Regular readers know I like to have my trading done by lunchtime. But sometimes something comes along that makes you hang in there a little bit longer. Wednesday was a good example, when the internet went a little bit mad about an exercise bike company, causing this to happen:
The furore was over a ridiculously tone deaf ad for a ridiculously overpriced exercise bike. I didn’t know anything about Peloton before (apart from the meaning of the word in the context of bike races!) I still don’t know a lot about it, except that valuing a company that appears to make exercise bikes with iPads strapped to the front at $8 billion seems like madness. Then again, when you’re selling subscriptions that cost three times the price of Netflix, perhaps there is money to be made. Either way, Wall Street isn’t exactly shy about attaching bumper valuations to loss-making ‘tech’ companies, and that’s fine by me because each one is a great source of potential trades.
Anyway, the point is that this bike ad was awful, the internet noticed, and then it did what the internet does best — it mocked, meme’d, and took it viral. The backlash caused the stock price to drop, and we know what that means.
The trade itself was textbook, although my entry was a bit late. No matter, it dropped fast and when the momentum ran out at a good target price, I was out with a shade over a grand profit. All in all, a nice way to end the session.