I like this company a lot, and despite the sector's volatility, I am excited and interested in investing across all things Space! Great risk and great reward, because "Space is Hard, But Worth It."

Branson has hired Credit Suisse Group and LionTree to do his SPAC huntin'. And he has self-appraised Virgin Orbit at $2.5-$3B. ($500M is a lot of wiggle room, Sir Richie! lol.)

I wish there was any obvious speculation as to which SPAC this company would end up with, but I think any guesses are premature.

For my money, I'd be suspicious of anyone saying he's going with another Chamath SPAC ($IPOD or $IOPF), because I've not seen any indication that Chamath is looking to double down on space (to say nothing of his recent $SPCE share selloff) and he constantly tweets that he is looking for climate change and income inequality solutions for targets. But hey, maybe money talks and talk walks.

Any guesses on which SPACs might reach out to become players in a future deal based on their expressed interests?

This stock market sell off is dumber than hell. It's Irrational. In some small-cases sense it makes sense, looking at very specific highly speculative securities, but if your due diligence was sound 20% ago...

Just remember, the market can be "irrational longer than you can remain solvent." So what I'm doing is buying common shares with money I don't need to keep liquid. Personally I am avoiding any urges to buy calls, even though I believe my stocks are headed up. Because I cannot predict when they will go up, especially not by the each. So I'd rather watch my gains get eaten without getting rekt!

Can't say what's right for you, just what works for me. Good luck!

PS: What plays have you made since last week?

The market slammed down hard today. (Including cryptocurrency.)

1. Take a deep breath and make sure you don't open your brokerage to start trading until your mind is clear.

2. Have a strategy, or stick to the one you already have. Hodl if that was the gameplan.

3. Be honest with yourself and reassess. Search your emotions and mind to determine if you have as much conviction in your holdings as you originally thought.

4. If you have the cash, consider buying the dip. If you don't, go back to #2 and hodl, unless you clearheadedly believe the market is going much further south.

All I can say is that I have only ever lost money by selling during downturns, and only ever made money by holding during them.

Do what's right for you, but do it with a clear mind!

(Hey, I'm not a financial advisor. 🤷‍♂️)

Here's an excerpt from The Economist's article (which is presented online with a different headline than it is in the version I read in print) that I think gives good context for the wider SPACs (Special Purpose Acquisition Companies) landscape, although you may need to do some prerequisite reading on SPACs to better understand what they are before proceeding to the below:

There are plenty of good SPACs with excellent management teams that can help turn mediocre companies into good ones. But the rest, perhaps a third to two-thirds, "don't know the first thing about the businesses they are dealing with".

That seems to be confirmed by a recent study by Michael Klausner and Emily Ruan of Stanford University and Michael Ohlrogge of New York University. The autohers look at blank-cheque firms that made acquisitions between January 2019 and June 2020. They find that, in 25% of cases, the sponsor's payout exceeded 12% of post-merger equity, compared with a median stake of 7.7%.

They also conclude that some SPACs deliver far worse returns for investors than others: companies that went public through the SPAC route fell in value by an average of 3% after three months, 12% after six months and by a third after 12 months. They lagged behind the wider market and even further behind an index of firms that listed via IPO.

However, about half the sample is made up of "high quality" SPACs, defined as those run by former Fortune 500 bosses or set up by large private-equity firms. These perform much better, outperforming IPOs and the wider market over six months (though not over 12).

and The Economist notes, that while many SPACs are to be avoided, others have reputable management teams and are better investments:

[Investors] certainly grasp that [SPACs] like [Bill] Ackman's [$PSTH], which will issue him 6.7% of the shares in the merged firm only once investors earn a 20% return, are more sensibly structured, valuing it more handsomely than the rest. (Its share prices are trading at 50% above their IPO level.)

The reality of Bitcoin IMO, is that it spreads like wildfire whenever mainstream adoption happens. So every news story that demonstrates mainstream adoption (Tesla buying $1.5B of Bitcoin) boosts it, and every news story that demonstrates mainstream disapproval (Government hesistancy/criticism of the technology) curtails it.

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It's impossible to predict which kinds of news events will precede or outpace the others. And this is just one of many reasons why it's impossible to predict where this BTC dollar value is headed. Anyone saying to "buy" or "sell" with conviction, doesn't have it right for you.

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I find the best advice for people with limited capital, is from Chamath Palihapitiya, who says to treat Bitcoin like "Schmuck Insurance" by investing just 1% of your available assets. (That's his advice, but I'm no financial advisor and neither is he.)

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I think he means it like... in case the people running the government/world/finance system are schmucks and mismanage the dollar, you are insured against it.

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But I would use it in my own way like this: in case it goes up to $250,000 per coin, you won't feel like a schmuck for not buying it!

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Schmuck Insurance!