Government shutdowns almost happening are an annual tradition at this point. It might be a big deal after it is shutdown for a decent period of time. Until then dont sweat it. The only people who think they benefit from the shutdown are morons. Shutdown could not happen, could happen and last a few weeks, or end rapidly after the Democrats in general plus the Senate GOP basically ram something through over the objections of the nutjobs who are holding this hostage. ​ Markets are moving down because the Fed rate decision puts us squarely on the path for a recession if this plays out like past lengthy rate pauses at elevated levels. Do I think its going to be a mild or major recession? Who knows. The myriad factors that determine that kind of thing are essentially impossible to predict with certainty. What I am certain of is that the Fed is driving us into a recession and the bond market inversion has been telling them that for some time. When the Fed finally realizes they screwed up they can either drop rates much sooner than they are suggesting now which will stop the recession from getting bad or they can stay the course and we will get another major recession of the GFC level. The best way I can explain this is the Fed is driving a car to a family holiday meal at grandmas by solely looking back behind them arguing with the teenager in the back while driving forward on a foggy day. They know the landmarks on this stretch of road but they have bad eyesight and crappy glasses. The bond market in the front passenger seat knows the landmarks as well, is lookin ahead and is screaming at the fed that they are about to run into the ditch. The stock market is the annoying kid in the backseat who is looking forward to the dessert after the family meal and is ignoring the impending disaster. That kid is arguing with the driver which isnt helping matters. The annoying kid just looked up and said something about we're going to be late for dinner. Any moment now the driver will either face forward and correct or we will be in the ditch (the bad recession). If they violently overcorrect we will rapidly go into the other ditch (massive inflation).

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In high school, Nick Wheeler dreamed of becoming a Green Beret. He achieved that during a decade-long Army stint, eventually leading a 12-man special forces team deployed in Eastern Europe. After serving, Wheeler applied to a few MBA programs. The day after his interview at Harvard Business School, he met with a fellow Green Beret enrolled there and asked about his plans. When the veteran said he’d like to start a “search fund,” raising money to find, acquire and then run a small business, Wheeler was baffled. “What the hell is that?” he recalls asking. “It sounded like a ridiculous concept.” Wheeler earned his MBA in May 2022 and has spent the past year reaching out to more than 5,000 firms in a quest to find what he calls the “golden seller”—that perfect company that would benefit from the leadership skills he honed in the military and the business chops he developed at HBS. He’s come close, twice, but both deals fell through. He’s undeterred, saying he thrives in uncertain terrain. “Most people don’t,” he says. Wheeler’s path is becoming a more common one for business school graduates. Called entrepreneurship through acquisition, or ETA, it differs from the better-known, venture-backed startup model because it entails buying an existing company, not starting one from scratch, with the potential for more autonomy and ownership. ETA began at Harvard in 1984, when entrepreneur-turned-professor Irv Grousbeck helped some students develop an investment vehicle that enabled the aspiring entrepreneurs to buy and manage a company. Grousbeck soon moved to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and took the search fund concept there. That’s where it stayed for years, limited primarily to a handful of Harvard and Stanford MBAs. But a surge in interest and investment more recently has propelled ETA to a much higher profile. That’s partly because interest in entrepreneurship picks up when job prospects dim for MBAs, as they have in 2023. Hiring has slowed in the consulting, finance and technology sectors that traditionally recruit most MBAs, and those who are getting hired are specialists in hot areas such as machine learning or data analytics, rather than generalist degree holders. “When the job market gets tougher, this attracts more people,” says HBS professor Royce Yudkoff, who, along with his colleague Richard Ruback, has been teaching ETA courses for a dozen years. But that isn’t the primary driver, says Stanford GSB lecturer Peter Kelly, who edits a search fund primer that MBAs refer to as the “bible.” Growing ranks of successful ETA entrepreneurs have spread the gospel, Kelly says, and schools are responding. “Our alumni have been screaming about ETA for the better part of a decade,” says Xavier Stewart, senior associate director at the Wharton School’s Venture Lab, an entrepreneurial center for students. “They said the school needs to focus on this.” Wharton has two ETA classes for MBAs and another for undergrads and awards $50,000 fellowships to as many as four students each year to help them conduct a search right after graduation. MBA programs at Yale, the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, among others, have widened their ETA curricula. On campuses across the country, there are ETA clubs, conferences and informal meet-and-greets, where budding entrepreneurs can chat with alumni who’ve gone down the path already. Most search veterans have good things to say: Nearly 3 out of 4 searchers who did an acquisition made a profit, and the annual tally of exits—when the company acquired is eventually sold—that generated a positive return has hit a record high, according to data from Stanford. The stats could make this sound a bit too easy—there’s a lot of work that goes into it, and plenty of risk, the various faculty members caution. First, one must decide what type of search to conduct and the kind of business to target. ETA typically happens one of two ways: It’s self-funded or done through what’s called a “core” search fund. The latter requires raising money from investors in two stages. The initial capital (generally about $425,000 per person) pays for all search-related expenses, like travel and administrative costs, plus the searcher’s salary. The much larger second tranche funds the actual acquisition, typically within two years. As for targets, some searchers drill down on an industry or region, while others have a scattershot approach. Self-funders, including Wheeler, have more freedom to choose what to acquire and can wind up with a higher share of equity ownership, but they usually end up buying a smaller company, because their acquisition budgets—often from Small Business Administration-backed loans—aren’t as big. Working through a search fund provides the entrepreneur with advice, support staff and networking opportunities. “Our job is not just to write checks but to be very involved,” says Lacey Wismer, founder of Hunter Search Capital, who’s worked with more than 100 searchers since 2010. “Every entrepreneur needs a different level of support.” Historically, most searchers are White men—“there’s not a lot of female representation in ETA,” says Angela Romero, who won a Wharton fellowship and is looking for a hotel management company to buy. But women, Black and Hispanic searchers are all gaining ground. I can't paste the last paragraph (Failure is part of the process) due to the paywall. don't sue me Mini Mike.

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Tesla is creating a monopoly on energy production, vehicle autonomy and the world's safest vehicles. Tesla threatens every single gas station in the world. Their own path downward would be self sabotage and that's not going to happen as long as Elon Musk is at the helm. As for me I like the Stock and I will Hodl

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ASML are begging China to open a new China office to produce the EUV and DUV machines. It’s predictable the China will make 3mn chips within 10yrs and that’s game over for the chip wars for the west and Taiwan. Tbh…. Why encourage China on the path of self sufficiency when we could of just let China buy fast chips at bulk forever. We’re guarantee the destruction of our own chip industry by making biggest customer go it alone. TW will eventually invade China as people look for better jobs and etc.

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so what am i to take away from this then because its the SEC saying it so am i suppose to go, well microbadger on reddit says 5 years is a long time so obviously there is a conspiracy between citadel and the sec? or do you think its more reasonable to believe the SEC over microbadgers musings on reddit? legit question, which path should the reasonable man follow, mr. badger?

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Money is stupid. More money more problems. You are headed down the enlightened path.

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pretty much yea. to recover yesterdays losses alone you have to break through 5 medium and 1 giga strong resistance. to drop down another 2% u only have to break 1 support. path of least resistance is down by a long long shot

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Yeah at some point when he started his other company, he didn't need the money anymore. He could've just said the market changed and his strategy no longer worked, claim he lost 30% and then pay everyone with his savings. Everyone would understand and leave him alone (it was a small group of investors only). It certainly stopped being about the money and more about his ego. A proof of that is that he didn't even bother to buy treasuries with all that cash. It's sad that he didn't realize that this was a path where he would be stressed out all the time and never really live in peace. Most people don't take long to realize that the more you deceive, the worse you feel. He had all the opportunities to end that for good, enjoy his family and live a happy life with lots of cash. Yet, he gave all that up just to be the guy who "never seen red", despite confessing that this was hurting him (until he couldn't take it anymore, so he told his sons). It's crazy how unwise he was despite all his intelligence.

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Look man. You can keep believing every negative news story you hear about Elon’s companies or you can just use logic. The FDA is not going to move neuralink to human trials if all those news stories were true. Point blank. If every single monkey died and they still approved it then that would be the biggest scandal of the century and this government is hostile to Elon. Biden chose early on in his administration to try and ratfuck Elon at every turn to try and help the old gas car companies. That’s what started all of this. I’m old enough to remember like 2 weeks ago when the left loved Elon. It all changed and every news story changes over night once the gas car companies realized they were on a path to bankruptcy because they waited to long to compete with Tesla. As soon as that happened it made Elon mad and he started saying bad shit about democrats and the war has been going ever since. It’s fucking plain as day easy to see if you stop listening to the god damn news who always have a vested interest in making you mad so you click or watch more.

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They’re fairly well positioned as far as clean energy plays go, but I think there’s far too much risk here for it to be worth an investment. The cash burn is insane and they don’t intend to even turn adjusted EBITDA positive until Q4 2024. Who knows when, if ever, they reach full GAAP profitable. In the mean time there’s significantly more dilution on the horizon. Also, gross margin is only at 1%. Even grocery stores operate at larger markups. Tesla’s superchargers, for comparison, sit somewhere around a 30% gross margin. Until chargepoint can show a viable path towards solving these issues I think it’ll just keep falling.

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