Let’s look at some of the silly, idiosyncratic events that happen when investors lose their minds:
• Companies doubled their market caps by adding blockchain to their name or issuing a cryptocurrency.
• An 18-year-old launched a hedge fund from his bedroom in suburban New Jersey.
• Equities ran 300+% off the lows while the GDP tracked the Great Depression, compounding at 2% per year.
• Value investing strategies have performed in the bottom 1 percentile since 1990.
• The S&P ran 14 months in a row without a monthly loss.ref 76
• Boeing rose 250% in two years.
• Blue Apron IPOed at $10 a little over a year ago; it’s now at $1.23 and nobody has been indicted.
• Tilray, a cannabis company reporting $28 million in sales, doubled in value in three trading days and rose tenfold in 2 months to a market cap of $20 billion before cutting in half. As Scott McNealy would say, “What were they smoking?”
• Solid Biosciences has no revenues and disclosed that one of its clinical trials was put on hold before its IPO in January.ref 78 The company sported a $1 billion market cap.
• Domino’s Pizza added 35% to a 20-fold, 10-year run aided by a debt-funded buyback program.ref 79
• Yulong Eco-Materials, a tiny Chinese manufacturer of eco-friendly building products, rallied 950% in one day after the company acquired a gemstone for $50 million. The company claims the 17.9 kilogram Millennium Sapphire is worth up to $500 million, although the price suggests it’s worth . . . $50 million.
• World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) tripled in the first 9 months of 2018, sporting a trailing P/E of >150
• 60% of corporate debt issued by companies in the Russell 2000 is rated as “junk.
• GM pays its investors a dividend yield of 4.1% with a negative cash flow.
• Uber has never turned a profit, but it’s about to go public at $120 billion.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/cm-us-standard/documents/2018-Year-In-Review-PeakProsperity-Final.pdf