Wednesday, January 2, 2019

DAVID EINHORN


DAVID EINHORN

The billionaire had a bad year, down 34% in 2018.


He hasn’t done well in the last several years, as it turns out, and the article doesn’t delve into the “asymmetry of numbers” issue that becomes very important when you have large losses. An example—when you lose 34%, you have to make 50% to get back to even.

One of the measures of a good money manager is how they perform in down markets as that performance defines the long term.

Note that Einhorn recently became a critic of Tesla, “…comparing the electric car maker to his famous call on Lehman Brothers.” Must have been reading my blog from a few years ago?

A/N: I was first disgusted with the Tesla phenomenon (aka, begging at the government trough) in 2013 or 2014, and first wrote about it here in 2017. Then, the stock was in the upper $300’s and market cap an astounding $60 billion. Today, it is down 8% as they missed their delivery targets, and market cap is about $57 billion.

If you go back and read old blog posts on the subject, it seems that Elon Musk has received $176 billion in subsidies for the wind power business. Couple that with the electric car fraud, and we may be comparing him to some of the most prominent and damaging shysters in the history of the US.

David Einhorn was heralded as a genius. That star has been tarnished. I’m predicting the same for Musk.

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