🕤 How to Make $110 Million at 20 years old

Step 1: Get $25 million from your dad

Aug 20, 2022

Sup, Zaid here. Welcome to “Money Minutes” the weekly newsletter about markets, corporate drama, and bad jokes in under 1,000 words. This newsletter is 948 words and should take you 6.9 minutes to read. Please consider subscribing if you haven’t already. My wife promised me a surprise when I hit 2,000 subscribers 😏 (I’m 300 away)

August is usually pretty chill, BUT NOT THIS WEEK. Adam Neumann got $350 million for his new company. Bed Bath & Beyond mooned and Mark Zuckerberg got cyber bullied.

I am writing this at 4:28am, so please excuse any typos or incoherent sentences.

Now let’s get into it.

Market Vibe Check

Stocks: S&P500 snapped a 4-week winning streak. Stocks don’t always go up. I hate to admit this, but I bought some SPY puts (expiring in late September) easier this week as a hedge (not investment advice, please don’t sue me). It’s worked out so far. September is right around the corner and has historically been a bad month for stocks. And yes, I know that past performance blah blah blah future results. I’m just a dude on the internet speculating on stocks. Always DYOR (do your own research).

Crypto: The rollercoaster is back! BTC touched $25k last weekend and now it’s down to $21k. ETH hit $2k and now back down to $1,600. The big drop came on Friday. I missed this feeling. It boring when crypto only makes 1% intraday moves. I need that 10%+ swings to feel alive. I’m DCA mode right now with crypto.

Word on the Street

😲 Adam Neumann gets $350 million: If you’ve seen WeCrashed, you know how much of a shit show WeWork was when Adam Neumann was running the company. So everyone was SHOCKED when they found out this dude convinced Andreessen Horowitz (one of the biggest VC firms in the world) to write him a $350 million check to build his new company ‘Flow’ which is like “WeWork for Apartments.” People were pissed off when they heard this news. WeWork raised $22 billion and is now only worth $3 billion. Adam got removed from CEO, walked away with $1+ billion, and did some sketchy business stuff. Now Adam gets to do it again. I can’t figure out where Adam falls on the “sketchy vs cool” scale. This mofo walks around NYC barefoot and hot boxes private jets, but might also be the most charming man in the world. I hope Jared Leto is ready for the sequel.

🚀 Bed, Bath (to Infinity) & Beyond: BBBY went from $5 to $30 back down to $10 in a classic meme stock pump and dump. Traders on Reddit’s Wall Street Bets (WSB) started hyping up the stock, hoping to cause another short squeeze on hedge funds. It worked. Then crashed. WSB hero and GameStop Chairman Ryan Cohen sold his entire stake in BBBY for $68.1 million profit, likely leading to the crash.

litquidity @litcapital

Let me get this straight: - Ryan Cohen knows he has a cultish wall street bets following - His stake in Bed, Bath, & Beyond was disclosed - BBBY ripped - Ryan Cohen sells the top and stock drops ~40% - New BBBY bagholders are minted How is this legal? Lol

Retail investor get screwed again. Some dude lost $1.1 million. After the Meme Stock Rally of 2021, I learned my lesson to not YOLO into random stocks anymore. This usually ends bad for retail investors. But some 20yr old kid made $110 million (more on that below).

🍎 “Spend Money Buying Apple Products Day” is September 7th: Apple will announce the iPhone 14 and other products on September 7th. Let’s be honest, regardless of what Apple shows on stage, millions of us (including me), will be buying the iPhone 14. Tim Cook could literally go on stage holding a scratched up piece of glass with the Apple logo on it, and I’m going to buy it. My iPhone 12 has been acting up lately (thanks Tim) so I have to upgrade. I also cracked my Apple Watch (I think it was Apple’s fault) so I need to buy that too. I know it’s stupid. But I’m under Apple’s spell. Tim Cook’s smile and folksy demeanor has got me hypnotized with no control of my wallet Good thing Apple stock is the largest part of my portfolio.

Winners and Losers

✅ WINNER: Super Rich Kid. A 20yr old college kid made $110 million profit in 5 weeks from trading Bed Bath & Beyond stock. Here’s how he did it:

Step 1: Borrow $25 million from “friends and family” (should be easy for anyone)

Step 2: Use that money to buy BBBY in July when it was trading at $5.50

Step 3: Watch the stock go up to $28 (420%+) in 4 short weeks

Step 4: Sell all your shares for a $110 million profit

Step 5: Go back to USC for junior year and throw epic parties

Seems like an easy process. Everyone should be able to replicate this strategy. Anyone want to lend me $25m?

I posted a TikTok about this story and many comments were saying it was insider trading. I don’t think it’s insider trading. More like gambling. Putting that much money on just one stock is just crazy. But I guess it worked out for this kid.

✅ WINNER: Big Ten Football. Speaking of USC, the Big Ten conference signed a 7 year, $7 BILLION media deal with Fox, CBS and NBC. This means the colleges that are in the Big Ten (USC and UCLA joining in 2024) will get $1 Billion a year (split amongst the schools) from these networks for broadcasting their games. I’m not a huge college football fan, probably because my alma mater Texas Longhorns SUCK. But college football is big business and live sports rights continue to become more valuable. The only thing worth watching live nowadays is sports. My TikTok livestreams are pretty fire too.

❌ LOSER: Zuck’s Metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg posted a “selfie from the metaverse” and got ROASTED.

Zuck spent $10 BILLION to create a product that has worse graphics than my Nintendo Wii back in 2007. After getting shit all week, Zuck posted an update on Friday to his Instagram, saying the graphic are being upgraded. The funniest part of this post is him saying the first photo “was taken very quickly”

I’m worried about my Meta stock.