David Alterman

Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups

[Z @ZeeContrarian1]

𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗠𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝗠𝘆 𝗘𝗱𝗴𝗲?

Most investors spend 95% of their time analyzing numbers.

Revenue growth.
Margins.
Guidance.
Valuation.

The problem is that everyone can see the same numbers.

Twenty years ago, investors like Warren Buffett could build an edge by reading financial statements better than almost everyone else.

Information moved slowly. Data was expensive. Analysis was limited.

Ten years ago, investors like Bill Ackman were still generating outsized returns through deep fundamental research, activism, and understanding businesses better than the market.

Today, every filing is instantly available to everyone.

Hedge funds, analysts, retail investors, and now AI systems can process the same information within minutes.

The market evolved.
Information evolved.
AI evolved.

Investors who didn’t evolve underperformed.

Even Bill Ackman’s most famous trade wasn’t finding a hidden line item in a balance sheet. It was recognizing a risk the market was largely ignoring and buying protection before COVID.

The edge moved.

I haven’t used Excel or a calculator in over 10 years.

Yet during that time I have outperformed the market by thousands of percentage points.

Not because numbers don’t matter.

But because numbers alone rarely provide an edge anymore.

If you’re only chasing valuations, you’re chasing information everybody already knows.

You can scroll through X all day and see endless posts saying:

“Bitcoin is so cheap.”

“PayPal is so cheap.”

And my personal favorite:

“This is the cheapest valuation in the company’s history.”

I probably see 10 posts like that every day.

So what?

Everybody can see the same valuation metrics.

Everybody knows the stock is trading at 8x earnings, 1x sales, or whatever ratio is being promoted that day.

If the opportunity is obvious to everyone, why would that be an edge?

In fact, some of the cheapest stocks get even cheaper.

The question isn’t whether something looks cheap.

The question is: what does the market believe that makes it cheap, and what is the market getting wrong?

One of my favorite edges is understanding the actions of the people who know a business best.

Not blindly following them.

Understanding why they’re doing what they’re doing.

In my latest three recommendations, $STAA, $WGS, and $IMDX, the numbers weren’t particularly attractive. Analysts were negative, and the last quarters weren’t great.

Yet within a few months, all three were up between 50% and 100%.

Almost nobody was talking about them.

You couldn’t scroll through X and find endless threads about how cheap they were.

At the same time, some of the people who knew these businesses best were buying aggressively.

That’s where I started paying attention.

Not because someone bought.

Because I wanted to understand why they bought.

There are entire funds and ETFs built around insider buying.

They scan thousands of companies, track insider transactions, apply statistical models, and buy based on those signals.

And they’re not wrong.

But that’s still only one piece of the puzzle.

Insider buying is not the thesis.

It’s one facet of the diamond.

It’s a clue.

The real work starts after you see the purchase, not before.

Who is buying?

How much are they buying?

What do they know?

What are their incentives?

Why are they acting now instead of six months ago?

Those are the questions that matter.

If you read the hedge fund letters on $STAA, you understood the thesis.

If you listened to the conference calls on $WGS and paid attention after insiders committed roughly $100 million of their own capital, you understood where the opportunity was.

Same thing with $IMDX.

The market is very good at pricing today’s numbers.

It’s much less efficient at pricing human behavior, incentives, and conviction.

[Josh Young @JoshYoung]

Druckenmiller: "contrarianism as a concept is overrated ... the crowd is right 80% of the time"

[David Alterman @davterman]

@goddamright_X מה חיובי בהודעה?

[David Alterman @davterman]

@Itay_Ven האם מי שקונה לא רואה את זה?

[David Alterman @davterman]

@value_invest12 So don't express it.

[litquidity @litcapital]

Hedge fund dudes will have setups like these just to underperform the S&P by double digits

[David Alterman @davterman]

@StealthQE4 This is 100% fake. Stop posting fake videos!!!

[David Alterman @davterman]

@StealthQE4 It's fake. Stick to doing what you know.

[Joeri @joeriwestland]

Very good news for $ZIM that HLAG is willing to pay even more (to Employees) to get their vote. Major roadblock now gone, only the political one remaining. I don't understand why its not trading closer to the $35 bid, esp after this news. Only up 1.5% premarket.

[David Alterman @davterman]

@Roie_cohen מה זה מימושים?

[David Alterman @davterman]

@Roie_cohen בדקתי, לא מוצא מניה xxxx

[Z @ZeeContrarian1]

Just out from Israel’s largest business newspaper: $ZIM received a buyout offer for $2.4B - about $20 per share.

$ZIM has $25 in cash per share, zero debt, and another roughly $10 in assets that management has tucked away using various semi-clever valuation tricks.

So yes - this price is a joke.
It’s nothing more than an initial anchor.

There is zero chance the deal closes anywhere near $20.

[David Alterman @davterman]

@dan_zafrir אם היה אולי זה היה מצדיק את השווי 🙊

[David Alterman @davterman]

@thecasualultra @grok why were they kneeling?

[Naval @naval]

The end state of all vehicles is autonomous. The end state of all military hardware is drones.

[David Alterman @davterman]

@epsilontal @ProTrader7777 כולה חזר יומיים אחורה משיא כל הזמנים.

[David Alterman @davterman]

@TASE_insights Dengi ili Pulya

[Charlie Bilello @charliebilello]

% Off 52-Week High
Gold: -3%
S&P: -5%
Apple: -9%
Amazon: -14%
Microsoft: -16%
Google: -19%
Nvidia: -22%
Bitcoin: -24%
Palantir: -33%
Coinbase: -41%
Tesla: -43%
Ethereum: -46%
MicroStrategy: -56%
Dogecoin: -59%
Trump Media: -70%
Trump Coin: -83%
Fartcoin: -89%
Melania Coin: -94%

[David Alterman @davterman]

@Noa__Legacy נשמע כמו המלצה

[David Alterman @davterman]

@theepicmap Kamuta Hiravata