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December 3, 2021
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Opening Bell: 8.18.17

Truth Gundlach strikes again; Leon Cooperman has some strong words for Bill Ackman; Trump is worth $2 billion to Twitter; Marilyn Monroe sex dolls are not kosher; and more.
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Jeff Gundlach Is Attacking the WSJ for a Story That Hasn’t Come Out Yet (BBG)
“Hard to believe. Reporter claims DoubleLine in financial distress! Says I announced no bonuses this year as a result. WTF?! With record AUM?” Gundlach posted on Aug. 5. In a separate post that day, Gundlach disputed that he’s “‘berating’ employees constantly. Constantly?! Try NEVER. Life is good at DoubleLine.” Late Wednesday, DoubleLine analyst Loren Fleckenstein forwarded emails with a Journal reporter to Bloomberg, the Financial Times, New York Times and other news outlets. In the message exchange, Fleckenstein -- citing a reporter’s after-hours call to an employee’s spouse -- called the journalist a “coward,” then later said that “‘creep’ fits better.”

GundlachExplainsItAll

What Is Trump Worth to Twitter? One Analyst Estimates $2 Billion (BBG)
That’s the conclusion of Monness Crespi Hardt & Co. analyst James Cakmak, who has a neutral rating on Twitter shares. It’s not that the president’s defection would touch off a mass exodus, lowering the number of “monetizable” daily active users, Cakmak said in an interview. Instead, losing its most prominent user would hit Twitter’s intangible value and lead to what’s known as multiple compression. “There is no better free advertising in the world than the president of the United States,” said Cakmak.

BILLIONAIRE BARRAGE: Lee Cooperman is stepping up his attack against Bill Ackman (BI)
"I'm not in the business of criticizing people, but I think this is disgraceful," he told Business Insider Thursday, his voice rising. "I think his conduct is irresponsible. There’s a way of dealing with it; he could have quietly presented his findings to the company, allow them to digest it. The company has been run as an open book." Ackman casts a "negative aspersion" on the hedge fund industry, he added. SEE ALSO: Ackman’s big ADP pitch flops on Wall Street

Wrong-Way Gas Bet Fueled Goldman’s Second-Quarter Swoon (WSJ)
Essentially, it was a bet on the timely completion of pipelines under construction to ferry a glut of gas out of the region. But one of those pipelines ran into trouble this spring: the 713-mile Rover, which would transport gas from the Marcellus to the Midwest and beyond. Its developer, Energy Transfer Partners, in February bulldozed a historic Ohio home without notifying regulators, and scrambled to finish clearing trees before the roosting season for a protected bat species. In May, federal regulators barred Energy Transfer from drilling on some segments of the route after a series of fluid spills.

Dimon’s Remarks on Trump, Charlottesville Provoke Discussion Inside J.P. Morgan (WSJ)
One of the more critical commenters wrote: “Chase has become extremely political this year and I must be honest and say that others and myself have taken offense to much of it.” He added that President Trump “condemned all hateful actors, as he should have. I have to see this conflict in my private life. I never thought I would deal with it at my workplace.”

Goldman’s sketchy case to buy (and then sell) bitcoin (FT)
As per the Goldman trading desk, discussing the possibility of trend exhaustion that could take bitcoin back to about $2,200: “Once a full five-wave sequence is in place, the market should in theory enter a corrective phase. This can last at least one-third of the time it took to complete the preceding advance and retrace at least 38.2 per cent of the entire move.” Invocation of invisible market forces seen through their effects is only a few steps removed from a horoscope. Sagittarius is rising, sell gold.

FYI: Web ad fraud looks really bad. Like, really, really bad. Bigly bad (The Register)
With ad networks, after fees and bots – which account for 30 per cent of traffic – are taken into account, $1 buys $0.07 worth of ad impressions viewed by real people. With open ad exchanges – where bots make up 70 per cent of traffic – that figure is more like $0.01. In other words, web adverts displayed via these networks just aren't being seen by actual people, just automated software scamming advertisers.

This celebrity is the most popular sex doll request (NYPost)
He told us that as many as half of the orders the company receives are for celebrity lookalikes, with Marilyn Monroe one of the most popular requests. However, the sex robot company is forced to refuse these orders – since they can’t use anyone’s likeness without their permission. Engineer Douglas said: “Marilyn comes up quite often. The caveat is we need the approval of the person or family. “If you wanted a robot that looked like Marilyn Monroe, you would have to have her estate approve it.”

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Herbalifers Stay Resolute (WSJ) When hedge-fund manager William Ackman unveiled his 334-slide presentation alleging that Herbalife is a pyramid scheme, it did nothing to shake Joanne Clare. The 38-year-old Staten Island mother of three has been selling the company's weight-loss products and supplements since 2004, when she says they helped her drop from 210 to 160 pounds in four months. She now sells as much as $3,500 a month of Herbalife products to her 30 clients and the two distributors in her "down line." "People have always said it's a pyramid scheme, but it's not," Ms. Clare said, adding that the bulk of her earnings come from sales to clients, not her cut of her recruits' take. Mr. Ackman's declaration that he had bet more than $1 billion against Herbalife caused many investors to flee, sending the stock down 38% in four days in late December. But some of the company's 3.1-million-strong army of distributors were unmoved. Eliot Spitzer Ends His Show On Current TV (NYT) The announcement comes a few days after Al Jazeera said it was acquiring Current TV. Later this year, the Qatar-owned broadcaster plans to turn the channel into an Americanized version of the international news channel Al Jazeera English. Mr. Spitzer said he had a “wonderful time” at Current, but emphasized that his relationship was with Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, Current’s co-founders, not with Al Jazeera. “Moving forward, their mission will be different,” he said — more international newscasts, less liberal talk about the news. Citi's Corbat builds bridges (Reuters) Citigroup Inc's Michael Corbat has been meeting with bank regulators in his first months as CEO, as he looks to bolster relationships and finalize the bank's plan to return capital to shareholders, sources familiar with the matter said. Corbat also expects to name his team of top managers within the next week or so, one of the sources said on Sunday. 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Paulo newspaper reported Saturday that all of the prison’s 263 inmates are suspects in the smuggling attempt, though a spokesperson said, “It will be hard to discover who is responsible since the cat does not speak.” Loeb, Cooperman Stand Out in Horrid Year for Hedge Funds (CNBC) Third Point was the clear hedge fund standout in a horrible year for the industry as almost nine out of 10 managers underperformed the S&P 500. Omega Advisors' Leon Cooperman also scored big. Loeb — once better known for his acerbic letters to CEOs — used an activist position in Yahoo and the contrarian buying of Greek bonds to drive the firm's flagship fund to a 21 percent gain in 2012. The firm's more-leveraged Ultra fund posted an even bigger 34 percent return...Cooperman's fund had a net return of 26 percent in 2012. 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Gérard Depardieu gives up French citizenship after bitter tax fight (GM) In a fit of pique, French movie star Gérard Depardieu announced during the weekend that he would give up his citizenship after politicians and the media took him to task for moving to Belgium and avoiding an impending tax hike for the rich. Mr. Depardieu is not France’s first fiscal refugee but his high-profile door-slamming so monopolized public debate that Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault had on Monday to parse whether or not he had insulted the actor. “I did not call Mr. Depardieu a loser, I said that it was loser-like [to move to Belgium to avoid taxes],” Mr. Ayrault told reporters...The “loser” comment seemed to have been the jab that stung Mr. Depardieu the most. “Loser, did you say loser?” the 63-year–old actor began an open letter to Mr. Ayrault that appeared Sunday in Le Journal du dimanche. 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