Tesla Fondo Hedge

Oggi Recce’d pubblica sette nuovi Post. Il lancio della nuova impostazione di questo Blog (a temi, e con un nuovo layout) è stato rinviato al secondo trimestre 2021 in ragione della rapidissima evoluzione della situazione dei mercati finanziari nel mese di gennaio. Per noi di Recce’d, sono sempre i mercati a dettare i tempi. In aggiunta, oggi le occasioni per gli investitori sono le più grandi di una generazione. e noi di certo non vogliamo perderle di vista.

Tra le nostre (a volte grandissime) fatiche quotidiane, troviamo anche momenti di divertimento. In alcune, rare, occasioni, c’è proprio da ridere. Ne abbiamo scritto anche in un altro Post di oggi.

Questa settimana, il divertimento ce lo ha garantito il Bitcoin: ci diverte vedere quanta gente c’è in giro che paga 50.000 dollari USA per avere un Bitcoin.

Nella nostra lunga esperienza, non avevamo ancora visto nulla di paragonabile: individui razioniali che pagano 50000 dollari (una bella somma) per disporre di una unità di una cosa che non hanno neppure capito, esattamente, che cosa è e che cosa può fare.

E pagano soltanto perché “lo fanno anche gli altri”.

Tornano alla amente episodi del passato, da Tiscali ad Enron a (più di recente, nel 2020) Wirecard.

Wirecard, uno dei titoli dell’austero indice tedesco DAX 40. (Si sa, che i tedeschi fanno le cose bene).

Wiurecard era scambiata a 105 euro il 10 settembre 2018: ma Wirecard non valeva nulla, proprio esattamente zero, erano soltanto numeri su un pezzo di carta. Wirecard non è mai esistita, se non per l’indice DAX 40. Nella vita reale, Wirecard non esisteva: esisteva unicamente sullo schermo dello smartphone su cui passano (troppe) ore i “guerrieri da tastiera” di Robinhood, e-Toro, e altre piattaforme online e dintorni.

La vita reale vince sempre: nel 100% dei casi. Arriva sempre il “momento Bitcoin” del quale noi scrivemmo già nel 2018, tre anni fa.

Per questa ragione, anche noi di Recce’d vinciamo sempre, come dicono i nostri risultati.

Per chi avesse la memoria cortissima, qui vi ricordiamo che il Bitcoin ad inizio settimana (8 febbraio 2021) era il tema unico di ogni commento sui mercato finanziari: “Musk ha acquistato Bitcoin”. Entusiasmo alle stelle e grafici che salgono, e salgono, e salgono in alto verso la luna.

Ne scriveva anche il New York Times, nel modo che noi adesso vi facciamo leggere.

By Ephrat Livni and Jason Karaian

• Feb. 9, 2021

Cryptocurrency prices are soaring after Tesla said that it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin with company funds. The electric carmaker wasn’t the first company to shift corporate cash into cryptocurrencies, but it was one of the biggest. It could make finance chiefs elsewhere consider whether they should follow suit, the DealBook newsletter reports.

Tesla’s move is an “exclamation point” for institutional acceptance of Bitcoin, said Matthew Graham, the chief executive of the Beijing-based blockchain investment firm Sino Global Capital. “It’s clear that Bitcoin is ready for Main Street.”

Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, is known for bucking convention, so his company’s purchase is not as surprising as it would be at, say, Ford or General Motors.

Tesla had more than $19 billion in cash at the end of 2020, a big enough cushion to make the Bitcoin purchase a relatively small share of its resources. But much of that cash was raised in recent stock sales, and the company only recently reported its second year of positive free cash flow. Because of Bitcoin’s unique characteristics, Tesla will have to record declines in the value of its Bitcoin against its earnings, but cannot book gains.

The software company MicroStrategy now holds Bitcoin worth about a third of its market capitalization, according to a site that tracks corporate holdings. MicroStrategy’s chief, Michael Saylor, held a conference last week that promoted Bitcoin for corporations.

Naresh Aggarwal of the Association of Corporate Treasurers in London is skeptical that many companies will follow Tesla and MicroStrategy and buy Bitcoin at scale. “Gold is probably a more traditional form of alternative investment,” he said, yet few firms outside the financial sector hold it. “If they’re not tempted by gold, then I can’t see them being tempted by Bitcoin,” he added, likening it to “putting money on a horse race.”

Keeping money in liquid, safe investments is particularly important during the pandemic, and many corporate finance chiefs remember being burned in 2008 by higher-yielding alternatives.

Ephrat Livni reports from Washington on the intersection of business and policy for DealBook. Previously, she was a senior reporter at Quartz, covering law and politics, and has practiced law in the public and private sectors.  

Jason Karaian is the editor of DealBook, based in London. He joined The Times in 2020 from Quartz, where he was senior Europe correspondent and later global finance and economics editor.

Poi però, che cosa è successo? Martedì 9 febbraio? Meno entusiasmo. Mercoledì 10 febbraio? Meno ancora. Giovedì 11 febbraio? Beh, forse … magari … le cose si possono vedere anche da una diversa angolazione. Venerdì? pronti, via! Meno 1%, e poi durante la giornata … arriva la Cavalleria Confederata.

Un gestore di portafoglio professionale a voi serve per questo: per non farvi sentire eccitati ogni lunedì, e depressi dopo qualche giorno.

Siamo qui per quello. Ma siamo qui anche per affrontare, in modo professionale, i temi che vengono strillati dalla stampa quotidiana, dalle TV come CNBC, da PLUS del Sole 24 Ore e da Corriere Economia.

Siamo qui per aiutarvi a distinguere, tra cento e cento fake news le poche cose (pochissime) che a voi servono per fare le scelte giuste quando vi chiedete in merito a “che fine faranno i miei soldi”?

E per questo, anche questa settimana come in alcune settimane precedenti, ci occuperemo di Bitcoin. Del quale, ripetiamo anche oggi, abbiamo già detto chiaramente (anche noi insieme ad altri) che NON è un investimento.

Ci occupiamo del Bitcoin come strumento per la gestione della tesoreria di un’azienda: sarà utile infatti ricordare che Elon Musk ha acquistato Bitcoin con i soldi che gli erano stati affidati dagli investitori che credevano di avere investito in Tesla, e nel futuro dell’auto elettrica.

La scelta di Elon Musk, di impiegare in Bitcoin una parte della disponibilità di cassa della sua Azienda, è una scelta che guarda al futuro? E’ una scelta che verrà replicata anche dalle altre Società quotate che fanno parte dell’indice S&P 500? E’ una scelta che farà il bene della Società Tesla, le darà un vantaggio rispetto ad altri costruttori di automobili?

E’ una domanda rilevante, per noi investitori: prima di investire, per noi è decisivo avere capito quali sono le strategie delle Società quotate, poter effettuare una previsione sulle loro capacità di produrre utili oppure perdite. Eventualmente, anche acquistando Bitcoin.

Leggiamo che cosa ne ha scritto il Financial Times.

Richard Waters in San Francisco and Eric Platt in New York FEBRUARY 9 2021

Cryptocurrencies play almost no role in the staid world of corporate treasury, where protecting a company’s financial liquidity and cash reserves are key. Their massive volatility has ruled them out.

That did not stop Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, from putting $1.5bn of his company’s spare cash into bitcoin last month. The company’s shares edged up more than 1 per cent on news of the bet on Monday, while the price of bitcoin staged a strong rally. But to experts in corporate treasury management, the move makes almost no sense.

“Corporations invest their cash in very high quality, short-term fixed income securities, and are willing to accept a relatively low rate of return,” said Jerry Klein, a managing director at Treasury Partners, an investment management firm in New York. “I don’t think there is a case to be made for investing corporate cash in a risky asset like bitcoin, where they could experience significant declines.”

Apart from a handful of listed vehicles that try to give stock market investors a way to speculate on cryptocurrency, only a very few companies have put their spare money into bitcoin. One of the first was the ecommerce site Overstock — though it only had $2m in bitcoin when it last disclosed the figure. The US software company MicroStrategy broke the mould in the middle of last year, making a well-timed move to start shovelling all the spare cash not needed for its operations into bitcoin. A week ago the company said it had spent a total of $1.145bn on bitcoin, and was sitting on a hoard of digital currency currently worth $3.2bn. Michael Saylor, its chief executive, described the investment as a “second strategy” for his company alongside its previous business of selling software, rather than as a treasury decision. The company has also said the investment was designed to raise brand awareness among corporate buyers of information technology and boost its software sales.

For Tesla, with a stock market value of more than $800bn, speculating on bitcoin seems unlikely to rise to the level of a second strategy. But accepting payment for its electric cars in the form of bitcoin could burnish its brand in the cryptocurrency universe. Musk’s vocal support for bitcoin and other digital currencies has already brought him a strong following in the crypto world. Tesla also said it would soon start accepting payment in bitcoin in a limited way, potentially giving it more ways to tap Musk’s crypto fan base. While there may be longer term upside to Musk’s enthusiasm for bitcoin, it brings more immediate risks. One is to the company’s reported profitability. Like MicroStrategy, Tesla said it would treat its crypto holdings as an intangible asset with long-term value, like goodwill. As such, it will have to revalue its bitcoin holding regularly and take any decline in value as a cost against profits. Any increase in value, on the other hand, can’t be fed back into profits, but can only be realised when Tesla sells the holding, in line with US accounting standards.

Tesla’s quarterly profit swings are already heavily influenced by the amounts it makes from selling regulatory credits to other companies, distracting from the performance of its underlying car business. A collapse in bitcoin prices could add to the extraneous earnings moves — though the downside would be limited to $1.5bn, unless the company pumps more of its money into crypto markets. In its filing with securities regulators, Tesla said its board had authorised purchases of gold and other digital assets. Recommended LexTesla Inc Tesla/bitcoin: asset exchange Premium

“It’s unusual, it’s risky and it won’t necessarily provide that hedge that they are looking for,” said Campbell Harvey, a professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “That to me is OK if you are a hedge fund and your clients know that this is exactly what you do, you make speculative bets and sometimes they work and sometimes they do not . . . Tesla is not a hedge fund.” The largest blue-chip companies have become full-time asset managers over the past decade as their cash holdings have swelled, venturing beyond time deposits and money market funds as places to park their cash. However, their purchases have often focused on the more sedate world of Treasuries, corporate bonds and asset-backed securities. Apple, which held almost $200bn in cash and securities in December, invested 48 per cent in corporate debt. Bitcoin prices have swung wildly over the past 12 months.

During the worst of the sell-off in March last year, prices fell as much as 63 per cent from highs hit just weeks earlier. The cryptocurrency has since surged in value and is up tenfold from last year’s lows. On Wednesday it was quoted as high as $47,492. David Yermack, a professor at New York University, said cryptocurrencies were still so new that accounting and tax authorities did not yet have rules on how companies should recognise the investments. He added that Tesla’s investment could prompt guidance on those fronts. “It has got to be at the top of everyone’s minds,” he said. “Many companies have avoided doing this for years because the auditors don’t know how to account for it.”

A large bitcoin investment could also put a dent in Musk’s self-declared intention of building a new style of corporate conglomerate dedicated to tackling climate change. The intensive data-crunching that goes into bitcoin mining — the process by which people involved in the network validate transactions — consumes plenty of energy. Some crypto experts argue that it would be too simplistic for institutions committed to environmental, social and governance issues, or ESG investing, to hold this against the company. Ethan Buchman, a co-founder of the crypto project Cosmos, said Tesla had already faced potentially bigger ethical concerns, given the mining practices involved in extracting the materials used in car batteries. He also claimed that cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, if successful, could lead to more moderate economic growth over the long-term, with big advantages for sustainability

Può essere utile al lettore, a questo punto, che Recce’d chiarisca quale è la nostra posizione sul Bitcoin: il Bitcoin non è un investimento (come è stato scritto anche da altri), ma questo non significa che non abbia un futuro.

Potrà essere, in futuro, un utile strumento di pagamento, a fianco di altri strumenti di pagamento. Una unità di misura, come molte altre, che ha un valore come metro. E che per tanto ha ed avrà un valore che è pari al suo costo di produzione (grafico qui sotto), che oggi dovrebbe essere di dieci centesimi, venti centesimi, forse trenta centesimi sopra il costo dell’energia elettrica? Non lo sappiamo, stiamo solo facendo delle ipotesi. Di certo c’è solo il fatto che nel tempo, il costo di produzione, inevitabilmente tenderà a zero (al netto del costo dell’energia elettrica).

Molto più critico, e negativo, di Recce’d sul Bitcoin è da sempre Nouriel Roubini, che anche questa settimana ha rinnovato la sua posizione critica attraverso il Financial Times, con un articolo che sotto vi riportiamo., in chiusura del Post.

La posizione di Roubini è molto rigida, ma alcune delle cose scritte qui sotto risultano, semplicemente, impossibili da negare.

The writer is a professor of economics at the Stern School of Business, NYU, and host of NourielToday.com

Claims that bitcoin is the new “digital gold” are feeding a new bubble in it and other cryptocurrencies. The last one in 2017-18 saw bitcoin go from $1,000 to $20,000 and then fall back to $3,000 by the end of 2018. Since the fundamental value of bitcoin is zero and would be negative if a proper carbon tax was applied to its massive polluting energy-hogging production, I predict that the current bubble will eventually end in another bust. Referring to bitcoin or other crypto as “currencies” is a misnomer. They are not a unit of account: virtually nothing is priced in them. They are not a scalable means of payment: with bitcoin you can do five transactions per second while the Visa network does 24,000.

Bitcoins are barely used by legitimate companies as payment for goods and services, although Tesla said it planned to start accepting them. Crypto is not a stable store of value: even some crypto conferences refuse to accept them as payment for attendance fees. The volatile price moves can wipe out any profit margin of a merchant within a matter of hours. They aren’t even denominated in a consistent way that allows users to compare relative prices of goods. This reliance on different tokens is effectively a return to barter. The Flintstones had a more sophisticated monetary system based on a benchmark: the cartoon cavemen used shells. Even referring to crypto as assets is a misnomer.

Most assets have a stream of income (stocks, bonds, commercial real estate) or a use (housing) or some other utility (fiat currency provides liquidity and can be used for payments). Gold has no income but it has industrial uses. It also has utility as a store of value and a hedge against inflation, currency debasement and tail risks. Crypto has no income, no utility, no payment or other services. It isn’t even anonymous because the underlying blockchain technology makes it easy to trace payments. It is only a play on a speculative asset bubble, worse than tulip-mania as flowers had and still have utility. Its store of value against tail risks is unproven. And worse: some cryptos, dubbed “shitcoins”, are financial scams in the first place or debased daily by their sponsor.

Bitcoin’s price is highly volatile, and claims of misbehaviour, including pump and dump, spoofing, wash trading and front-running by exchanges, are widespread. Stablecoins claim to be superior. But New York authorities are already investigating whether one, tether, is being used to manipulate the price of bitcoin. Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of the cryptocurrency ethereum, argues that no crypto can be at the same time scalable, safe and decentralised. Traditional financial systems are scalable and safe: if your credit card or bank account is hacked or stolen, you are made whole.

But they are centralised because participants and assets are verified by trusted institutions. Right now, crypto is neither scalable nor safe. If your private key is stolen or lost, the assets are gone for good. It isn’t even decentralised. Oligopolistic miners control most bitcoin mining. Many are out of reach of western law enforcement in places such as China, Russia and Belarus, creating a national security nightmare. About 99 per cent of bitcoin trading occurs on centralised exchanges, which may be hackable. Furthermore, the original programmers retain outsized control over their creations. In some cases they act as police, prosecutors and judges, and reverse transactions that are supposed to be immutable.

Nor is crypto equitable: a small number of “whales” control much of bitcoin’s value. This undermines claims that crypto will decentralise finance, provide banking services to the unbanked, or make the poor rich. Blockchain claims to enable cheap money transfers to refugees, but crypto is much more likely to provide cover for scam artists, conmen, tax evaders, criminals, terrorists and human traffickers. Our world is beset by financial crises, geopolitical risks and very loose monetary policy. There is growing demand for safe haven assets that are a hedge against inflation, currency depreciation and debasement and tail risks. Gold, inflation-indexed bonds, commodities, real estate and even equities are all reasonable candidates. Risky, volatile bitcoin doesn’t belong in the portfolios of serious institutional investors. Many of its retail backers are suckers being manipulated by an army of self-serving insiders and snake oil salesmen. Tesla’s Elon Musk and MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor may be betting the house on bitcoin. That doesn’t mean you should.