Skip to main content

Trump Media why it doesn't matter

 Trump Media is not a case of fraud it is incompetence and hubris with a gullible investing public.  These are hardly uncommon in the investment world.   The Chinese EV company is a fraud, the intent is to defraud American investors with the complicity of the Chinese state.  The intent is there from the very start, why American firms participate in these frauds is simple they get paid handsomely.  The brokers that did the Chinese EV deal got massive fees.

Trump Media is not that at all, are the managers overpaid and incompetent, yes! Is Trump suing the guys who created the platform because he wants more,Yes.  Trump wants the management team he has running the show because they are allies and supporters and for Trump, these are determinant factors.  He will always hire sycophant over competence.  It is in his DNA.

When looking at the 10-Q there is a lot of stuff that makes perfect sense, the reality is that the imbedded option where the company took a $224 million hit was baked in the cake and has no cash flow implications.   The company spent nearly $100 million dollar on new media initiatives that no one has heard about.   What these are is unclear, a new FOX News (Trump always wanted his own media platform).   Maybe a new cable company that only delivers Trump-branded programming.   Is the $100 million justified, I don't know but in one quarter of the year, Trump Media has burned 25% of its entire cash reserves.  That is significant but again not fraud, will these investments be worthwhile?  Who knows maybe the money was misspent on vanity projects but stupidity and fraud are two very different things.

No single investor will lose everything, and at the very least Trump was at one point trying to create something.  Part of the problem is that he is not good at it, and because he is surrounding himself by people who admire him rather than are competent the outcome is somewhat predictable.   Mediocre managers hardly ever produce outstanding outcomes.   

As for the performance in Q1/2024, I would have thought that the revenue stream would have come with a disclaimer that more than 50% of all revenues in the firm came from "Trump-centric products".  From what I was able to find out more than 60% of their revenues were generated by Trump's businesses.  It's like the ITV counting as revenue ads for ITV programming.   OK maybe for a very small percentage but certainly for the majority.   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b)...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spray painting Taylor Swift G650 aircraft (updated)

 First, a bit of paint will not harm anyone.  These climate activities are going to learn two things in the next few days:  (1) Trespassing at an airport is a felony almost anywhere in the world.  That means criminal prosecution.   (2) removing paint from an aircraft is expensive.   So these climate activists are about to find out the reach of the British criminal system and it will not be pleasant, the UK has very strict laws about that, I would be surprised if cleaning the aircraft of all the paint will cost less than $100,000.     I am sure that when they planned (premeditation) this little show they had a very valid logic to doing this.  Tonight, they are probably realizing the depth of their troubles.   I understand that in the UK it's a minimum one-year jail sentence.    Also, good luck travelling with a criminal trespass charge against you.  I am relatively certain that the airline industry will ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Janet Yellen from China supporter to Hawk...

There is rarely serious news in the world these days, it seems that most newspapers are filled with headlines and little else, and then Ms Yellen went to China.  Secretary Yellen has long been known in the Biden administration as the voice of moderation when dealing with China, yet as her trip which concluded yesterday a hawk was born:  She warned the Chinese against dumping goods in the United States.    fighting words! The American administration is very concerned about the lack of Chinese domestic consumption.   Even before the COVID-19 epidemic, there were already the beginning signs of a slowdown, automobile sales were off.   China is facing domestic deflation (a clear sign of collapsing demand) China imports few consumer goods, they import raw materials and intermediary goods.   It seems that the American administration is concerned that the Chinese administration will dump consumer goods abroad to keep its manufacturing machinery ...
Post a Comment
Read more