Political Theater of the Absurd – Ep. 459

Recorded April 10, 2019

VISIT PETER AT THE LAS VEGAS MONEY SHOW  May 13 – 15, 2019

Lyft Sinking

I began yesterday’s podcast by pointing out the weakness in shares of the recent IPO of Lyft.  In fact, I mentioned that Friday’s close above the IPO price (the first time it closed above that price since the day of the IPO) the fact that it couldn’t hold on to that rally, I thought that meant the stock looked even weaker, technically. And we got a big follow through today.  Lyft sank about 11%, it closed near the lows of the day, 60.12.  In fact, we did trade as low as 59.75 on the closing minutes of trading.  We’re now down about 32% from the opening print, after it went IPO on that day.  We’re 17-18% below the IPO price.  If you happen to get the IPO price and you still have the stock, you’re almost in a bear market from that purchase price.

Catalyst: Uber News

The catalyst today was the news that it looks like the Uber IPO is going to happen sooner than everybody thought. Maybe they will be filing as early as this week, and the IPO is going to be bigger than people initially thought, as far as how much stock they’re looking to unload on investors.  Although, they’re taking the valuation down from maybe $90 to $100 billion.  I think initially they were talking $110-120 billion, and they’re going to look to unload about 10% of the company – $10 billion. Now, you would think, “Wait a minute, if Lyft is doing so poorly, what is the rush to bring Uber to the market?  Doesn’t it seem like a bad time?”  But if you think about it, I think what Wall Street is worried about, is if they wait even longer, the price of Lyft will sink even further.  So it’s a mad dash to get this thing out there before it really hits the fan, because this is showtime for all of these unicorns.