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An Interesting Lyft/Uber Anecdote Plus News Stories I Found Interesting
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One of my oldest friends works for JP Morgan and recently shared a story with me regarding the Lyft and Uber IPOs. When Lyft started trading, many Uber employees and investors actually shorted Lyft as a hedge against their own stock in Uber. Why? Well, even with the upcoming Uber IPO, many of them would not be able to sell their shares for a long time due to a lockup period. In order to "lock in" the value of their stock, shorting their nearly identical competitor was about as good as they could do. Ironically, when Uber started trading many Lyft employees and investors did the exact same thing for the exact same reason.

I find this to be a fascinating case of price discovery in the market. Just swap Lyft employees/investors for Uber employees/investors and you have a case of organic selling vs organic buying (the market).

Some news stories from this week I've found interesting:

Russia Pulls Most of Its Troops From Venezuela
Why? Venezuela stopped paying them and providing services.

Russia Refuses to Sell S-400 to Iran
I find this to be very curious. Every news outlet seems to have its own spin on the story but we need to think through a decision tree here. What probability does Russia assign to a U.S. strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in the next ~year? I'd guess 50%. If so, would the sale and deployment of the S-400 to Iran actually stop an American attack? Unlikely though it would undoubtedly change the plan of attack. One could assume the meta that Russia wants to see the U.S. attack Iran and get bogged down in a costly war. However to do so would mean that the Russians genuinely believe that the deployment of a S-400 (or multiple installations thereof) would be the deciding factor for whether or not the American's thought an attack was viable. The Russians, while self-confident, are professionals and are unlikely to place so much faith in one of their systems. So, IMO, the meta of Russia trying to bait the U.S. into a war with Iran by not arming Iran is non-viable. On the other hand, if Russia were to sell S-400s to Iran it would undoubtedly make an American attack more difficult. Yet Russia refused to sell an S-400 to Iran. As far as I can see, this is Russia telling Iran "we really don't care about you that much."

Russia Has (Maybe) Restarted Low-Yield Nuclear Tests
Interesting that Russia would bother testing its own warheads. Generally speaking, once you have a well-designed warhead there's a hell of a lot more that can go wrong/degrade with the delivery system. The low-yield tests wouldn't really teach the Russians anything they already didn't already know from a physics standpoint. As an aside, these tests would explain the iodine 131 that was detected in Northern Europe back in 2017 and the subsequent deployment by the U.S. of a WC-135 Constant Phoenix.

China is Probably Looking at its Second Bank Failure in a Week
It's never a good sign when your auditors resign.

Turns out Deutsche Bank and UBS Talked About a Merger
aaanndd UBS passed. Just like Commerzbank. Shocker.
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