Steve Eisman has a simple way to explain why SpaceX is the most absurd stock in America: its revenues are roughly equal to those of the company that makes Froot Loops. The difference? Nobody is valuing Kellogg’s at 100x revenue.
If you’ll recall, Eisman identified that a housing bubble was building in 2006 and 2007, fueled by an explosion in the issuance of “teaser-rate,” sub-prime mortgages, and that a crash was imminent. He famously seized the moment by shorting the home-loan market big time, a move that greatly profited both the trader and his firm FrontPoint Partners, a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley. Michael Lewis made Eisman a Wall Street legend by chronicling his exploits in his 2010 bestseller The Big Short. In the 2015 film version, Steve Carrell played the famously cranky, contrarian (re-named “Mark Baum”), while Marisa Tomei portrayed his wife and co-skeptic, former J.P. Morgan analyst Valerie Feigen (“Cynthia Baum”). Today, Eisman hosts the weekly podcast “The Real Eisman Playbook,” a program I highly recommend as much for its rollicking mockery of the group think that dominates the sell-side stock community as its sharp insights on economic trends and knack at nailing the basics that over time, drive outstanding returns to investors.
