[anonymouse008]

Well hell, I made the wrong choice at a fork in the road then. If finance is willing to buy a tighter confidence interval based on insight to Mudge’s credibility, then I severely underpriced the potential payout in finance.

E-mail is open to those who want tighter intervals re this deal or similar: my new pivot.

[ryandrake]

Yea, wow, I had no idea someone would pay that much simply for an ex-employee to spin a bunch of bullshit about their former company or colleague. Incredible!

I remember a surreal experience after having left a Silicon Valley tech company. I was contacted over LinkedIn by someone wanting to "do research" about that company. Reading between the lines, he wanted company dirt, secrets, and so on. Having no intention of violating my (very serious) NDA, I declined, but he was insistent and offered to buy me dinner. I figured I could just go, chew my food and not answer questions, so why not get a free meal out of it? We met, I started chowing down, not answering anything, and just treating it like a lovely dinner date. He eventually excused himself to the bathroom, and then disappeared, leaving me with the bill. So, I guess my plan didn't work, but I got a stupid story out of it so I've got that going for me.

[dilap]

This story is fantastic. It's great because the ending is so unexpected, but then on second thought, exactly what you should've expected. Perfect.

[abawany]

You now know what the status of your payout would have been had you chosen to violate your NDA. There is no honor among thieves, apparently.

[linuxlizard]

That's not just a stupid story, that's an awesome stupid story.

[Scoundreller]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/world/black-cube-nso-citi... ?

[gojomo]

Lesson learned: if anyone wants to try the same move, choose someplace where the host pays at the counter, before sitting down with the food. (What are some of the best Bay Area eateries that work that way?)

[appleiigs]

Lots of stories like this in finance. In Flash Boys book, it discuss finance firms laying 800 miles of fiber across mountains just for trading. Bloomberg terminal tracks oil tankers. Hedge funds using satellite photos to see how busy shopping malls are. To take that even further, a hedge fund hired hundreds of people to sit in Luckin Coffee stores to track traffic and what customers purchased... on and on.

[schoen]

It feels intuitive that the tanker tracking is relevant to traders, but how would they really use this information? Does the arrival schedule of individual oil tankers really noticeably move energy prices in a particular country or particular region? Like, does crude oil locally get $0.001/gallon or $0.001/barrel cheaper each time a tanker arrives somewhere?

Or is it more like "a storm is delaying 30 tankers' arrival" or "a war is delaying 20 tankers' departure", to understand industry-wide or market-wide patterns?

[ProjectArcturis]

The Luckin one actually identified an enormous fraud.

[danielmarkbruce]

It's a $44 billion deal. The current market cap is $32 billion. There is $12 billion of winnings sitting there on the table if you choose "it will close" and are right.

[keepquestioning]

Please. How replicable do you think this situation is?

[danielmarkbruce]

Merger arb is a thing. Lot's of similar situations albeit with less media coverage.