Matt Levine’s most recent Money Stuff article is classic Matt Levine. It is both entertaining and informative. This one is on WeWork – the coworking startup that has committed to 14 million square feet of office space around the world and will have $18 billion in rent payments due over the next decade.

Here is an excerpt:

WeWork Cos. is a real-estate company with a couple of innovative twists on the model. First, rather than owning its buildings, it rents them: It leases office space from regular real-estate companies, adds … beer? … or whatever, and then subleases the space to tenants at higher rates. And second, rather than being valued like a real-estate company, it gets valued like a hot tech startup — “the sharing economy,” ping-pong tables, etc. — so it can raise gobs of money from SoftBank Group Corp. at a $20 billion valuation without ever getting particularly close to profitability. And look at all these words:

“Indeed, to assess WeWork by conventional metrics is to miss the point, according to [Chief Executive Officer Adam] Neumann. WeWork isn’t really a real estate company. It’s a state of consciousness, he argues, a generation of interconnected emotionally intelligent entrepreneurs.”

Really, what sort of multiple would you put on a state of consciousness?

Lately I have really gotten into Matt Levine’s daily newsletter about “Wall Street, finance, companies and other stuff.” Maybe that’s how I should describe this blog: Cities, real estate, design, and other stuff.

If you aren’t familiar with Matt’s writing, here is an article that he wrote about Kylie Jenner’s recent tweet concerning Snapchat. You know, the one that wiped out $1.3 billion of market value because she revealed – using only 88 characters, I might add – that she was no longer using the app.

sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.

— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The article was spurred on by this question:

“Would it be insider trading for Kylie Jenner to buy short term out of money put options on Snap and tweet out that she’s no longer using Snap?”

And this is the start of his answer:

Insider trading, as I am constantly saying around here, is not about fairness; it is about theft. It is not illegal to trade on your own nonpublic knowledge of your own intentions. Warren Buffett can buy stocks before he announces that he’s bought them, even though that announcement will predictably make the stocks go up. 

If I did describe this daily blog like Matt describes his daily newsletter, this post would clearly fall into the “other stuff” camp. But maybe you too will find it interesting. If you do, you can subscribe here. 

Matt Levine’s most recent Money Stuff article is classic Matt Levine. It is both entertaining and informative. This one is on WeWork – the coworking startup that has committed to 14 million square feet of office space around the world and will have $18 billion in rent payments due over the next decade.

Here is an excerpt:

WeWork Cos. is a real-estate company with a couple of innovative twists on the model. First, rather than owning its buildings, it rents them: It leases office space from regular real-estate companies, adds … beer? … or whatever, and then subleases the space to tenants at higher rates. And second, rather than being valued like a real-estate company, it gets valued like a hot tech startup — “the sharing economy,” ping-pong tables, etc. — so it can raise gobs of money from SoftBank Group Corp. at a $20 billion valuation without ever getting particularly close to profitability. And look at all these words:

“Indeed, to assess WeWork by conventional metrics is to miss the point, according to [Chief Executive Officer Adam] Neumann. WeWork isn’t really a real estate company. It’s a state of consciousness, he argues, a generation of interconnected emotionally intelligent entrepreneurs.”

Really, what sort of multiple would you put on a state of consciousness?

Lately I have really gotten into Matt Levine’s daily newsletter about “Wall Street, finance, companies and other stuff.” Maybe that’s how I should describe this blog: Cities, real estate, design, and other stuff.

If you aren’t familiar with Matt’s writing, here is an article that he wrote about Kylie Jenner’s recent tweet concerning Snapchat. You know, the one that wiped out $1.3 billion of market value because she revealed – using only 88 characters, I might add – that she was no longer using the app.

sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.

— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The article was spurred on by this question:

“Would it be insider trading for Kylie Jenner to buy short term out of money put options on Snap and tweet out that she’s no longer using Snap?”

And this is the start of his answer:

Insider trading, as I am constantly saying around here, is not about fairness; it is about theft. It is not illegal to trade on your own nonpublic knowledge of your own intentions. Warren Buffett can buy stocks before he announces that he’s bought them, even though that announcement will predictably make the stocks go up. 

If I did describe this daily blog like Matt describes his daily newsletter, this post would clearly fall into the “other stuff” camp. But maybe you too will find it interesting. If you do, you can subscribe here.