Peter Sterky🇺🇦

The next Warren Buffett, if there will ever be another, will not be found at the Berkshire annual meeting.

@GavinSBaker $LMND

Really good.

@Nick_Lamparelli @Ironic_Ape The balance sheet matters. And so does product, team and execution.

@Ironic_Ape Come on man. You know darn well that you all are just coming around to the balance sheet. Tooth and nail, I was told by all y’all that balance sheet metrics was not applicable to this company. Just like in 2020 when motley fool told me the loss ratio didn’t matter.

I've been told for YEARS that the balance sheet doesn't matter in fast-growing companies. Dinosaur, I think, was the term used The balance sheet matters greatly, and LMND has done a terrible job of growing.

1917

@fallacyalarm When did Lemonade, or Schreiber, communicate wanting "to turn profitable in 2026"?

🔎 $ROOT & $LMND 4Q25: Buckle up. The insurance technology sector has tough times ahead. Speculative flows will have to leave the space. The cyclical consolidation of the insurance industry seems to be the right catalyst for that. fallacyalarm.com/p/root-and-lmn…

@Ironic_Ape @alc2022 In my experience, high churn is more highly correlated to the core offering than onboarding funnel improvements etc fwiw.

@psterky @alc2022 Exactly. They can fix it - but experiance matters - I won’t be reinvesting until I can see long term consumer stickiness without huge growth spend.

$HFG update. This is a 100-bagger in the making. Not quite there yet, but tracking in the right direction.

@Ironic_Ape @alc2022 You need to zoom in and assess churn. Incredibly high in this industry => limited LTV + hard to grow + need to repeatedly re-acquire customers <=> beholden to GOOG, META etc.

I bought HFG at $5 - I like the stock, but sold and flipped to LMND not that long ago at around 70% gain (memory, would need to check) I’ve used HFG for 5+ years, only changing weekly to try gousto and green chef. I expect margins to expand given they are making a considered effort to reduce SG&A Marketplace margin was my play, fresh fruit, deserts, ancillaries… grocery is a TOUGH sector, typically 3-5% margin - but marketplaces typically yield a lot more. I DO NOT like the new way they package goods, yes it’s cheaper to package the way they are now - but in 5 years as a customer and more recently a stock holder - I sold. Their margins didn’t expand as fast as I had expected given the shift to marketplace and new app, now with the change to bagging, while it will expand margins with packaging process - I expect to see more churn… I typically waste 1 extra meal a week and wife and I put it down to the “I can’t be fucked to cook” logic… our spend on take away has increased since they changed it… their portion sizes have shrunk considerably and the premium exotic fruit has consistently had problems with mangos bruised or damaged 4/5 times. This will erode margin as customers complain - one mango refund probably takes 30% of the boxes margin 🤷‍♂️ Lower interest rate environment with their debt profile will be advantageous, but I want to see the customer experience back the way it was 3 years ago. 🤷‍♂️ The fresh ready meal market had taken a lot of share and while they have increased their focus on this - others are taking share because people are lazy…. That was their original value prob. ww 4 the win 🤫

@FredrikHjelm4 Great summary. But it is illegal to "borrow against your holdco personally and live on the loan tax free" though.

Sweden: we are a high-tax socialist country, everyone contributes, we take care of each other The income tax story is real. Starts at 30%, hits 55% at the top, add employer social fees at 31.4% and you're north of 65% fully loaded on senior salaries Also Sweden: >inheritance tax abolished 2004 >gift tax abolished 2004 >wealth tax abolished 2007 >property tax capped at $900/year regardless of what your home is worth >no tax on unrealized gains >borrow against your holdco personally and live on the loan tax free >capital gains at 20-30%, only when you actually take money out >ISK accounts (think Roth IRA but works for unlisted assets too, no capital gains tax on the inside) I spent years believing the story. Running a company and making some money changed it The big families didn't build dynasties despite the tax system. They built it, across Social Democrat and centre-right governments alike, because the rules never changed when the party did I ran the California comparison. Top income is similar pain, roughly 50% combined. But California taxes capital gains as ordinary income, around 37% combined. Federal estate tax hits 40% above $14M. Sweden is more capital-friendly than California in almost every category that matters for building generational wealth The story Sweden tells about itself is not the real story. It punishes labor and protects capital, same as everywhere else. Just with better parental leave so nobody complains Look, the low capital taxes are actually good policy. Abolishing inheritance tax brought capital back and the data supports it. But the gap between how labor and capital get taxed is hard to justify on fairness grounds. A flatter, more harmonized rate between the two would be simpler and more honest It would also save the country billions of hours in admin overhead, for individuals navigating the rules and for the civil services enforcing them Why not just do a flat level across? Seems easier

@theKanakaNative @KonsNemo @Opendoor @rabois @nejatian Yes.

@psterky @KonsNemo Have you listened to @Opendoor Q4 Financial Livestream where he speaks on the matter? Or his Q3? Or @rabois? Or @nejatian interviews on MSN or podcasts? Such a silly statement. Auē. Mahalo ke Akua

I did a quick search on Kaz Nejatian to understand his impact on $SHOP and what potential he might bring to $OPEN based on that. In short, Nejatian joined when Shopify was a fast-growing but largely unprofitable platform, and left with it as a highly profitable, $260 billion market cap company with deeply embedded financial services — a significant part of which he helped build. Nejatian joined Shopify from Facebook in 2019 as VP/GM of Shopify Money, was promoted to VP of Merchant Services in 2020, and became COO in 2022. Shopify’s annual revenue grew from around $2 billion in 2020 to over $10 billion by 2025 — roughly a 5x increase. Nejatian was instrumental in building Shopify’s financial tools, including payments, capital, and banking products. He also led the recent push into generative AI tools and was considered an “AI-native executive.” He played a key role in expanding merchant services and product development, making financial services a core part of the Shopify platform. Based on his past achievements, I very confident in Kaz, as a CEO, that will bring Opendoor Technologies to company’s next big step, being a house real estate fintech.

@ericjackson @open "If I buy [10%] of all U.S. outstanding shares, all buyers would have to come to my market place instead of NYSE and I could sell them additional services".

@ericjackson I've listened to Kaz theoreticizing. I seriously struggle to see what problem @OPEN solves for whom in a sustainable way. No matter how large or broken "a market" is.

8 months ago, I said $OPEN could go to $82 by 2028. I now think I may have been too conservative. Not because the housing market got easier. Because the operator changed. Kaz took over in September. Since then, Opendoor's weekly acquisitions have gone from roughly 131 homes/week to 442/week — you can track it yourself at accountable.opendoor.com. That's 3.4x in 5 months. And this is happening before the seasonal peak. That's the first thing. The second thing is headcount. Opendoor is down roughly 40% from prior levels. If Kaz gets anywhere close to the kind of lean operating model Keith Rabois has talked about, Wall Street is nowhere near modeling the operating leverage. The third thing is the mortgage. This is the part people still don't get. At Carvana, the car was never the whole business. The financial products were. Same idea here. The home is the distribution channel. Mortgage, title, insurance, and the closing stack are where this gets much bigger. That's why the new 4.99% mortgage beta matters. The skeptics will say iBuying loses money, a subsidized mortgage will lose money, and a faster pace just means they go bankrupt sooner. Kaz heard the same thing at Shopify when he built Shop Pay Installments from zero to one of the largest installment products on the internet in a year. He tweeted last week that he remembers "all the people who were very confident it could not be done." The old debate was whether iBuying works. The better question now is whether Opendoor is quietly becoming a housing-fintech platform. That's a very different multiple. My original $82 target used Bloomberg's FY2028 revenue consensus. Wall Street currently has $4.2B for FY2026. The acquisition pace implies nearly double that. If the pace is real, and if Kaz's Shopify playbook translates faster than expected, that timeline may be pulling forward. That's what I'm watching now.

@20thCenturyPOV Cool. Let’s hope the house does not turn up as yet another loss leading sale in the next Qs. So far, negative unit economics.

Just sold my home w/ Opendoor $OPEN A+ experience I’m extremely happy as a customer & shareholder. I gave a few pieces of feedback on the app itself, otherwise the process from beginning to end was seamless, and I was always able to reach someone. 19 days (including weekends)

@ericjackson I don't understand any of this. Flipping unmovable houses in a local market, at negative unit economics, where your presence at scale moves the same market, will enable what?

People still think $OPEN is just an iBuyer. That's like thinking $CVNA is just a car dealer. It's not. The car was never the business. Finance & insurance were. Today: CVNA gross profit per unit = $7,024 And 40% of that comes from financing. Now think about houses. Average home price ≈ $365K Average car price ≈ $25K Every financial attachment on a house generates 10–15x more dollars than the same attachment on a car. Mortgage. Title. Insurance. Closing services. The home becomes the distribution channel. The financial stack becomes the business. Kaz built Shop Pay Installments from zero to dominant in a year. He just launched a 4.99% mortgage at OPEN. Same playbook. Meanwhile the cost structure is collapsing: • Headcount down ~40% • Rabois thinks the platform can run with ~200 people • AI does the underwriting, pricing, and workflow That's operating leverage the Street isn't modeling. If OPEN reaches $20B revenue and attaches financial products like CVNA did… Gross profit ≈ $4B+ At CVNA's current EV/GP multiple that implies roughly: OPEN at $80+ per share. And that assumes no premium for faster growth. The old debate was: "Does iBuying work?" The better question now is: Is Opendoor quietly becoming a housing fintech platform? Because if that's the right framing… $82 might end up being the floor, not the target. People asking for OPEN targets: End of 2026: $18-28 End of 2027: $80-110 End of 2028: $130-180 Using forward EV/GP, not EV/Revenue. The math works at a discount to CVNA's current multiple. It works even better if you give OPEN a growth premium for 80%+ YoY.

@m_MTG63 @CedarStResearch $CVNA has liquid, in the sense of movable, inventory that could be sold to customers over a wide geo. $OPEN does not. They are stuck in the local market they're in, and their inventory moves the market. On top of that negative unit economics in an asset heavy biz.

@CedarStResearch I'm not sure it needs to - my theory is that the point of this is to help $OPEN become the $CVNA of housing by giving them opportunities they otherwise wouldn't have had. If they get enticing rates via FWD commitments w/o having to pay for them, it's a narrative + revenue builder

If anyone cares these are my thoughts on the $OPEN origination news release. My two cents move to $BETR. $OPEN move is sell a loan for 0% gain on sale (there is credit risk... if you're selling a loan for 0% Gain and your volume goes up on a business with little to no margin (home flipping) you're not adding to capital and your creating a bit of an issue from a solvency perspective if I put my tier 1 capital hat on...) and keep the home value elevated but entice the buyer with a teaser rate they can lock in that's 150bps below market so they can move inventory (theoretically flip faster right). I don't know how they are funding the loan (that should probably be disclosed if it wasn't), I doubt it's a traditional warehouse facility it wouldn't work at 4.99% (they'd be writing it at a negative gain on sale). If it's a forward commitment and rates drop that's very bad for Open and on a balance sheet that can't handle any rate sensitivity (again thinking like a bank). They made no mention of LTV, DTI, FICO and they are not an experienced lender so definitely some questions regarding the sustainability. Is Lennar the next Rocket Mortgage... no, so I am a skeptical. $BETR built a foundational AI origination platform that is set to scale pretty dramatically if you looked a little deeper then a 10-Q or 8-K or followed the quants into the ATM trade. There were signals. Most ignored. A few if us sniffed it out. Well before Georges $41.

@CedarStResearch Have not looked at $BETR. $OPEN has severely negative unit economics, has a track-record of moving market prices (negatively) in markets it has entered into, and looks like a dog.

@grok @insiderinvests Would you not call that effectively a sale then, since he received $24m in August for delivering shares later? No matter what, he will sell shares?

No, the $25M is from a prepaid variable forward contract Noto entered last August (1.5M shares, ~$24M upfront cash). It's not a sale—it's financing liquidity with no immediate tax event or share disposal. He retains upside (can roll forward before maturity) and still owns the shares. Today's Form 4 shows only a net buy: 56k shares purchased open-market at avg $17.88 (~$1M total). Bullish move after the dip.

Holy sh*t Noto just said that he thinks $SoFi is a great risk reward despite his concentrated position

The bots on X are becoming unbearable.

@Ironic_Ape @nikoliasgoninus I suggest/advise testing their system.

@nikoliasgoninus Guidance will be the decider IMO.

Bought some more $PATH. $10 seems really cheap for this company.