This morning Cathie Wood, the founder and CEO of ARK Investment Management, put out a note that she foresees shares of Tesla (TSLA) quadrupling in value to $3,000 by 2025. It’s worth noting that Wood, 65, was named “the best stock picker of 2020” by Bloomberg News.
We’d note the similarities between TSLA now and AMZN five years ago. By 2016 AMZN shares had already had a fabulous run-up, just as TSLA has made a 700% gain in the past year or so. And people were wondering how much higher AMZN, then selling at under $700 per share, might go.
TSLA is selling at just under $700 per share right now. AMZN is selling at about $3,100 per share today.
Who will remember this blog post in four years, besides Jacob Anstey and Susie B.? Who knows? Who knows if Susie B. is even still out there or if she’s burning incense and olive leaves in hopes that Sweet Pea’s ankle will recover in time for the postseason?
Anyway, I dunno. But I’d be very, very surprised if TSLA stock is not selling for at least $2,100 in 2025 and even that would be a 200% gain. In a post-Robinhood world, that’ll look very good in your portfolio.
A volcanic eruption in Iceland, as if that nation doesn’t already have a surfeit of natural wonders. Meanwhile, above, a divine marriage of technology and nature. Shot by drone. Not an opening for a new season of Game Of Thrones.
These gawkers do realize that slipping into a flow of lava is instant death, don’t they? Have they never watched a James Bond film?
The Jean Genie
The unofficial mascot of 2021 March Madness: 101 year-old Sister Jean of Loyola, whose Ramblers advanced to the Sweet Sixteen. She’s older—by nearly 20 years—than the NCAA tourney itself. Loyola is one of ELEVEN schools that were seeded five or spots below the team they beat this weekend and we’re not even fully to the Sweet 16 (the previous record through two rounds was ten).
Fast forward two years when Betty White, now 100, wins an Oscar for her portrayal of Sister Jean in Rambler Resurrection. It’s the role that White was born (in 1923) to play.
As of this morning, the tourney still has UCLA, whose 11 national championships are the most in the tourney’s history, but the next four biggest winners—Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke and Indiana—did not even make the tourney.
The tourney has never been set up better for a Gonzaga triumph. The Zags are undefeated and could become the first school since the Hoosiers in 1976 to cut down the nets with an undefeated record.
The Chase
I only caught the last 20 minutes of it, so I’m unable to endorse my channel guide rating of two stars for The Chase, a 1966 film that aired on TCM on Friday. However, if that rating is accurate—when’s the last time you saw a Guide synopsis that read “a disappointment”?—we may have a winner in the “Best Cast, Worst Movie” sweepstakes.
Look at this cast: Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Angie Dickinson and the immortal Miriam Hopkins (one of Hollywood’s most luminous starlets back in the ’30s). And yet the movie was a pfffft, both critically and commercially. And not even bad enough to be a cult classic.
Although, it is odd (and SPOILER ALERT here) that a film based in Texas a few years after the Kennedy assassination has as its dramatic climax a captured man being gunned down by a stranger who steps out of the crowd as he’s being escorted by a lawman to jail. A little too on the nose and a little too soon, no?
Hey, JW, do you just post Rex Chapman tweets in order to avoid having to write more or to avoid posting political stuff about how 21st century Republicans are flat-out garbage?
That’s a very good question. But this is a quality video, no?
On the one hand, women’s college basketball stars such as UConn frosh Paige Bueckers sound hopelessly naive when they tweet or IG about the paltry workout facility they are given, particularly relative to the men, during the tournament. After all, the men’s tournament will net the NCAA, in TV revenue alone, approximately $700 million in the next two-plus weeks. The women’s tournament? About $30 million.
Separate AND unequal.
On the other hoop hand, Paige Bueckers is herself at least 20x the attraction that most of her playing brethren are. And yet she gets the same deal—a full scholarship, room and board—that an eight-minutes-a-game reserve on a 16-seed does.
The NFL Cashes In
Yesterday the NFL signed new media rights agreements with CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN and Amazon collectively worth about $110 billion over 11 years. The deals will begin in 2023 and run through 2033.
The deals are also about a 100% markup from the current NFL deal, which was already exorbitant. What’s happening here? The NFL realizes that traditional networks are making one last stand to stave off obsolescence, so it soaked them for all they’re worth. It’s like knowing, as the head of state, that we’re all moving to electric vehicles, but extracting one last political contribution from Big Oil or Detroit before we make the transition final. Smart.
It feels like this is every Fox just-off-air moment. Right before they put back on their masks of “patriotism” and “Christian values.” And while there is nothing ethically wrong with vaping—other than it makes you look like a douche—it’s wonderful to see Hannity caught being who he actually is.
Coaching
Michigan State is up 44-31 just before halftime versus UCLA when a blown assignment on a switch leads to a Bruin bucket at the buzzer. Do you have a problem with how Tom Izzo handled this? With how Spartan player Gabe Brown reacted to Izzo?
I really don’t myself. Save it for the comments. I’d love to hear what you think.
UCLA rallied from five down in the game’s final 90 seconds to force overtime and then win.
Vanderwaal’s Forces
I did not know about teen sensation Grace Vanderwaal one week ago. Now I do. She is an incredible talent who, still only 17, writes and performs her own songs. This, below, was the Suffern, N.Y., native’s introduction to the world at age 12 in 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNxO9MpQ2vA
Miracles have come true for Grace. But I truly worry about where she’ll be, emotionally and mentally, in a year or two. She’s already dyed her hair pink AND then shaved her head. You’ve seen the VH-1 Legends docs. So have I. We know where this is headed.
“You Don’t Give Awards To Comedians”
There are two Jerry Seinfeld award speeches on YouTube well worth your time. This one and the one where he accepts a Clio. In both Seinfeld simply truth-abuses the very people who are lauding him. It’s hilarious and honest and yet… there he is, accepting the awards.
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament commences today in Indianapolis, which is also home to the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) itself. The NCAA’s stated mission is to be the governing body of intercollegiate athletics, which it is. But when it comes to the NCAA tourney, a.k.a. March Madness, the NCAA is a bank.
According to Forbes, “the current agreement between CBS and Turner Broadcasting with the NCAA averages $771 million a year, and then via an extension averages $1.1 billion a year from 2025 through 2032.”
Each year the NCAA distributes money to its 32 member Division I conferences, via its NCAA tournament revenue, through something it refers to as “the basketball fund.” In 2019, the last year the tournament was held (due to the pandemic), the basketball fund’s total value was $170 million. That’s about 20% of what the NCAA receives from its TV contract with CBS and Turner.
The basketball fund is the not-for-children’s-ears aspect of the NCAA tournament, something you’ll never hear Jim Nantz or Len Elmore or Bill Raftery discuss. Here is how it works. The fund is split into units. Just for making the tournament, a conference (not the school itself) earns one unit. Hence, since every conference earns an automatic berth the NCAA is able to guarantee that each conference will garner at minimum one unit from the basketball fund.
Beyond that, each win by a member school earns that school’s conference another unit (with the exception of the national championship game itself, where a unit is not awarded). For example, the West Coast Conference landed two schools, Gonzaga and BYU, in this year’s field of 68 schools. If BYU wins one game and is then eliminated while Gonzaga cuts down the nets, the WCC will earn eight units. Two units for each school qualifying, one unit for BYU’s one win, and five units for Gonzaga’s five units leading up to the NCAA title game. Two plus one plus five equals eight.
In 2019 the value of one unit equaled approximately $1.6 million. If we use that same figure for 2021, and imagine the above scenario, the WCC should earn, via the basketball fund, $12.8 million ($1.6 million x 8) for its appearance and performance in March Madness.
And it will. But not right away. And this is how the NCAA behaves exactly like a bank…with no justifiable reason other than it can. For every and all conferences, whose member schools constitute the NCAA (“We the people…yada yada yada”), the basketball fund is not paid out in full. Instead, those unit payments are doled out in 1/6 increments over six years. Hence, that imagined $12.8 million payout to the WCC would actually be $2.13 million next year. And the year after that through 2027.
And here is where the NCAA behaves even more like a bank. Take a look at the NCAA’s financial statement for fiscal year 2019-2020. There, on Page 6. “Investment Income, net….. $40,488, 047.”
Now do a little arithmetic. The NCAA’s “basketball fund” in 2019 was $170 million, but as stated above, it only pays out 1/6 of that fund per year. Hence, the actual payout from the 2019 tournament to its 32 Division I member conferences in 2020 was $28.3 million. That’s more than $12 million less than it actually made in investments during that fiscal year.
The NCAA never needed to touch the principle from its TV contract in order to fund its basketball fund. The investment earnings more than took care of that, yielding more money for the NCAA to invest the following year and hopefully generate an even greater return on investment. Thus, the NCAA not only does not touch its television contract revenue in order to meet its basketball fund obligations, but with each succeeding year (should investments perform at a stable rate of return) it takes a smaller percentage of its investment revenue in order to meet its basketball fund pledge.
The NCAA will loudly trumpet that, yes, it earns plenty of dollars from its March Madness TV contract, but that plenty of that money is returned to its schools. Via the basketball fund. But that’s simply not true. Because of the 1/6 payout plus its investment revenue the NCAA is able, annually, to never have to touch a dime from the check CBS and Turner sends its way.
And all of that is smart business. Except that you must remember that the performers in this grand show, the players, do not receive a penny of that money. And that the NCAA is, for tax purposes, a non-profit. As my friend Bomani Jones told me recently, “Beware the non-profit that does not have a cause.”
The NCAA’s cause may ostensibly be overseeing intercollegiate athletics. There exists, however, an underlying mission to enrich itself by taking in revenue on an immediate basis while paying out its costs on an annuity basis. And using those funds that it is able to keep in-house as investment capital, hence generating secondary revenue that allows it to meet its costs without ever touching its primary revenue stream. This is how a bank operates, no?
A 21 year-old man (white) gunned down eight people, six of them Asian, in three separate massage parlors in Atlanta. We must be emerging from the pandemic if racially-motivated mass shootings are returning.
Morgan Stanley, the nation’s largest brokerage, has just released a report titled “The Case for Cryptocurrency as an investable asset class in a diversified portfolio.” If they’re in, Bitcoin may be inevitable. Time to put away your tulip analogies?
Lions and hyenas never see snow in their natural habitats, but like most four-legged creatures, they seem to take to it quite naturally. There’s nothing like seeing wild animals at play. Or maybe they’re just happy that school was canceled.
Portnoy’s (Latest) Complaint
Nobody should ever be afraid to publicly speak their mind. But when you do I’d suggest doing actual research before slandering an entire company with blatant lies.
Now comes the part where our fans become the bad guys because they defend us from being called Nazis. https://t.co/DrQLGQW7RJ
Barstool founder Dave Portnoy is a complicated character. He’ll never back down from a fight and he sat down with the Former Guy for a gushing interview last summer and his site is somewhere between early National Lampoon and the worst of frat bro culture. On the other hand he employs bright individuals such as @PFTCommenter and Joey Mulinaro, is buds with big finance names like Jim Cramer, and has helped give away millions to small business owners in need the past year.
One day earlier hockey broadcaster Gord Miller tweeted that he had some free time before a flight, so fire away with questions. A follower asked when he’d appear on a Barstool podcast that is geared to hockey, “Spittin’ Chiclets”
I like those guys a lot, but anything to do with Barstool is a no-go for me. https://t.co/W5l3IjmgIC
My problem with Barstool is the history of unapologetic misogyny, racism, xenophobia and the repeated condoning of non-consensual sex. If not wanting to associate with that makes me part of “cancel culture”, or constitutes “virtue signalling” or being “woke”, I’m OK with that.
Which prompted Portnoy’s above tweet. Portnoy has plenty of Trump in him, except that unlike Trump he does have empathy and is not always looking out for himself. However, when someone points out—accurately—that he and his site promote misogyny and objectification of women, he always plays the free speech and/or Cancel Culture card.
It’s important to note: Miller isn’t attempting to shut down Barstool. He’s simply saying that he does not want to be associated with it. And Portnoy is not attacking the verity of Miller’s claims. He’s attempting to say this his own free speech is being threatened. Which, of course, it is not.
March Madness Meets Reefer Madness
More than half a ton of marijuana with a street value upwards of $8 million was discovered by a sharp-nosed police dog during a routine traffic stop in northwest Indiana. https://t.co/sCoiRxxTLe
In Indianapolis, where the NCAA tournament commences tomorrow and will be held for the next two-plus weeks, a German Shepherd with a keen snout sniffs out more than a half ton of weed with a street value of $8 million.
The tourney’s first upset.
You have to love that the pooch is posed in front of his bust. But you do worry about the safety of his family.
