Bill Blain is a UK-based blogger. On May 3 he published his "May Day Rant" (linked below). He suggests that both the US and UK may be at "Peak Greed", and in his opinion, political forces are in motion to restore a more equitable society. Specifically, the rich will pay more taxes, and labor will receive an increasing share of national incomes.
Blain notes that for the first time ever, the CEO of a pharmaceutical company has been found guilty of racketeering in the distribution of opioid drugs by prescription. He is referring to John Kapoor, founder and CEO of Insys, the corporation that developed Subsys, a fentanyl-based nasal spray for relief of pain in cancer patients. Kapoor and 4 other executives were accused of bribing doctors to write more prescriptions for Subsys, paying them amounts up to $200,000 to participate in marketing events. Previously, a number of doctors had been arrested for writing Rxs for patients who did not have a cancer diagnosis (but had addictions to fentanyl). Two executives of Insys took guilty pleas and cooperated with the prosecution of Kapoor and 4 other executives. Kapoor and the 4 others are out on bail, awaiting sentencing by the U S District Court in Massachusetts in about 3 months. (They are expected to appeal the convictions.)
http://morningporridge.com/the-morni...--may-day-rant
As I look around at asset prices, I agree with Blain, maybe "Peak Greed" is nigh:
UBER is readying an Initial Public Offering of shares. Estimates of the IPO price imply that UBER could be valued at $80-$91 billion. In the first quarter of 2019 the company had sales of $3 billion, and reported a net loss of $1 billion.
Speaking of IPOs, much of the excitement is the "first day pop", when the newly listed stock starts to trade at the IPO price, and eager buyers (who weren't allocated any shares in the IPO placement by investment banks) bid up the shares on the stock market. On May 2, Beyond Meat (symbol BYND) had its IPO at $25, then in trading in the open market the price of the shares had a first day pop of about 165%, closing at $65.75 People may remember a flurry of dot-com IPOs in 1999-2000. There were at that time 15 IPOs with a first day pop greater than 165%, topped by Akamai Technologies first day pop = 458%.
Tesla is readying a convertible bond and stock issue. The size of the offer seems to keep scaling up, but the latest estimate was $1.6 billion for the bond (an IOU convertible to Tesla stock) and 3.1 million shares of the same stock.
Far from Wall Street, "where the shadow from the starlight is softer than a lullabye", in Aspen CO, a vacant lot (4.4 acres) recently sold to anonymous buyer for $24.2 million.