Warning: Speculation Heavy
Chamath Palihapitiya is AKA the “King of SPACs” and with good reason. He was behind SPCE, OPEN, CLOV, SOFI, and has two open SPACs: IPOD and IPOF.
Recent Strange Trading Activity
November 9, 2021
At 11:16 AM PST, there was a sudden volume spike on $IPOF, taking it from $10.16 to a top of $10.78. Impressively, IPOF managed to hold its gains when it bounced off the VWAP twice at about $10.45, closing the day at $10.65 (+4.72%) and extending gains into the afterhours to $10.93 (+2.63%). It is also interesting to point out that IPOD also made a weird move today, but the volume is only a fraction of IPOF at 859,600 which is above average but not unheard of.
There was the most volume its had in months, at 11,398,500 shares. Check out the volume here.
Also these three large dark pool trades that occurred during this volume spike:
And for bonus, this dark pool print on November 4, which I am including just because it’s also recent:
Options Flow
According to Unusual Whales, the P/C Ratio is 0.072, with bullish premiums at 61.50% and bearish premiums at 38.50%.
Options Chain: Jacked
Float: 86.25M according to Yahoo.
11/19 10c has more than half the float on its own, and is still a significant portion of the float despite the 10p OI:
12/17 gets even crazier:
Rumour Mill Target: Discord
This is where the speculation gets heavy. Here is my collection of speculative breadcrumbs/notes:
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Back in May, 2021, Microsoft made a $10B bid for Discord, but Discord turned it down and stated that they received a lot of offers. Link.
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Chamath opened greek subsidiaries for every SPAC. For IPOB it was the Hestia Merger Sub, Hestia meaning domesticity and home. Ended up merging with a real estate company $OPEN. For IPOC it was Asclepius Merger Sub, Asclepius meaning medicine. Ended up merging with a healthcare company $CLOV. For IPOE it was Plutus Merger Sub, Plutus meaning wealth. Ended up merging with a fintech company $SOFI. And now he has registered a so called Eris Merger Sub, Eris meaning chaos, strife and discord. Credit to this Reddit post for this breadcrumb.
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In May, 2021, IPOF was announced to be in talks with Equinox Gym, but this merger got cancelled, supposedly due to the negative blowback Chamath received for choosing Equinox. Around the time of the talks, Chamath opened greek subsidiary, Morpheus, he who forms. This adds substance to the above noted subsidiary naming theory. Eris Merger Sub was registered on August 24, 2021.
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Alleged “pre-IPO funding round” for Discord on August 25, 2021.
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This is the Discord board. Mitch Lasky is the most senior board member, having served since 2013. Mitch Lasky is a partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Benchmark. Benchmark’s Bill Gurley is extremely bullish for SPAC mergers, and he was part of the Nextdoor merger transaction. Mitch and Bill are both from the same firm, Benchmark. Link for Bill Gurley’s bullishness on SPACs. Note that he says “SPACs are remarkably cheap compared to mispriced IPOs”. Nextdoor’s decision for going public through a SPAC instead of an IPO was largely due to pricing advantage. This is typical for companies wanting to go public with not a lot of revenue. Sounds like Discord?
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List of Chamath Definitive Agreement Announcement Tweets. He announced three definitive agreements in the span of four months, with the last one being SOFI on January 7, 2021. Given the title of “King of SPACs”, it appears due time for another DA.
Conclusion
I have no idea what’s going on. I’m just sharing info that I found interesting, both in the technicals and in the speculation. However, given the options OI size and the float, I think that if any merger happens, and it’s an interesting company, regardless of whether it’s Discord or not, this stock seems to have serious gamma squeeze potential. Wrinkled brainers please correct me if I am wrong.
Position
15 x 11/19 12.5c lottos
I had January 10c for a while but cashed them out on the run today to pick up some November lottos with the profits.