Can Bill Ackman Do It Again With Agilent???

Trading is nothing but a numbers game…you hope your loses are smaller and hope your winners are much larger than your loses.  Take the billionaire, Bill Ackman of Pershing Square.  The hedge fund’s returns fell 4% in 2017, dropped 13.5% in 2016 and declined 20.5% in 2015, but lets look at some of his recent winners.

A year ago, billionaire, Bill took a $1 billion size position in home improvement Lowe’s because he thought there were opportunities to improve its supply chain to serve customers better and enhance the customer experience through strategic brands and differentiated in-store experiences.  I personally thought Bill was going to take another lost, but boy was I wrong. Bill got in the stock in May of 2018 and thus far that $1 billion is now worth $1.3 billion, a nice paper profit of $300 million thus far.

But Bill’s bigger win was in Chipotle.  Back in 2016, Bill’s Pershing Square bought almost 10% of the shares.  Bill thought Chipotle had a strong brand, differentiated offering, enormous growth opportunity, and was undervalued.

The following year Chipotle hired a new CEO, Brian Niccol.  At Taco Bell, Niccol was known for food menu innovation as well as driving technological advancements to the customer ordering process.  Under Brian’s leadership, digital sales quickly grew as Brian had hoped is that more and more customers will skip other eateries and just order their food at Chipotle.  And then a year later, Brian introduced a loyalty program.

And look what the stock has done since 2016….WOW.

And Chipotle is the gift that keeps on giving as Chipotle made up of 14% of Bill’s hedge fund returns of through mid-2019.

In the most recent news, Bill bought 2.9 million shares in Agilent Technologies on Monday. Agilent provides application focused solutions to the life sciences, diagnostics, and applied chemical markets worldwide.  Essentially Agilent is a lab testing equipment maker.

Billionaire investor William Ackman’s hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management said Monday it bought shares in testing equipment company Agilent Technologies Inc, only its second new investment this year as the fund has reported a 51% return.

Agilent Technologies’ stock price jumped nearly 5% in after-hours trading after Ackman’s investment was made public in a regulatory filing. Ackman’s $7 billion fund earlier in the year bought Berkshire Hathaway Inc shares.

The filing did not say whether the Agilent investment will be active or passive, and Ackman’s spokesman declined to comment. The filing showed that Pershing Square owned 2.9 million shares at the end of September and did not say how big the position is currently. At Monday’s stock price, that stake would be worth $246 million.

Source

The fact that Bill and Warren Buffett own Agilent, something must be up. I really like the monthly demand near $60, but something tells me price isn’t going to get there anytime soon.

But there is also a great level at the weekly demand at $70 to go long as well.

This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.

It’s a Good Day!

Today is a good day. I’m looking forward to its outcome.

My fight against governments is unending, a daily burden, but one which I undertake willingly.

I pride myself in fighting governments on every front that I possibly can: it doesn’t matter which level of government or even which country’s government I fight. As long as
I am making it hard for tyrants to be tyrants, then I am doing something right.

Today is a good day because, God willing, tonight I will get to confront a government official face to face. Tyrants being what they are, such opportunities are rare. “Democracy”
is only a word, a word which Representative Democracies have become the antithesis of.

I’m not naive, I know that I can’t change a politician. I can’t change a politician, but I may be able to help change politics! I will be in a room of influential people: voters, business elite, political party funders, and I fully intend to make best use of this opportunity to open their eyes.

The groundswell against politics in general is growing large, noticeable large – but that groundswell is generally confined to the lower levels. Richer citizens tend to ignore it,
they have more capacity to absorb tyranny – it doesn’t hurt them much and I doubt that they even notice it much of the time. Tonight I will do my best to enlighten the rich, and I will do this by backing the government
official into a corner, forcing them to expose their lies, greed and alternative agendas.

At least, I’ll make my best efforts to do so.

The rich have much to fear. While the average millionaire is not complicit in the day-to-day tyranny that representative democracies now are, WHEN the torches and pitchforks come out, there is no telling how far down they will go in their quest for vengeance and retribution. The average millionaires would thus do well to
enlighten themselves a little and to sympathise with the plight of those poorer then themselves. When business heavyweights start to pressure political parties and hold them accountable, that can have an immediate positive
effect on communities. No political party wants to deal with the bad press of a large company actively and publicly opposing them. If there is one thing a politician really despises, then it is the truth coming out of the
mouth of a well-known and crespected source.

And so the process continues: continually trying to open the eyes of those who have yet to see, or perhaps don’t want to see.

I’m tired of this fight, I’m really REALLY tired of it. It is a reality that I live 24/7/365, and one which I take seriously. The burden of constantly opposing corrupt governments is rather draining, because there is just so much damn evil to oppose!
I know that my many posts, blogs, emails, discussions etc often go completely ignored – but there is method to my madness.

I saw that earlier this week.

I tend to get a little shunned; not in the nasty “ostracised by the community” kind of way, but more in the “try to avoid him him, he’ll just berate you for voting
and tell you yet again why fiat money is evil” kind of way. People would rather not be around me, because “light conversation” with me tends to become rather heavy, and I won’t let them walk away without
the added burden of what they could be doing to help bring about change.

BUT

I’m right – and they know it.

There is a saying, something along the lines of “Nobody loves a warrior until the enemy is at the gate”. I am such a warrior, in more ways than one, and I wear that lack of love as a badge of pride.

And so it happens, that when the proverbial brown stuff hits the fan, suddenly I find myself to be popular again. That is what happened earlier this week.

Government (in my country) made such a large and obvious mess up, that the usually complacent sheep were temporarily jolted out of their rose-tinted slumber, and they took to social media
en masse to express their disapproval.

The words they used were heart-warming – because I saw them repeating words that I so often speak. You see, when you carry on and on and on until people are sick of you, something
you say sticks in their brains. Deep down they get the nagging feeling that all is not well. When circumstances eventually do become undeniably nasty, a little trigger fires in the back of their minds and they remember your
words.

I have made the most of this opportunity. I did not to welcome the newly awakened with open arms, but rather to chastise them for their regular conduct and to warn them against doing so
again in the future. I’m driving the lesson home. Next time around it they will react quicker and with more conviction…

It doesn’t take a lot of people to oust a tyrannical system of government, but it does take more than we have available at the moment. The longer the sheep keep their heads down and
try to ignore issues, the longer we will all suffer.

It is with that in mind that I go with a smile on my face to tonight’s meeting. I know that the politician stands no chance against me. True, it’s only a big fish in a small
pond, but this particular pond is a relatively large and significant one – the ramifications of losing control of it could have a major ripple
effect for a certain political party and even for my country as a whole. So I will be giving it my all. Wishes of good luck and prayers (irrespective of faith or denomination) are most welcome.

Conclusion

Bitcoin is coming. I absolutely believe in the power of decentralised cryptocurrencies and the revolutionary disruptive effect that they are capable of having on international finance. I
absolutely believe that governments can be starved of funding and can be rendered obsolete by blockchains; both in a financial and in an administrative role.

But Bitcoin is going to take time. The upcoming global stock market crash is not going to automatically result in cryptocurrencies replacing fiat currencies overnight. Sure, it will give
crypto an enormous boost, but this is not the crash that will spell the end of fiat forever, it will only be the beginning of the end.

It is still up to us to fight wherever we can: to fight for what is right – not legal. To fight for true patriotism – not the words and symbols created by politicians. To fight for liberty
and free will, not disguised socialism and “democracies” that aren’t democratic.

The battle is hard and the end is nowhere in sight. But if you and I don’t fight it, who will?

Yours in crypto

Bit Brain

All charts made by Bit Brain with TradingView

“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first” 

~ Mark Twain

“Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful” 

~ Bit Brain

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