Reggie Middleton

Year end 2015, we go from Ponzi scheme to failure to the thing every major global bank desires. The dilemma is, the ingenuity to excel in this space lies in scrappy young startups, not trillion dollar mega banks. Let me prove this to you, step by prior art step.

After forensically analyzing Morgan Stanley's balance sheet (which is very much like the rest of Wall Street's balance sheet) I can draw direct parallels to that of Lehman and Bear Stearns in 2007. It's a party!

Not only is the equity market going to crash (after a dead cat bounce) the property market is about to pass out pain like you won't believe.

Is Deustche Bank the next Lehman is likely the wrong question to be asking. Is Lehman the template for European banking may be more to the point. Take it from the guy that called the Lehman debacle 5 months before the fact.

Death by a thousand cuts now has a venture capital version. Observe as I walk through FinTech startups literally disassemblet the almighty money center bank.

Surprise! Surprise! Five years ago I said the only way Goldman would ever break $200 again was to ratchet up risk. Guess who broke $200 this morning. Better yet, guess how they did it! Every financial rag and business blog should read this BEFORE writing another word about GS blowout earnings!

MMT: Monetizing Muppet Trades. This one made good money!

Exactly as I warned 3 wks ago, Nordic countries are facing pressure. Here's strong evidence of a krone break, havoc to ensue in global banks, how to monetize when skittish brokers pull access & leverage. 

First we discuss whether Goldman Is Giving Real Advice or Muppet Fodder, then we learn how to monetize our position on said Fodder... eh... Advice using just a bitcoin wallet and not Goldman itself.

Now that bitcoin has increased in price around 80% since the peak of doom and gloom, Flat Earth Society, can't see the forest due to tree bark blindness short-sightedness, it's time to bust some more Bitcoin myths and move on to what this stuff can really do.

Bitcoin's competitive environ is already prompting a race towards negative margin, and despite such VCs have dumped nearly $100 million in 3 companies in as many months. Here's what I see coming down the pike...

So, I'm off to the races to raise money for UltraCoin, my uber-disruptive startup, and I come across the resistance of certain parties to take common stock. Now, the standard in the professional VC community is to take preferred stock with a stack of anti-dilutive measures, control premiums and liquidation preferences.

I got into a Twitter debate with Marc Andreesen of Netscape (the inventor of the commercial web browser) and Andreesen Horowitz (the VC fund that financed Facebook, Twitter, Skype & Zynga) fame.

He spit out what was mostly common sense, yet still flew in the face of what is taught in school, most text books and by most B school teachers. Here's how it went down...

1/A few common fallacies about valuation of public and private technology companies:

Google reported Thursday later afternoon and the early morning traders didn't know what to make of the numbers - with the stock gyrating up and down. The following day, CNBC's 2nd annual sitck draft stock picking contest ended. Guess what happened? For the impatient, I can put the video here...

That unpopular short Apple/long Google pair trade's still paying in spades. In addition, an hour and a half of nerd celebrity Bitcoin and crowdfuning equiy in startups.