The Wall Street Bets due diligence on Wendy’s is gold.

The catalysts are:
◻️ The release of a new summer salad
◻️ The @Wendys Twitter account, which has mastered “meta pragmatic roasting” (which is effective with younger people)
◻️ The fact it literally sells chicken tendies

Our intuitions often leads us astray. A good reminder: study counterintuitive math and economic results.

Here are 9 of them 🧵

The Birthday Paradox

In a room of 23 people, there's a >50% chance that 2 people share the same birthday.

This type of probabilistic thinking does *not* come naturally to many people.

The Coastline Paradox

Fractal geometry is also confounding:

The coastline of a landmass does not have a well-defined measurement. As the unit of measurement gets smaller (eg. from KMs to cm), the length increases without limit.

Winner's Curse

In an auction, the winning bid will usually exceed the intrinsic worth of an item leading to a significant overpay (and negative net profit for the winner).

Braess's Paradox

Removing an extra road can make everyone's commute time faster.

Why? The existence of a "fast" road leads to congestion because everyone uses it. If you remove the shortcut, traffic flows better.

The most memorable interview I did this year was w/ Stanley Druckenmiller, who famously made $1B shorting the British Pound.

The trading legend's track record includes a 30-year stretch returning 30%+ a year (without a single down year).

Here are 8 investing lessons🧵

1/ Make concentrated bets in high conviction plays

2/ Concentrated bets can sometimes *reduce* risk

3/ Use a multi-disciplinary approach to investing

4/ Know when to sell (he never uses a stop loss)

“I spend too much at Starbucks” is a legendary meme.

It's also not an accident: the coffee retailer -- worth $120B -- uses many psychological hacks in its store and menu designs to get you to drop more cash.

Here are 11 of them 🧵

1/ Starbucks is all about positioning

The chain has higher prices vs competitors. But that's the point.

People typically assign higher value/quality to higher prices. Known as "irrational value assessment", this makes Starbucks an everyday luxury that people will pay for.

2/ Premium brand = premium customer base

By setting its prices higher, Starbucks attracts clientele that are relatively price insensitive.

Starbucks frequently raises its prices with little negative effect to its bottom line.

3/ "More than coffee"

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz created the premium feel by emphasizing experience:

◻️Positioned SBUX as a "third place" (b/t home, work)
◻️Brought bean grinding in-store (for aroma)
◻️Banned auto espresso machines (it took away from the barista craft)

4/ Lighting and visual cues

The Starbucks operations is about "flow", efficiently moving people around the store+ getting them to spend.

To form lines, it directs people to well-lit areas (usually the merchandise, which provides the added benefit of nudging products for sale).

Peter Thiel's 2014 Reddit AMA is full of nuggets 🧵

1/ His biggest investing mistake was *not* doubling down on Facebook

2/ Thoughts when he first met Elon

3/ Whether he has a "ban" on hiring MBAs

4/ Why he invested in SpaceX

5/ His reaction to the movie The Social Network

1/ Amazon is famous for its writing culture:

• "Mock press releases / FAQs" for new product pitches
• "6-page memos" instead of Powerpoint

Two former Amazon execs wrote a book called "Working Backwards" detailing the philosophy.

Here are some insights 🧵

2/ The "Working Backwards" playbook

Instead of creating a product then finding customers, Amazon asks "What does the customer need?" and works toward the product.

✅Customer need --> Create product
❌Create product --> Find customer

3/ Write a mock press release

To determine if the customer need makes biz sense, employees write a press release:

• What problem is the new product solving
• Why it's better than existing options

To persuade a customer, the document has to be jargon-free and tell a story.

4/ Press release forces big thinking

You don't write a press release for an incremental improvements.

Creating a product worthy of a press release means really solving a customer problem and going after markets with large TAMs.

5/ Include an FAQ in press release

Addressing every potential customer question can help identify hurdles to getting something to market...and also uncover opportunities.

@TraderIndian

@nid_rockz So called popular handle

When a consumer company advertises only on biz channels and not on GEC and mainstream channels, you should be alert about the management's intentions.

#investing

Anatomy of pump

Read below thread & articles

https://t.co/Zw9TDgFH8M

https://t.co/oeNhoq9fnz

https://t.co/DDRo4pP8O3

All identical. Many more links on net

Clearly co PR or cartel planting this misleading narrative on massive scale thru media/twitterati

Beware

#ccd

How did the debt come down :

1) sale of stake held by co in Mindtree to LnT for ~ 2700 cr. This was actually done when VGS was still alive. just months b4 his unfortunate death

2) sale of real estate asset global village tech park to blackstone for approx EV 2000 - 2500 cr

3) CDE lost controlling stake in its subsidiary Sical Logistics as lenders invoked collateral shares. SCL had debt of 1500 cr which used 2 add 2 CDE consolidated debt

But no control = SL no longer subsidiary = it's debt can't show in consol debt of CDE. Just an accounting thing

So as you can see, most debt reduction has come from selliing prime non core assets. Not operating cash flows!

And another 1500 cr debt disappeared from book because they lost control of a subsidiary due to defauls

Malavika Hegde is in a tough spot and may be fighting hard to save CDE. There still are some other non core assets which can b sold to pay dues. But overall the CCD biz is struggling - unlike what the current narratives being planted by someone are saying

A group with extreme amounts of leverage from public sector banks and inflated market value for its equity also has avg. earnings multiple across the group at around 250x. Must be a coincidence