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Andrew Tobias
Andrew Tobias

Money and Other Subjects

Gambling + Gaza

July 31, 2025August 1, 2025

Robert Reich: The Financial Bubble Will Soon Burst.


This isn’t an investment letter and I’m not an investment advisor. But I want to warn you. The financial economy — stocks, bonds, and their derivatives — is in for a big reality check, and I think it will happen soon.

The real economy is showing worrisome signs. . . .

And remember: Trump’s big tariffs haven’t hit yet. They go into effect tomorrow. That will cause prices to rise and consumers to pull back. . . .

Yet despite all this worrisome news, investors are going nuts buying up super-risky assets.

The financial economy is immersed in the kind of wild gambling we saw leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. We’re seeing it all over again — this time with cryptocurrency tokens, meme stocks, junk bonds, shares of Meta and Microsoft, and the reemergence of blank-check entities . . .

I’m not suggesting you cash in your stocks and bonds, but if I were you I wouldn’t follow the crowd into more risky investments. Again, I’m not an investment advisor, but there’s so much wild gambling going on right now that I fear we’re soon in for another financial crisis.



OPRT

I gambled $6,000 yesterday that I will probably lose to buy 400 calls on OPRT that expire August 15.  Each gives me the right to buy 100 shares of OPRT at $7.50 . . . which is worth nothing unless the stock, currently $6.20 a share, climbs above $7.50 in the next two weeks.

My idea?  The company is scheduled to release second quarter earnings August 6.  If OPRT is indeed on track to earn “in the range of $1.10 to $1.30” this year, as they have previously projected, then the quarterly numbers they release might confirm they’re on track to do so.

At that point, might “the market” then bid the price up to, say, 10X the lower end of the projected earnings range?  Which is to say, $11?

The earnings they announce could of course be disappointing.  Or could be fine but no one cares.  Either way, I will lose $6,000.  But in case the stock did jump to $11, each of my 400 15-cent calls ($150 each, because each is for 100 shares) would be worth $3.50 ($3,500), so $6,000 would magically have become $140,000.

I totally don’t expect this to happen (though a run up to $8 would still yield a triple; to $9, a tentuple).  But stranger things have happened.  (Here are 40 of them.)

To me, this is not “wild gambling” of the type Robert Reich decries but (I tell myself) well considered gambling.



Emil Bove Is a Sign of the Times


He has demonstrated that total sycophancy to the president can be a fantastic career move.




A GLIMMER OF GAZA HOPE

Arab States Call for Hamas to Disarm Amid Push for a Palestinian State

I mean, it’s very brave of the surviving billionaire Hamas leadership, wherever they now are (certainly not in Gaza!), to fight to the bitter end, no matter the horrible toll.  But if they really cared about their fellow Palestinians, they might have built a prosperous Gaza instead of a war machine after Israel vacated the strip in 2005; or at least have done what the Japanese eventually did after their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor: surrender.  (And then build a wonderfully prosperous country.)


Is it genocide?  This Israeli genocide scholar, Omer Bartov — and many others — say yes.  Yet it would seem to me: no.  (War crimes?  Crimes against humanity?  All too likely so.  And horrible enough without adding genocide to the indictment.)  To me, genocide, like any other “-cide,” means deliberate killing for the purpose of extermination.  That’s not what we did at Hiroshima or Nagasaki.  I don’t think it applies to Gaza.

That said, Bartov’s indictment — and the view so passionately expressed by the Patinkins that you’ve likely seen — should be considered by Jews everywhere, not least in the Knesset.


To those rightly concerned by the spike in antisemitism generally, and on college campuses in particular, I commend my friend Matt Nosanchuk’s magnificently level-headed, compelling July 15 testimony before the House Committee on Education and Workforce.


Shalom.

 

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