cover your shorts for a loss doesn't make you bullish on the market.

On that topic, show one, and only one post where Tooth or anyone else in all of BFI called for nationwide lockdowns in explicitly the US by the first week of March. I'll save you some time: I'm not interested in vague terms like "global lockdowns", which can mean several Asian/European countries or one country from each continent. If it were so obvious the US were going under lockdown, then surely one person, any person (not just you), must've posted that the US specifically was going under lockdown (most of BFI is American, is it not?).

And there are numerous posts of Tooth going absolutely apeshit when a third-person agrees with the person who's he arguing against. I'll spare the thread posting them here, unless someone really wants me to dig them up.

During this entire rally, Tooth has been crying "Great Depression", "Financial Crisis" and recently "retail rally!", all of which is irrelevant. Far below average market IQ. Meanwhile, here's what I've posted. What % of what I have posted is relevant to the current market action? 80? 90%?

March-April:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=5901

May:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...13&postcount=3

June (I was wrong about 3100 cap):
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/3...020-a-1770488/

General 2020:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=6169

Oil results:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=202

In the oil thread, I detested getting long USO in favor of XLE/SPY and look at the results.

In the same thread, Tooth said he would be long IF it went negative. Oil briefly went negative, and he starts doing a victory lap saying "I CALLED NEGATIVE OIL!!" Wtf? You said you would get long. He didn't get long, nor was he ever short -- he made no calls or trades. It's like if I said, I'll go short if TSLA trades at 1000, TSLA goes to 1000, then saying "I CALLED TSLA 1000!" It's a total freeroll. Had oil not gone negative, no one would have called him out because he said he would get long IF oil went negative. How are those TSLA puts doing btw? At least he was honest when he said:

You'd think someone this wrong about anything about show some humblness, but no, he has a lot of free time on his hands, and all he does attack people that prove to be smarter than him.

As I've been saying, Tooth has BEFORE corona and nothing AFTER. His posts during this rally, along with the Brian bet thread, exposes him for what he really about trading. Nothing but loud-mouth charlatan.

Thanks candybar. Aside from Tooth and his few fanbois, which probably include coordi and BFI newcomers/non-traders, I don't think people hate me. This is what hate looks like:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...0&postcount=20

I probably don't get much credit, but I don't think people hate me. And I don't get credit probably due to selective reading/memory. I said a lot of things contrary to what positions people were holding. Just look at the May month-end S&P poll and see how bearish the forum was.

Btw, I enjoy reading your post too. You've done good job outlining how this is not 2008, and it just goes over most people's heads.

Yeah, totally on grim's side here.

I've been a professional trader for the last 9 years, and have started reading BFI over the last few months. I immediately had mixed opinions on TS, he said some smart things, but then kept attacking people and never admitted to ever being wrong.

Now that I've been lurking for a while and posting a little, I would set the line at 80% that TS is not a profitable trader. He has some really good insights, but he is also wrong and never admits it. That is probably the nut worst trait to have if you want to be trading in the long run. This is all not to mention that he doesn't post screenshots of trades he has made when offered $100 per screenshot for charity. If someone made me that offer, I would snap call it if I were posting here a ton.

He does have some good insights, so I wouldn't want him banned. He does need to stop with the personal attacks though. I take him for what he is - a non trader with the odd good insight and a lot of nonsense.

Lol at banning Tooth. This forum would devolve into lazy analysis and reposted memes, basically an unfunny version of wallstreetbets without the ******ed degens.

This is where imo you get off the rails. Why take a swipe at coordi? Not speaking for coordi, imo he has made it clear that he doesn’t care about your results, he cares about your thinking that goes into making a trading decision. He gets that in some of TS postings. He can correct me if I am wrong. If “newcomers” make their trading/investing decisions primarily on what they read in this forum without doing their own due diligence, that is their problem. This idea from you and grizzy that you are protecting the newbie poster is asinine.

Poster awards for being right have little value. I don’t understand the idea of hating an anonymous poster. You can hate their posts for sure.

Welp that has been my impression about the bearish sentiment. I am constantly amazed about how many posters are looking to put their money on declines in valuations. To be fair though, many posters have pointed out that being on the long side has been the right side to be on over the long run. Many posters do make trades on the long side actually from what I can tell. So the bearish sentiment of the forum is at best a qualitative judgment.

My take is that you despise TS postings mainly because you think think he is closed minded; takes it personally when people don’t share his views; attacks posters that don’t share his views as often those attacks come across as disingenuous, mean spirited and personal; and seems to have a distinct lack of humility. In short TS is the quintessential cyber bully. From what I can tell, you are not alone, many posters share that view.

This is all correct. I don't care about someones personal results, I care about the ideas they post.

Grim might be the best trader on the forum, but he doesn't post positions, he isn't posting trades, hes barely posting ideas. Generic sentiment about the market isn't high quality posting. I've been right about the general sentiment of the market for the last month. My account balance has gone up a lot. What does that provide to the forum?

Clayton might be the best trader on the forum, but he just trades all day, comes in EOD with a meme about how stressful the day was, then posts some general market sentiment making sure everyone knows its just his lol-level guess. I understand hes an "expert" in his field, and doesn't trade the same assets as TS, and probably doesn't need any outside analysis. Well, thats like your opinion, man.

The reality is, there has been very little high level discussion the last couple of years that didn't directly involve TS. Less people are posting on BFI because less people post on 2+2. To think banning the main driver of discussion will have any affect other than there being less high quality discussion is, to be frank, ******ed.

Mostly what I see is bruised egos. Grim clearly thinks hes the smartest person in the room, and wants the praise and adulation that TS gets. Whether he truly thinks TS is a fraud, or this jealousy has completely warped his brain, I don't know. Clayton didn't throw down the gauntlet until TS was a dick to him about the pump n dump.

i think you're massively underpricing the amount of high level discussion that would start to percolate if every participant knew that tooth wouldn't jump in.

i made a rare stock trade of a cancer drug stock that looked interesting for covid relief, posted my ideas surrounding the trade, the company, what the drug does specifically that made it interesting for people dealing w cytokine storm, posted all my trade prices, netted like 15%, closed when i wasn't satisfied with management's communication. in the process TS says i got taken in by a scam and my take was "mouth breathing noob level ignorant".

company is still basically trading at the price range that it was months ago, best as i can tell the market seems to think the company isn't a massive scam, meanwhile we've seen plenty of shuffle pumps in the biotech space be quite lucrative for people intrigued at the space.

sure i have other stock ideas (presently not long anything right now except treasury etfs) that might be interesting if the barstool sports stock rally ever fizzles. but there's no motivation for me to share them in this forum. the mods seem content to just lay back and let the guy who's banned in every other forum write 7 paragraphs of arrogant know-it-all barf vitriol in response to every stock idea. it's tiresome.

i like most everyone here (cept grim he's a knob LOL) but it just makes more sense to share these ideas privately w friends. i'm done bantering w TS perma.

and yes my posting content here is a lot of LC especially when the world was ending. apologies. i mostly trade stuff that nobody else here trades (cept mrbaseball i think, and maybe turtletom). i do want to shift into some cool value-investing oriented ideas in spaces that are interesting to me, but every company seems to have a P/E of 100 and every stock idea seems to be centered around memes and momentum. i have no expertise in this area so I don't contribute. i will never find the next NKLA and i doubt i will ever buy into the next NKLA.

And just to be clear, I think you are more than fine as a poster. The only reason I single out your content is because you are one of the people throwing down the gauntlet.

Just to be clear, here was how our conversation went:

This is me generously taking my time - with zero upside to myself as it's an obviously terrible bet on the fundamentals of no interest to me - politely explaining to you why this is a bad bet and giving you details of what a bio fraud looks like. Analysis that probably figured in you letting it go for a profit.

A little bit of back and forth between long term traders "losing your bio fraud cherry", especially when you attack me first, is a nothing, and yet now you're precious about it? Everyone who's attacking me has a majorly bruised ego, mostly because I'm the guy who takes the time (like the above) to actually discuss theses and disagree with people.

And in grim's he case can't handle that I get credit for some excellent analysis that makes or saves people a lot of money, or brings to their attention things they didn't consider and can't read elsewhere.

So we end up with occasional obsessives like grim spending hundreds of posts lying and ruining threads to attack me. It's really weird.

From the mod thread:
Um, I'm not the one starting anything outside of the beef thread? That's the entire point. This is one way - an extremely obsessed grim ruining multiple threads with hundreds of off topic posts purely about me. I'm not instigating this stuff.

And I gladly admit when I'm wrong. Examples of me being wrong:

1. Netflix should tank on Disney. Comically wrong.
2. I thought the market will run out steam around 2500-2600 area and go back down.

I was completely wrong about those things. But no one is bringing them up. Instead they're lying.

Examples of me being actually correct that grim and others lie about:

1. That I was short Tesla. I advocated covering at $190 and have an incredible record of profit on that stock on posted trade recommendations, most recently a 10 bagger. I've flipped frequently on the stock based on conditions and am absurdly in the green on this on posted recommendations.
2. That post corona I was a market bear at the lows (I said it would rip on fiscal stimulus and calm and buy up waiting for reopening, which is precisely what happened)
3. That I said the market would go "-70% during this rally". I said the opposite, that it would calm and rip on fiscal stimulus, which it did. The discussion was about how deep the long term economic damage is and where that will take the market after the 1929/2008 style bear market rally. Grim lied over and over and said I said "it would go -70% during this rally".

Example of me being amazingly correct just this year:

1. At all time highs, that corona will tank the markets to high probability as the whole world locks down
2. That the market will keep diving on fed stimulus, but bottom and calm and rip on fiscal stimulus
3. That oil supply shock -> supply limitations is quite likely to make oil go negative, and I wouldn't get long until that happens.

And many more over the years. This is why much of this forum likes my analysis.

I'm not going to admit to what I didn't get wrong. Most of what grim says I got wrong is a pure lie or a truly extraordinary lack of reading comprehension + some strange bias from obsession/jealously. The oil thread is an excellent example of how off the deep end of crazy he is when it comes to me. There's no sane person who would read that and think I wasn't hugely helpful with a correct view, and him an obsessed thread ruining troll.

I remember this. you posted about it on 4/27 as it hit its ATH. I believe you suggested that if the science on paper was solid you would buy more and then hold through May. While i'm glad you posted about it, it was very helpful to read TS's post blasting the stock idea (yes he could have been more gentle about it) as it probably gave many pause. More importantly he gave his reasons behind his trashing of your stock pick after you said "ok i'll take the bait, give your reasons." A few days later you told everyone you dropped the stock because the founder sounded like an idiot during a call. I'm sure you would have done that anyway without TS's feedback but while that feedback may not have helped you it was helpful to me to not even think of getting involved. Since then, i believe you've called for his ban half a dozen times.

Barely posting ideas? Scroll up to post #88. I just served you my 3 month resume on silver plate. Here it is again:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...3&postcount=88

Dude, this is twice you've gotten it way wrong. If you can't read and interpret plain English, then I don't know what to say.

No, I don't believe I'm the smartest person in the room, and no, it's not about my ego. But yes, I believe Tooth is fraud and doesn't post in good faith. That's the only part you got right.

And big lol at jealous. Jealous of what exactly? If he shows his 3-year PnL, then MAYBE I might be jealous if the numbers are right. Until then, his image is that of an un/underemployed man living in E Europe who spends the greater part of the day trolling internet forums. Judging by his posts (post Corona crash, Brian bet, constant backtracking, general permabear market analysis/trades), I'm almost certain he's not a big winning trader, let alone a professional. Even if he shows $100k/yr PnL (funny how he always runs away every time I post this btw), that would be impressive side income, but is absolute peanuts if that's your profession, at least for an American with a few years of experience. Not to mention, it's volatile income without benefits.

If anyone is jealous, it's him. I revealed what I did for a living, and he angrily responded in a wall-of-text saying "It's not like you cure cancer or anything!"

You need learn how to read people.

Do you me understand that other people (me/others) believe TS actually posts in good-faith? You have stated, perhaps dozens+ now that you feel this is the case. The WHOLE forum already knows your stance and there is no need to continue to blast that you think this is so, because what it does is detract from actual discourse/discussion. The problem is you can only see the world through your own limited perspective, truly. The other point about him not posting his PnL, no one cares except you. No one cares what country he is in, how many girls he is banging, what his NW is except you. Do you not get that? I actually could care less what his PnL is -- outside of mild curiosity -- much like I DNGAF about yours, or have any inkling to post mine. Why does this trigger you so much? It's an insecurity within yourself that you feel the need to continue to point this out. No poster owes you anything or has to prove anything to you, and it's audacious to demand something like that from others. You know how it reads to everyone else? The fact you keep trying to measure dicks with him (profits, PnL, who got what trade right) just reeks of you having a small one.

For those who post a thesis/analysis and add to any discourse, let their words stand on their own without making this about ego or your take on it unless you want to specifically address/challenge discussion points in the thesis without going after the character of the poster. Honestly, the sooner you look in the mirror and understand you have a fragile ego, the better your posts will become. In the meantime before you have that epiphany please just mute him for all our sakes.