Variant Insight

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Variant Insight

Variant Insight

@VariantInsight

recession tested, contrarian, early trend spotter.

Entrou em Şubat 2020
625 Seguindo136 Seguidores
Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@kturet @MrMojoRisinX After researching further, the conclusion I've reached is nothing reasonable can be done for now to stop the delisting. Really it comes down to what happens next with management and a takeover
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Mojo
Mojo@MrMojoRisinX·
I received several messages this morning on that other platform (subbbbbb.....st*ck) about ticker $MAPS. I am not that familiar with this company/stock, but I have heard a pitch and recall the insiders attempting a management led buyout in the past. I am not involved and am very unlikely to get involved directly as I am pretty busy with some other mandates that involve constructively working with c-suites to effectuate change. If I understand this correctly, $MAPS runs a two-sided cannabis technology platform. Weedmaps connects cannabis buyers to licensed dispensaries on the consumer side. WM Business sells SaaS tools including menu management, CRM, loyalty programs, and delivery logistics on the merchant side. Revenue comes from monthly listing subscriptions and advertising placements. Seems like there are potential buyers for this business ranging from DASH, UBER, GoPuff, perhaps even direct competitors like YELP, and then distressed PE who would likely restructure the business, clean it up, wait for rescheduling catalyst, and then flip to a strategic partner. Jack Dorsey and Block are also interesting here given Block's existing presence in the payments and POS space for small merchants, and cannabis dispensaries are exactly the kind of underserved merchant vertical that fits that thesis. So today, MAPS surprised its holder base with not another take private proposal but instead announced it would voluntarily delist from Nasdaq and move to OTC markets. The company plans to file a Form 15, which terminates its SEC reporting obligations entirely, and the last day of Nasdaq trading is expected to be April 24, 2026. Btw $TOKE owns 800k shares and is also liquidating so they probably exited their position today in this 50% downdraft (12mn+shares have traded). Again, I am new to this situation, but this looks coordinated and frankly well thought out. The MAPS board was almost entirely replaced in the months prior to this announcement. Three new directors were appointed between February and March 2026, all with ties to the founders or cannabis private deals. Scott Gordon, the most prominent independent voice and former CEO of the SPAC that took MAPS public, resigned one day before the delisting was announced. The company also switched auditors four days before the announcement. Co-founders Doug Francis and Justin Hartfield control roughly 40% of the combined voting stock. Francis is now both CEO and Chairman. They previously attempted a take-private bid at $1.70 per share in late 2024 but withdrew it in June 2025 after a special committee was formed to evaluate it. I want to be careful here, but this is how I see the alleged strategy. By delisting before making any formal bid, the founders avoid triggering Delaware's "Entire Fairness" review standard, which would require a fairness opinion from an investment bank that would almost certainly highlight the gap between the $62 million cash position and the market cap. Once the stock drifts to pennies on OTC with no institutional coverage and no SEC filings, they can make a lowball offer and claim they are paying a premium to the OTC price. They then wait for federal cannabis rescheduling or banking reform and sell to a strategic buyer at a massive multiple. From there, a Nevada reincorporation becomes the logical next move for bad actors who want to finish the job, and I have written about this playbook before in tweets and Inside Mojo. Delaware allows lawsuits for breach of the duty of loyalty. Nevada requires proof of intentional misconduct or fraud, a much higher bar. With founders controlling 40% of the vote and institutional holders likely exiting, pushing through a reincorporation vote becomes realistic. If these guys are as calculated as this looks, that is likely already on the whiteboard. Which is why anyone considering action needs to move with urgency. Once they go dark and reincorporate, the legal window closes pretty fast. On what shareholders can actually do today: the most actionable path is social media pressure combined with finding a white knight who believes in this business and can move quickly. And critically, a legitimate acquirer does not need to go through this board. A formal tender offer goes directly to shareholders and requires public SEC filings, meaning an interested party could bypass the board entirely and take an offer straight to holders before April 24. Any bidder crossing 5% ownership also triggers a mandatory Schedule 13D filing, so this does not happen quietly. The window to make that move while MAPS is still listed on Nasdaq is two weeks. The legal paths, breach of fiduciary duty and securities fraud tied to the prior MAU misrepresentation, a matter they have already settled once, are real but slow and expensive. If a formal merger or squeeze-out eventually happens, Delaware appraisal rights allow dissenting shareholders to demand a judicial valuation, but that is a years-long process. The white knight angle is the one worth pursuing hard and fast. Anyone seriously looking at this, feel free to reach out.
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@clintoptions Only way that happens is if oil and rates drop/stay flat….if that happens I could see some pre-mag7 earnings buys which lifts the indices
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Clint Awana
Clint Awana@clintoptions·
People seriously going to lose their minds when the market pumps on Monday with no deal being made between US and Iran
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@SayNoToTrading By the time Anthropic IPOs, they will be at $50B + run rate. Easily $1B valuation @ 20x sales (vs SpaceX 200x). Also with $ZM, stock is down 19% from highs, and has $8B cash currently. Will be trading at EV/E of ~5x, major buyback incoming
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Say No To Trading
Say No To Trading@SayNoToTrading·
For those buying $ZM and $SKM to get exposure to Anthropic, if you assume the $350B valuation, these stocks nor others are great options. Even if you assumed double - $700B valuation - that would still be less than 1/4 of SK Telecom, which is the stodgy $T $VZ of South Korea. Already having run 40% YTD for this specific reason, $SKM is already discovered. I would not want to be left holding $SKM bag if hype around it dies down and keep in mind, that can happen even if Anthropic continues its trajectory. When I asked Claude Sonnet 4.5 this same question, the answer was ironically quite awful and incomplete.
Say No To Trading tweet mediaSay No To Trading tweet media
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@thewritser I own and manage via friends/family roughly 1.5% of A shares OS. If you are also a material shareholder, DM me re starting up a class action / legal action
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Writser@thewritser·
$maps fascinating price action. No firm opinion, but seems strange that a company with $60m in cash that was worth ~$120m yesterday is now worth ~$70m because it is going to delist from the NASDAQ. Delistings often present interesting opportunities.
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
When you think about it, since it’s been made clear that Elon intends to merge SpaceX and Tesla next year, keeping $TSLA weak is a benefit. Also, clear that investors / retail (aka the cult of Elon) will be selling TSLA to buy a position in SpaceX IPO. Tesla will be very weak next few months.
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Tim
Tim@tbonetrades·
$TSLA red... that mysterious call buyer who was propping the stock only cares about the SpaceX IPO now, gee wonder who
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@Dcpcooks I’m thinking idiocracy a more prophetic movie of where things stand and are heading
GIF
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@tbonetrades Market move today seems to agree with that sentiment - but oil and rates differ. Given UAE wanting to get into fight, and Trump staying 2 weeks more, I think an island invasion in the works. But who really knows…don’t think Trump even knows his tomorrow plan until tomorrow
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@HedgieMarkets May be possible, but it’s the specs and the details that matter so telling the LLM “generally” what you want doesn’t get anywhere near a polished product (speaking from experience as a push out my latest SaaS release, AI bolstered but took massive amount of intervention
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Hedgie
Hedgie@HedgieMarkets·
🦔 A software engineer published a blog this week arguing that programming languages are dead and everything will soon be written in plain English, run directly on what he calls ClaudeVM. The argument is that just as Java brought ten times more engineers than COBOL, natural language will bring hundreds of millions of people who write in English instead of code, swamping traditional software the same way JavaScript swamped everything before it. He calls traditional coding today the equivalent of filming radio plays for television, using the new medium but thinking in the old one. My Take I've seen this argument cycle through the industry in different forms since COBOL was supposed to make programming accessible to everyone in the 1960s. The core problem hasn't changed. Natural language is imprecise by design. That imprecision is a feature for human communication and a serious liability for software that needs to behave the same way every time it runs. A bank's transaction system, a medical device, an air traffic control system. These are not problems where close enough is acceptable. What I do think is true is the direction of the argument, not the destination. The barrier to building useful software is falling fast and will keep falling. More people will create more software with less formal training. That's already happening and it matters economically. But the claim that deterministic, auditable, maintainable code becomes irrelevant because LLMs can be seeded for reproducibility is the kind of argument that sounds clever until you're debugging a production system at 3am and need to know exactly what happened and why. Engineers aren't resistant to this idea because they're like radio stars failing to see television. They're resistant because they've spent careers cleaning up what happens when precision gets treated as optional. Hedgie🤗
Hedgie tweet media
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@JasonStrom_ Anyone confirm at this point oil is flowing down to El Segundo? I'm assuming so but if anyone can confirm that nothing is stopping them at this point I'll sleep better
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Jason Strom
Jason Strom@JasonStrom_·
$SOC Powder keg. Waiting for the spark.
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@tbonetrades It’s going to be ridiculous, but by floating only 5% and playing games with QQQ and S&P indices they are going to manipulate this higher than any of their 🚀 at some point will be the epic short of the decade
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@JasonStrom_ Any thoughts on lag between oil flowing and first sale? It’s quick transit to Pentland (POS), so are they waiting on something that’s pushing it out (by 4/1) or was that just conservative and CVX deal now in place will move date up?
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Jason Strom
Jason Strom@JasonStrom_·
$SOC - “We’re going to run Sable’s crude at El Segundo in April,” the president of Chevron’s downstream, midstream and chemicals businesses, Andy Walz said in an interview Tuesday,
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BonkDaCarnivore
BonkDaCarnivore@BonkDaCarnivore·
Ahhh yes, the old "I have a girlfriend, she just goes to school in another state" argument. We're negotiating with *checks notes* someone not in charge. Right. There's nobody.
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Adam Smith
Adam Smith@AdamSmithKY·
@MarioNawfal Why would Trump put boots on the ground when he just posted that he was going to wind things down in Iran?
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Mario Nawfal
Mario Nawfal@MarioNawfal·
🇺🇸🇮🇷The U.S. is shifting key military assets to the Middle East right now. This may be the clearest signal yet that the US might put boots on the ground in Iran to secure the Strait of Hormuz.
Mario Nawfal@MarioNawfal

🇺🇸🇮🇷CENTCOM posted mid-air refueling of an A-10 Warthog. The A-10 was built in the 1970s to destroy Soviet tanks. Half a century later it's still the ugliest, meanest thing flying and it's out there strafing Iranian positions at 3,900 rounds a minute.

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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@tbonetrades Think Bessent (Treasury) may have decided if he's already opening a futures account to buy Oil, why not some Qs and Spoos as well.
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Tim
Tim@tbonetrades·
Oil fills the gap up almost exactly, what a coincidence $CL_F
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@NewmoonCap How do you figure? The newly elected Iranian leadership just lost his entire family to the strikes, no way they don’t pursue destruction of Israel and US the moment it’s feasible
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Newmoon Capital
Newmoon Capital@NewmoonCap·
Even if trump tacos now, its a win.
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
This chart missing critical data on the drawdown AHEAD of the event. Without that, it provides no perspective on whether the event just led to “buy the news” after selling the rumor. Case in point, Ukraine invasion we were down 8% before Russia crossed the border. Today we are at ATH (RSP) and 2% off highs for SPY
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Ryan Detrick, CMT
Ryan Detrick, CMT@RyanDetrick·
Here's a list of major geopolitical events since WWII. Up a median of 5% six months later. All of them felt really bad at the time.
Ryan Detrick, CMT tweet media
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@SamanthaLaDuc The way crypto is rallying, feels like retail plans to use this to push market to new highs next week. Oil will ultimately determine where the markets head, but right now looks like 100dma may hold (sadly as I’m net short)
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Variant Insight
Variant Insight@VariantInsight·
@aleabitoreddit Im sure market will just shake off $150 oil, focus on data centers and nuclear 😂
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Serenity
Serenity@aleabitoreddit·
You all do realize War is bullish for markets right anon? General rule of thumb is: As long as it’s not in your territory, War is bullish. There’s the retail on X “panic sell everything from $NVDA to $HOOD it’s over” following US/Israel forcing a regime change in Iran. But institutions have largely frontran it as seen with the rise of big defense + oil sectors (and selloff of anything high beta) leading up to the actual event. U.S. stocks generated positive performance one year after an act of aggression in roughly 73% of armed conflicts since WWII. And it’s likely the US already prepared for any Oil volatility by taking over Venezuela earlier for oil reserves. Annualized returns during the Korean War (+18.7%), WWII (+16.9%), and the Gulf War (+11.7%) all beat peacetime averages.  After Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the S&P 500 index fell more than 7%. Shortly after, markets rebounded and the S&P was trading at a level higher than before the invasion, even as the price of oil remained elevated above $100 a barrel. There’s different implications on different sectors with Iran and Oil impacts, but generally markets as a whole go up (short term down). TLDR: It’s obviously multifaceted and more sectors are impacted than others depending on the conflict. But rule of thumb is War is bullish, as long as long as it’s not on your own territory.
Serenity tweet media
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