ATROCIOUS big pharma price gouging of insulin:

This crying mother can’t afford the $1000 for her son’s insulin.

📌yet, it only costs pharma $5 to produce.

📌Insulin was invented 100 years ago by Fred Banting—who donated patent for $1 to make it free for all.

Let that sink in.

2) Insulin is one of the most disgusting cases of price gouging ever.

America has long taken a free market approach to pharmaceuticals.
Drug companies haggle separately over drug prices with a variety of private insurers across the

3) “Meanwhile, Medicare, the government health program for those over age 65 — it’s also the nation’s largest buyer of drugs—is barred from negotiating drug prices. That gives pharma more leverage, and it leads to the kind of price surges of EpiPens, opioid antidotes, & insulin.”

4) In 2018:
Johnson & Johnson CEO made $30M
Pfizer CEO made $28M
Merck CEO made $18M
Eli Lilly CEO made $16M
Gilead CEO made $16M

Meanwhile:

📌Americans spent $535B on Rx drugs

📌1/4 of diabetics rationed insulin to survive

📌500K Americans went bankrupt from medical bills.

5) What’s the right price patients should pay for medications? ZERO dollars, because no copay ==> more patients get their medicine ==> saves lives and saves money. Copays decrease adherence, and copays hurt patients who actually need them.

How Does Zero Cost EMI work?

What is the catch here? How do Companies involved make money here?

A Thread🧵👇

Please "RT" if you like the thread.

1/ You are looking for a mobile phone worth Rs.10,000 on Amazon and as you move ahead to place the order, you are offered an option to pay that amount spread across 6 months. 6 EMIs of Rs.1667. No interest charges or processing fees.

2/ The next thought you have is - ‘obviously there is some catch here’. Why would someone give me an option to pay over 6 months? That too without any fees/charges!?

The catch is - it is more to do with marketing and sales than finance.

3/ There are 3 entities involved in this transaction. The platform (Amazon), Mobile Brand (Samsung), and the finance company (Bajaj Finance).

4/ Imagine you are a student who just got an internship with a stipend of Rs.5000. Shelling out Rs.10000 may not be possible for you. But if you have to pay Rs.1667 a month for 6 months, you feel like you have got a deal! Samsung gets to sell more. Amazon gets more commission.

WHY $CCIV CAN TRIPLE SOON.

What is $CCIV ?

CCIV is the fourth SPAC by Michael Klein who already has multiple multi-billion dollar SPAC mergers including $CCC valued at over 19 Billion. CCIV is in TALKS to take @LucidMotors public valuing the merger at over 15 BILLION.

What is LUCID MOTORS?

Lucid Motors is one of the worlds leading EV car "Startups" founded in 2007 in California they were previously known as Atieva. Most of their 1400 employees come from well know car companies such as TESLA and Mazda.

The Lucid motor core team

Peter Rawlinson ( CEO & CTO)

Originally from wales, peter was the Chief Engineer for the TESLA MODEL S. Peter was also the Principal Engineer at @Jaguar Chief Engineer at @lotuscars

Derek Jenkins ( Vice President of Design)

Derek started his journey with 8 years at @Audi working on the Audi A2 & A8 among others. After Audi, he moved to VW where he spent nine years. He is also credited for the design of the CX-5, Mazda6, Mazda3, and the CX-9 among others.

Lucid Air

Lucid Air is the first car by @LucidMotors which is set to release in the summer of this year. Air will have four different variants starting from 69,900 USD which will have up to a 503 MILE RANGE.

Some interesting snippets from @MotilalOswalLtd 25th Wealth Creation Study:

(A Short thread)

1. Consumer/Retail is the biggest wealth-creating sector over 25 years.

2. Almost 60 of the top 100 market cap companies in 1995 did not make it to the Wealth Creators list.

3.Corporate profit to GDP at all-time lows + Market cap to GDP close to an all-time high.

4. Permanent change in the long term interest rate band is leading to a change in valuation expectations.

5. Twenty-five stocks for the next twenty-five years. Read the Disclaimer.

The old conservative versus liberal thing, or the left/right division has been completely obliterated, and sometimes directly reversed. Originally, those on the right were defenders of the status quo, which meant they were fine with the world being run by bankers and aristocrats.

1/ Thread: $GOOG 4Q'20 Update

For the first time, GOOG segmented its cloud revenues/income separately, and overall revenue was >20% in 4Q which led to +7% after-hours reaction yesterday.

Here are my notes from earnings/press release.

2/ In the last quarter, here is the segment-wise growth:

Search +17.4%
YouTube ads +46.0%
Google Network Members +22.9%
Cloud +46.6%

Cloud more than doubled in the last two years.
Other bets losses $4.5 Bn in 2020 (vs $4.8 Bn in 2019)

3/ Operating margin in Q4 ~28%
FCF margin in Q4 ~30%

One of the big takeaways was the core business was even MORE profitable than most investors thought since cloud had -42.9% operating margin.

$GOOG's search business is a good comp for Fed in terms of "printing" money. JK.

4/ "you can track takeout and delivery orders when you book or order from Google Maps"

"More than 0.5 million channels livestreamed on YouTube for the first time in 2020"

"videos in our new Shorts player are receiving 3.5 billion daily views."

5/ Google Pay app is now used by >150 mn people in 30 countries.

Cloud backlog $30 Bn now (from $19 Bn in Q3)

# of Deals >$250 Mn became >3x

Waymo is providing hundreds of fully AV rides per week

Retail searches >3x YoY

Cloud operating losses flat YoY

1/x Since I promised a few investors outside Sweden/Nordics to look deeper into $CDON, with my negative customer biases aside, here's a short thread;

Let's first go through the negatives

2/x I really understand the excitement when you put on the "local dominant marketplace"-glasses and start comparing CDON multiples to the likes of $AMZN, $MELI, $SE or whatever. But with boots on the ground I can assure you, that they are *nothing* of the sort. At least yet.

3/x Just looking at GMV/revenue, after >20y in business, an "everything store", CDON doesn't even come near other local niche players like $BHG (8bSEK) or $BOOZT (4bSEK) and other private companies. They are closer to $LYKO in size, who are only selling hair & beauty..

4/x Unfortunately the brand is very much on decline (especially among young ppl) since the website has been mistreated for years and years, so I think they have to work extremely hard on building trust + enhance customer experience to even have a change long term.

5/x Like I wrote yesterday we have a very divided (in a good way) eCommerce market in the Nordics, with lots of amazing niche players with top notch customer experience. To put it in words you understand, we are a more $SHOP like region with independent businesses.

Today we're gonna talk about profits. They come from stock! #AdamSmith reminds us that stock is any resource paid for in advance when doing business. In general, profits and wages don't move together. (I.ix.1–2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

As stock goes up, there's more of it to employ more workers (by paying them or providing machines for them to work or both). This raises wages! But new stock competes with existing stock, which tends to lower profit. (I.ix.2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

If you thought figuring out the average wages of labor was complicated, don't even think about trying to figure out the average profit of stock. Basically impossible. Luckily, the rate of interest tends to vary with the profits of stock. (I.ix.3–4) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Lots of laws have tried to control interest rates and stop usury. They've all failed to do either. (I.ix.5–9) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Profits and wages rising together is unusual, but it happens. In particular, in new colonies. (I.ix.11) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

1) "Funded by hundreds of millions of dollars from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other high-tech interests, activist organizations created a two-tiered election

TSMC $TSM projecting capital expenses of 25-28B USD in 2021. 80% allocated for advanced process tech, 3, 5, 7nm. 10% advanced packaging and mask making, 10% other. 2020 capex, originally slated at $15B, was over $17B. For context $AMD's entire revenue for 2020 estimated at $9.5B

Management sees a growing market and TSMC growing faster than the market, with a 2020-2025 CAGR of 10-15%. In 2019 capex was initially estimated at $10-11B and then revised up to $15B. They are expanding fast, and newer nodes are more capital intensive.

3nm looking good and has strong customer interest, production in 2H 2022.
All this, especially the capex, in line with suggestions Intel will be increasing their use of TSMC fabs, or else AMD making really large increases (or both), but they also project a lot of growth in phones

TSMC utilization rate is very high, and they expect it to remain high in Q1. They expect more revenue in Q1 than in Q4. Margin is hit by the weak USD and the large capex, but they still think a 50% gross margin is reasonable, long term.

Analyst on call surprised at raise in capex, says it is above consensus. Hmmm $INTC?

Exclusive: Alleged RCMP mole accused of selling secrets to kingpin money launderer and terror-financier’s network | https://t.co/6oS5jHrnWQ https://t.co/evpm0Eh9S6 @CullenInquiryBC

1. I'll unpack a few points from this ongoing investigation by Global News into the Ortis case. The allegations against Ortis, from my investigation, are very international in scope, and could not be more relevant to the work of @CullenInquiryBC

2. If you have the impression that Ottawa has been asleep at the wheel with issues of transnational drug cartels using Canadian cities as giant money laundering vehicles, that would be partly correct, in my years of expertise. But the Ortis case alleges something else going on.

3. What my investigation shows, is the case against Cameron Ortis -- who was one of the most influential leaders in RCMP and top intel official -- is he was allegedly corrupt and compromised a Five Eyes probe of a global kingpin money launderer.

4. In order to understand the case, it can't be stressed enough how important the Altaf Khanani money laundering organization is to drug trafficking and terrorist attacks worldwide, according to the DEA.

Irresistible to leave this moment alone - a thread to share some investment lessons:

1/ Size matters.
Melvin entered 2021 circa $12 billion in AUM and runs a highly levered balance sheet. That’s a lot of short exposure to move around if needed.

2/ WSB/Reddit captured a market inefficiency.

Stocks are not supposed to have over 100% short interest. Naked short selling is illegal. This set-up should never happen. Kudos to those who took advantage.

How it happened and what it means has rampant ramifications, but in this moment the individuals captured the anomaly.

3/ Be careful dismissing “in theory” for those rare moments when it becomes “in practice.”

Keynes said “markets can be irrational longer than you can be solvent.” I suspect this won't take down any significant hedge fund, but it definitely hurts.

3b/ Be careful dismissing “in theory” for those rare moments when it becomes “in practice.”

Academic finance teaches that “a short sale has unlimited downside and limited upside. Those events almost never play out, until they do.

If you're a college student who wants to pay off all your loans... here's an idea for you:

It takes ~$5k to start and will make ~$30k a year of profit

It won't get you rich, it'll pay for college.

(..and will teach them more about business than they’ll learn in school)

The idea isn’t sexy. But it works:

**Plastic Moving Bin Rentals**

Everyone knows moving sucks. The worst part is being stuck with 400 cardboard boxes at the end of your move.

Instead - @benmlevy told me about Gorilla Bins. They dropoff plastic moving bins, & pickem up later.

Let’s break it down. Our goal is to pay for college (~$30k profit per year).

To do that, I think we’ll need $50k in revenue.

The avg move (a 2 bedroom apartment) is $180

To hit our goal, we need do ~5.5 moves per week

COSTS?

How many bins do we need to buy up front?

5.5 moves a week x 50 bins = you need 275 bins. Let’s round up to 300 to be safe.

Ok let’s hop over to @uline to see how much these bins cost

Bingo. Bins cost about $15 a piece.

$15 x 300 bins = $4,500 initial startup costs.

Time to beg your parents or a rich aunt to lend you money to get the biz rolling (...or just take $5k of student loan money and invest it here…)