Tue, May 31, 2022|Whitney Tilson

Thursday's special event; The carnage in cryptos; The Top 50 Richest People Have Lost More Than Half a Trillion Dollars This Year; Doug Kass' prescient surprises; My latest COVID update

1) We only have a few seats left for the free, private event my colleagues Enrique Abeyta, Berna Barshay, and I are hosting in New York City for Empire Financial Research paid subscribers this Thursday, June 2, from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

We'll present three of our favorite stocks, take questions, and then host a cocktail reception afterward from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.

It will be at the IESE Business School, 165 W 57th Street, across the street from Carnegie Hall.

Fifty-five people have already signed up and the room only has capacity for 60, so if you'd like to join us, please register here.

For subscribers who aren't able to join us, we'll tape it and make the video and our slides available to you shortly afterward.

If you aren't an Empire subscriber but would like to attend or watch the video and receive the slides, you can become one for only $49 by taking advantage of our special 75% discount to receive a full year of our flagship newsletter, Empire Stock Investor – just click here to subscribe and then click the link above to register for next week's event.

2) In Empire Stock Investor, we mostly focus on large-cap, blue-chip stocks that we'd put in our parents' retirement accounts – but not always...

In the April 2021 issue, we recommended buying ethereum (ETH) with an entry price of $2,025.16. It quickly doubled over the next month... And in a special update the following month, we recommended selling 55% of the position at $3,733.95 – banking a quick 84% gain. Then, earlier this month, we sent our subscribers another special update recommending selling the rest of the position at just under $2,000. In total, our subscribers banked a 45% gain.

Here's the key, though...

We always knew it was a speculation – and told our subscribers this. But, as I outlined in my May 12 e-mail, it was a good speculation last April – which is why we recommended it – that turned into a bad one recently – which is why we exited.

We never fell in love with ethereum (or any other cryptos). Unfortunately, many other folks did – and got burned – as these recent articles highlight:

Charlie Munger is Right: China is Making the U.S. "Look Foolish" on Bitcoin (Quoth the Raven)
What Happened to TerraUSD's Bitcoin Reserves (WSJ)

3) It's good to see Warren Buffett and his company, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B), which I've long called "America's No. 1 Retirement Stock," bucking this trend! The Top 50 Richest People Have Lost More Than Half a Trillion Dollars This Year. Excerpt:

The top 50 richest people in the world have lost more than half a trillion dollars on paper this year, a stunning loss of wealth that exceeds the gross domestic product of Sweden and is greater than the market caps of all but six companies in the S&P 500.

The 50 wealthiest people, which include Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett, have had a combined $563 billion in net worth evaporate this year through May 22, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking updated daily of the richest people in the world. The drop comes as the stock market flirts with its first bear market since the beginning of the pandemic.

Mr. Musk, Tesla's (TSLA) chief executive and the world's richest man, currently has a net worth of $201 billion. On paper, he has lost $69.1 billion so far this year, the most of any billionaire currently on the top 50 list, according to the index.

Here's the latest list of the top 25, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index:

4) A hat tip to my friend Doug Kass of Seabreeze Partners, who predicted this as one of his 15 Surprises for 2022:

Surprise, Surprise: Bezos, Musk Battle It Out to See Who Can Record the Biggest 1-Year Drop in Net Worth Ever

May 24, 2022

Though only a little over four months into the year, my 15 Surprises for 2022 are well on their way to being the most prescient of any in the last 20 plus years of doing my List.

Here is one Surprise that is coming to fruition:

Surprise No. 4 – Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk Battle It Out to See Who Can Set the Record for Biggest Loss of Personal Fortune in a Single Year

Amazon runs into trouble with higher labor and shipping costs, declining ad sales and slowing demand for AWS.

Elon Musk over-celebrates being named Time's "Person of the Year" and winds up hospitalized after a drug overdose.

Tesla's shipments and market share are adversely impacted by a host of competitive EV offerings from domestic and non U.S. manufacturers.

EVs lose their luster and appeal as it becomes clear that the electric grid is nowhere near ready for a mass switch... nor is your home. (Try charging and running a major appliance at the same time).

GM and F shares also falter as their transformation and execution into the EV market is questioned by investors.

- Amazon's (AMZN) earnings have been hurt by supply chain issues as well as the higher costs of labor and materials. AMZN shares are down to about $2,100 from a high of $3,770.

- Tesla's shares have taken a nosedive in the last few months; almost falling by half to $655 from their high of nearly $1,300.

- The share prices of original equipment manufacturers General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) – so popular six months ago – have moved to 52-week lows. GM has fallen from $67 to $35, Ford has dropped from $25 to $12.

I will have a half-year review of my 15 Surprises for 2022 in early July.

5) I continue to follow developments with COVID-19, but not as closely anymore... in part because I've been really busy with other things, but mostly because, as I've been writing since as far back as December 14, COVID-19 has become endemic.

Here's a link to what I sent to my coronavirus e-mail list over the weekend (to sign up for it, simply send a blank e-mail to: cv-subscribe@mailer.kasecapital.com). Excerpt:

A new study analyzes U.S. deaths since vaccines became available and concluded that HALF of the 641,305 deaths were preventable had everyone gotten vaccines: Vaccine Preventable Deaths Analysis. Here's the chart:

In the rest of my e-mail, I covered:

Where Death Rates Rose the Most
The Anti-Vaccine Movement's New Frontier
Various articles about Long COVID
Pandemic dashboard
COVID variants, including Monkeypox
The Disillusionment of Young Chinese

Overall, I'm not worried about the latest flare-up in cases, as ICU hospitalizations and deaths remain very low. Again, to read the full e-mail, click here.

Best regards,

Whitney

P.S. I welcome your feedback at WTDfeedback@empirefinancialresearch.com.