My question is what else has this fellow identified and what have Thiel et al. read and internalized?
Dec. 2022:
"Unfortunately, the flipside of the tech bubble is fairly ugly for the company with added pressure coming from higher operating costs, higher costs of deposits, and unrealized losses in its htm (hold to maturity) fixed income portfolio. Both these htm losses and potential losses from the loan portfolio could wipe out book equity value."
Find me a potential scenario and I'll find a random newsletter or tweet thread predicting it.
Things like this remind me of the hindsight lens of many conspiracy theorists ("We're wrong 99/100 but look at this one we got right") or even people (mostly playfully) saying things like "The Simpsons predicted 9/11".
To say that the average startup founder/team should have taken action based on a random newsletter or tweet thread predicting this (storied 40 year old bank failing) in January is pretty absurd.
By Thursday, the news were already abuzz with SVB being in dire straits and the CEO calling people to tell them their deposits were safe.
It's funny you compare this to the hindsight of a conspiracy theorist when this whole notion that Peter Thiel used secret insider knowledge is by definition a conspiracy theory. I only present the alternative, that there was information publicly available that could have led one to draw this conclusion.
This thesis happened to be proven correct in this instance. Now let’s go talk about the thousands that have been wrong.
I didn’t and don’t support any conspiracy regarding Thiel in any of this. I don’t think that conversation is productive.
What I am saying is the timing is interesting and anyone who thinks the playing field is level with a 25 year SV power player veteran billionaire is delusional.