Devb 332 @devb332

@batagonx Wrong post, I think 😅

He sold engagement rings to half of Britain. Then he called them crap — on stage, in front of 6,000 people. Including royalty. He owned the biggest jewelry chain in the world. Ratners, H. Samuel, Ernest Jones. Over 2,000 stores. Someone asks how he can sell a sherry decanter set for £4.95. "Because it's total crap." The room laughs. He keeps going. "We even sell a pair of gold earrings for less than a pound. People say, that's cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks & Spencer. I have to say, the sandwich will probably last longer." More laughs. Royals in the front row, chortling. By the next morning, the tabloids had it on the front page. Shoppers stopped saying they bought their engagement ring from Ratners, because now everyone would say the same word back: crap. The company lost £500 million in value within days. A £112 million profit turned into a £122 million loss. Ratner resigned in 1993. The business survived only after being renamed, Signet Group, and scrubbed of his name entirely. He didn't lose to a competitor. He lost to his own mouth. There's a term for it now in British business: doing a Ratner.

@Pixel_Neuron The real risk wasn’t being wrong. It was running out of patience while being right.

Trump called Bitcoin “thin air” in 2019. Six years later, his name was on a crypto coin. July 11, 2019. President Trump tweets: "I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air." Bitcoin was trading around $12,000 that day. He added: "Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity." Then: "We have only one real currency in the USA... It is called the United States Dollar!" Five years later, the position had reversed — first in rhetoric, then in business, and eventually in policy. In May 2024, campaigning: "If you're in favor of crypto you'd better vote for Trump." In July 2024, he was the keynote speaker at the Bitcoin Conference. Three days before his own inauguration, in January 2025, he launched a token bearing his own name, $TRUMP. It hit a market cap near $14.5 billion within a day. It later crashed more than 90%. But that's a story for another day. Trump Media, the company behind Truth Social, has since announced roughly $2 billion in Bitcoin and related purchases, and a separate crypto partnership tied to Truth Social. From "thin air" to a $2 billion Bitcoin purchase and a coin with his name on it. Six years.

@Pixel_Neuron One different week and we might never have heard of Tesla or SpaceX.

@Pixel_Neuron That’s what makes it worse. He had the information and still got the conclusion wrong.

March 11, 2008. A viewer asked Jim Cramer if his money was safe at Bear Stearns. Cramer didn't hesitate: "No! No! No! Bear Stearns is fine! Do not take your money out of Bear Stearns! That's just being silly!" The stock was at $62 that day. Five days later, Bear Stearns needed emergency funding from the Fed. Two days after that, JPMorgan bought the entire firm for $2 a share. A firm that employed over 14,000 people was gone in a week. Cramer later said he was talking about deposit safety, not the stock, and that the clip got cut out of context. Maybe. He never walked back "Bear Stearns is fine." A year later, on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart played the clip back to him. Cramer's response: "I was wrong." Here's the part worth sitting with. He wasn't some random guy guessing. He ran a hedge fund. He had sources on Wall Street. And five days before the collapse, live on air, he had no idea what was coming.

@Pixel_Neuron Having cash during a crisis is an advantage by itself.

🚨 عام 2011: إيلون ماسك يسخر بنوبة ضحك هيستيرية على الهواء من شركة سيارات صينية تُدعى BYD.. واليوم؟ الشركة تبتلع تسلا بالكامل! 🤯🚗💥 ​المذيعة سألته: "وارن بافيت اشترى 10% منها، لماذا تضحك؟" رد ماسك باستهزاء: "هل رأيت سياراتهم أصلاً؟ قبيحة وتكنولوجيتها ضعيفة.. الأفضل لهم أن يركزوا على ألا يموتوا داخل الصين!" ​ماذا حدث بعدها؟ ⚡️ الشركة لم تمت.. بل أصبحت أكبر صانع للسيارات الكهربائية في العالم وتفوقت على مبيعات Tesla نفسها! 📈 بافيت وتشارلي مونجر رأوا المستقبل واستثمروا، بينما ماسك كان يضحك على المظهر الأولي! ​عام 2023 أعادوا نشر الفيديو، فرد ماسك متراجعاً: "كان ذلك منذ سنوات.. سياراتهم الآن تنافسية للغاية." ​💡 أعظم درس بيزنس ستتعلمه في حياتك: السخرية من المنافس سهلة جداً.. لكن الصعوبة الحقيقية تكمن في معرفة أي "مسودة قبيحة" اليوم ستتحول إلى وحش يلتهم السوق غداً! ​احفظ هذه التغريدة وشاهد الفيديو التاريخي الصادم بنفسك! 🧵👇 x.com/devb332/status…

@Pixel_Neuron The sale gave Musk the capital to make completely different bets anyway.

@Pixel_Neuron There’s something amazing about seeing footage like this from 1933.

@grendelbane Exactly.

Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin a fraud, worse than tulip bulbs. "If you're stupid enough to buy it, you'll pay the price for it one day." Then he added the line everyone remembers: "I'd fire in a second" any JPMorgan trader caught touching it. That was September 2017. Bitcoin was trading around $4,100. Six days later, his own bank confirmed it was routing client orders for a Bitcoin product. Not JPMorgan's money. Client orders. By January 2018, Dimon said he regretted the fraud comment. He kept calling Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme for years after that anyway, as recently as 2024. Then the bank he runs kept moving the other direction. It already lets clients pledge Bitcoin ETF shares as collateral for loans. Reports this year say it's building toward accepting actual Bitcoin the same way. Dimon's own words now: "I don't think we should smoke, but I defend your right to smoke. I defend your right to buy Bitcoin, go at it." Bitcoin is around $84,000 today. Up nearly 20x since the day he said he'd fire someone for touching it. He didn't change his mind. He just followed the money.

@Pixel_Neuron Money changes the playbook fast.

@Pixel_Neuron I think the hardest part was sizing it that aggressively after only four hours.

@soncarius Most investors overestimate how much edge they actually have.

@Pixel_Neuron Makes you wonder which “obvious” assumptions today will look ridiculous in 10 years.

In 2007, Steve Ballmer laughed on camera about the iPhone. "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item." He was CEO of Microsoft. He wanted Windows Mobile in 70-80% of phones. He said Apple might get 2-3%. Here's the part people forget: his math wasn't insane. Windows Mobile really was everywhere. The iPhone really did cost more than most phones people were buying. He was reasoning from the market that existed. He just didn't see the one Apple was about to build. Today Apple is worth close to $5 trillion. Microsoft is worth around $3.7 trillion. Ballmer has since admitted it straight: "People like to point to this quote where I said the iPhones will never sell... it was business model innovation by Apple." He wasn't stupid. He was looking at phones and pricing. Apple was building an ecosystem and a monthly bill. Same market, two different questions. Only one of them was the right one to ask.

@reidgrows Maybe the real flex is never needing to look rich.

@senmarketjp Markets probably have more clocks hidden inside them than most traders realize.