What are ways to bet AGAINST the value of some startups?

Discussion in 'Trading' started by pinetboltz, Oct 24, 2023.

  1. Its a good trade idea.

    Don't rule out crypto either.

    My theory is that the age old 'rising tide lifts all ships' does not apply in this space.Moreover,I believe that investors in this space simply move losing/dwindling investment funds to blue chip crypto,rather than outside the space,creating a potential hedge or perhaps a dual bet.

    I've been looking at shorting parabolic 'shitcoins' for a while now.
     
    #11     Oct 29, 2023
    pinetboltz likes this.
  2. nitrene

    nitrene

    Very true. I had friends who worked in both Silicon Valley Bank & First Republic and they were imminently linked to the whole VC market.

    Believe it or not my friend at First Republic told me years ago that they had an informal branch inside Facebook & Google. I told him that was very risky (this was in 2018).

    Silicon Valley Bank had a lot on informal investments in the Fintech craze especially in the SF bay area & the Seattle area. That is the reason their stock traded like a profitless tech startup.
     
    #12     Oct 29, 2023
    pinetboltz likes this.
  3. pinetboltz

    pinetboltz

    thx, i might go with the distressed real estate idea as it seems easier to execute & less open to manipulation

    if anything, the previous cycles already showed so many of these startups cannot deliver anything close to the hype they promised

    this time the stuff they are pitching are even more fantastical - ie. my bet is that, in the aggregate, the fiction they are writing for the VCs/LPs has little chance to coming to fruition, in both the financial payoffs & actual deliverables
    - eg. even with self-driving cars, where untold billions have been poured in by the largest tech groups, it's still being worked on after a decade plus of constant grinding and cash burn
    - with the smaller companies led by 2nd tier people trying to "solve the world's problems" and "reinvent artificial general intelligence" with only a few hundred mil runway, yeah, i don't buy it

    maybe a good strategy is to hoard cash while waiting for all the factors to align, really holding out for insane bargains at the stage where they surrender & do fire sales, before moving in to target distressed real estate
    - for GDP to slow/ ease etc - already seeing pockets of slowing inflation
    - some tech companies already in layoffs/ hiring freeze mode
    - high mortgage/ interest payments surely not helping the frothy operators

    timing that market would be important, but once in, i think it should be a max of few years before it pays off, as the cycles always repeat in SF where new hopefuls reenter with dreams of glory
     
    #13     Oct 29, 2023