Most of you are probably acquainted with the name Chamath Palihapitiya, although I seriously doubt any of us could spell it correctly without at least a few tries. He is the billionaire financier who is considered the King of SPAC. SPACs, of course, have become the laughingstock or the financial universe, because they were obviously just a scammy way for undeserving companies to come to the public markets without the scrutiny of a normal initial public offering.
In the space of a couple of years, Mr. Palihapitiya has moved “from hero to zero” as the entire fleet of investment vehicles he was touting have come crashing to Earth. One will not be surprised to know that the chap managed to cash out of some of these items, here and there, since, I suppose, he wanted to give other people the chance to make big profits as well.
I bring this up because of this item, in which Chamath basically cries “Uncle” and shutters a couple of funds. I’ll let his ostensible reasons for doing so speak for themselves.
So hold on a moment here – – it’s true that he’s closing down those funds After all, he wouldn’t want an “inferior asset” now, would he? But he specifically cites his PRIDE and the companies that he did “help” to bring public. He mentions five specific ones, which I assume have produced amazing returns for his investors. Let’s take a look at this pride-inducing quintet, shall we?
Gosh, maybe my eyes are deceiving me, but these look like dogshit. What’s he proud of, exactly? These are all train wrecks, some of them with losses in excess of 90%.
Well, we can’t entirely blame the guy. He DID warn us in his own Twitter feed a full 19 months ago:
