Achalugo

VC ● Finance ● Tech ● Diary ● I don't need your permission to win.

[Achalugo @norasparklez]

Do not be angry that you are not where you want to be, Be angry that you are not doing anything to get to where you want to be. https://t.co/yf0eGTRkBG

[Khalid' Ozavogu Abdul @OzavoguAbdul]

Quote this tweet with a "Note To Yourself"

[Bremen @Rxbremen]

CBN new rule and implications as regards HOLDCO.

This is very very interesting.

For bank investors please read this.

https://t.co/fUaXbKZg1L

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

In awe of SpaceX and its story - past, present and the future. You can think about it in 10+ different ways and continue re-blowing your mind in circles. Huge congrats to the team! 🚀

[Shruti @heyshrutimishra]

Elon just created 4,400 millionaires in a single day.

400 of them are now worth over $100 million.

These aren't VCs. They're SpaceX employees, and the list includes welders, technicians, and cafeteria staff, because for two decades the company paid every level of the workforce in stock instead of higher salaries.

Juan Hernandez immigrated from Mexico and took a $28 an hour contractor welding job in 2015. He says he didn't even know what SpaceX was. The company gave him a $10,000 equity grant and let him buy more shares through payroll deductions. That stake is now worth $880,000.

Trevor Hise's parents wanted him to take a stable job at General Electric. He picked SpaceX instead, stayed 12 years, and accumulated over 100,000 shares. At the $135 listing price that's $13.5 million. He's 37 and semiretired. His words: "The magnitude of this has been ridiculous."

The most telling detail came before the listing. Over 100 employees quietly banded together and negotiated a group wealth management deal covering up to $5 billion, because none of them had ever needed a wealth manager before.

Software IPOs have minted millionaires for 30 years. This is the first one where the money went to the factory floor.

[Morgan Stanley @MorganStanley]

Today, @SpaceX (Nasdaq: SPCX) makes its public market debut with a $75Bn offering (pre-greenshoe) at $135 per share, marking the largest IPO in history.

Congratulations to the SpaceX team. We are honored to serve as joint lead bookrunner and sole stabilization agent.

[young king @emaedi0ng]

Unfortunately, the stench of mediocrity will never go away. Gone are the days when the top guys were the top guys. Gone are the days when young people were inspired by exemplary excellence.

Now, clowns are the icons. Comedians and fraudsters are the SI unit of the youth.

[Achalugo @norasparklez]

One of the best takes!

[Ole Lehmann @itsolelehmann]

this is just the most ridiculous AI application i've ever seen lol

a Peter Thiel-backed startup that makes AI collars for cows is now worth $2 billion

and the more I read about it the cooler it gets. here's how it works:

every cow wears a solar-powered collar that talks to a network of radio towers and an app on the farmer's phone

instead of building physical fences, the farmer draws the fence on a map in the app, and the collar keeps each cow inside that invisible line using GPS

when a cow drifts toward the edge, the collar plays a sound to steer her, and a gentle vibration tells her which way to go.

it's like how a car beeps as you back up toward a wall

the cows learn the cues in a few days

so now a rancher can move an entire herd to fresh grass by sliding the fence on a map, without driving out to open a single gate

and that same collar is reading each cow's body the whole time.

it takes five readings per second on every animal, so the AI can catch a cow that's sick, injured, ready to breed, or about to give birth before a person would ever notice walking the field

so it's basically like WHOOP for cows too lol

and they gave the AI behind it the perfect name: the Cowgorithm

it's been trained on more than 7 billion hours of real cow behavior, which is why Halter calls the data its real asset and moat.

they know what a normal cow looks like better than anyone, so they can flag the odd one out instantly

it's already on more than 1M cattle across New Zealand, Australia, and a bunch of US states.

California even used it on public land to graze cattle in patterns that clear dry brush and slow down wildfires

costs about $5 to $8 per cow per month

a job that used to mean barbed wire, gates, and driving the fields all day is now mostly 1 person on their phone

[DINQ @dinq_me]

Xi Yin just left Harvard for OpenAI.

String theorist. Youngest full professor in Harvard history.

His words: "AI gives me 100x speedup. Weeks of output would take me 10 years."

Then: "I don't believe there's any human intellectual ability AI cannot replicate."

The man who said that is the one who would know.

#DINQ #AI #OpenAI

[Michael @OladejiTosin15]

Associate Director.

Grateful for the journey, the lessons, and the people who made it possible. Excited for the road ahead.

#MakingAnImpactThatMatters

[Nikita Bier @nikitabier]

Commentary is one of the most important pillars of X. And sometimes the best way to share your thoughts is with video.

Today we're launching a whole new way to make them:
React with Video

Tap the repost button and start recording with green screen, split screen, or picture-in-picture.

Now available on iOS

[Josh @JoshuaOgundu]

Early anthropic employees are about to reach financial independence this fall

[Aubrey Strobel @aubreystrobel]

The best beginning of a relationship I’ve ever heard:

“We sat next to each other and realised we were reading the same book, which is crazy. It’s called Trust [by Hernán Díaz] and I had just finished the first chapter and I told her and she looked at me and said, ‘I just finished the first chapter too.’ I said, ‘So we’re on the same page.’”

— Callum Turner on meeting Dua Lipa

[Achalugo @norasparklez]

Tiwi is such a lover girl.

[Ayọ̀mítidé🌺 @Ayomide__koya]

Tiwi talked about how she knew Kunle Remi was going to marry her🤭🤭❤️

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. #MagnificaHumanitas

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

We must, then, avoid the “Babel syndrome,” namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance. This is the risk of dehumanization: building a future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means.

[Giuliano @Giuliano_Mana]

I think about this every single day.

[The Instigator @Am_Blujay]

President of Botswana 🇧🇼 Duma Boko stunned the audience after stopping midway through his speech to deliver a brutal but powerful lecture on relationships, loyalty, and trust.

[Ejiro Peters @ejirogh3ne]

The concept of a Nigerian woman asking for flowers is still funny to me. I’ll send fresh roses & lavender but yeah, what are you going to do with them after?

Are you sure you don’t want a five liter bowl of Banga soup with imekpe instead?

[Ewgi @Ssaasquatch]

Haven’t shared this before, but a lot of people ask me how I do it, so here goes:

Long-dated options, or LEAPS, are a powerful way to aggressively compound portfolio gains if you have high conviction about the future price of a stock. I have personally made a lot of money doing this. Yes it works!

LEAPS gives you opportunity to control at least 100 shares of a stock without owning them. I use this mostly for swing trades I plan to dump in <1 year or two. No point doing this for long term holds.

Eg: A stock trades at $10 and you believe it can hit $20 within a year, Instead of spending $1,000 to buy 100 shares, you buy 3 call contracts with $11 strike (will explain this later), expiring roughly a year from now. Some people do short dated ones too. That’s fine as look as it’s not too short. You need time for your thesis to play out. Avoid ODTEs if you know what’s good for you except you’re an idiot.

Assume premium is say $3 per share? Each contract would cost: $3 x 100 = $300. 3 contracts would cost: $300 x 3 = $900. Total cost = $900

Now suppose the stock doubles to $20 in one year, just as you projected.

Each contract is now worth:

($20 - $11) x 100 = $900. Meaning 3 contracts you bought would be worth $2700

Summary:
Initial cost: $900
Final value: $2700
Profit: $1800

Assuming you bought the stock outright:
100 shares at $10= $1k. If the stock goes to $20, your shares are worth $2k. Profit: $1k.
In other words, LEAPS compounded your returns with lesser capital and vice versa.

Are there risks involved ? Of course. A lot of risk.

If the stock does not rerate meaningfully higher, you can lose most or all of your capital.

A wise man once said, “Leverage is for idiots.” and he wasn’t exactly wrong.

This isn’t something you YOLO, and definitely not with a large chunk of your port. I personally never risk more than 10% of my port (Okay fine, I’m lying. It goes as high as 20% sometimes)

You only use LEAPS when your conviction is extremely high and you believe the stock can rerate aggressively to the upside.

Now here’s the real alpha:

How do you manage risk and find the right stock for this kind of bet?

This is the filter that has consistently worked for me:

1. I like beaten down assets with improving business margins ie Growing revs & bottom line, positive or improving EBITDA (adj), and a low D/E ratio.

On the technical side, the stock should be trading within say 10% of their 52-week low, RSI below 40, and sitting on key support across all long timeframes.

The goal is to always find a mispriced asset, not to catch a falling knife.

2. Buy around 10% OTM strikes ie If a stock is at $10, I’m looking around the $11 strike.

That way, the stock only needs to move above the strike plus the premium paid for the trade to become profitable. If you buy very far OTM strikes, you can still lose money even if the stock moves meaningfully higher. This is essentially baba ijebu.

3. Theres no point holding the contract into the final 60 days unless it is already deep ITM and you are comfortably profitable. Read up about something called thetas and option decays.
At that point, either sell it, roll it, convert to shares, or take the loss on the chin. You live to fight another day.

4. Only buy LEAPS when implied volatility is low cos Low IV = cheaper premium. Thats when LEAPS make the most sense cos you don’t want to overpay for optionality, then be directionally right and still get hurt cos IV compresses.

My current LEAPS:

$HIMS
$SOFI

As always, This is not financial advice. Just sharing what works for me.

There are tons of tutorials on YouTube that explain the mechanics better, but take this as a primer.

You’re welcome :)

[Achalugo @norasparklez]

This is an interesting tax case

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Spain just lost a tax fight with Shakira so badly that the court is making the tax agency refund her €60 million AND pay her entire legal bill. That second part is the unusual one. Spanish courts almost never punish their own tax agency.

The case came down to one number Spain could never prove: how many days Shakira actually lived in the country in 2011. To be taxed in Spain on money you earn anywhere in the world, you have to be there more than 183 days a year. That's the law. The tax agency tried for years to prove Shakira crossed that line. Even with every record they could find, they could only reach 163 days. Her own records put the number at 143.

She spent most of 2011 on tour. 120 concerts in 37 countries. She didn't own a home in Spain, and her business wasn't headquartered there either. The agency's whole case rested on the fact that she was dating a Barcelona soccer player at the time.

The original tax bill Spain handed her was €55 million. About half was the tax claim itself. The other half was a fine for not paying it. So Spain was demanding €27 million in tax, plus €27 million in punishment for not paying the €27 million they couldn't prove she owed.

Today's ruling wiped all of that out. The court ordered a €60 million refund with interest. Then it ordered the tax agency to cover her entire legal bill from its own budget. It's the kind of penalty Spanish courts rarely impose. They only use it when they think the agency had no business bringing the case in the first place.

Spain has done this to other wealthy foreigners before. Lionel Messi was convicted in 2016 of dodging €4.1 million in taxes. Cristiano Ronaldo settled in 2019 for €18.8 million. Shakira herself has paid Spain twice already in other cases: €7.3 million in 2023 to avoid a separate trial, and another €6.6 million in 2024 for a different one. The pattern with rich foreigners has been the same every time: pursue, assess, fine.

Shakira pointed something out in her own statement. She had the resources to fight Spain for 8 years. Most people in her position don't. They settle in year one because they can't afford a decade of legal bills against the government.

Spain can technically still appeal to the Supreme Court in the next 30 days. Tax lawyers say they almost certainly won't. The ruling is too solid.