Paul Singer has led activist campaigns against some of the largest companies on earth—AT&T, SoftBank, BP, Southwest.

He even commandeered a navy vessel after Argentina defaulted on its debt.

Last week, he set his sights on Pepsi.

Let's dive into his thesis and plan 🥤👇

PART 1: INVESTMENT THESIS

PepsiCo is currently undervalued, reflecting investors' lack of confidence in growth.

It's valued at 18x earnings, compared to a historical average of 22x.

PepsiCo now trades at a 4.1x P/E discount to peers, rather than its average 1.4x premium.

An activist investor just released a turnaround plan for Cracker Barrel. It's incredible reading.

Sardar Biglari, who fixed Steak 'n Shake after 2008, has owned $CBRL shares for 14 years. And he's not happy with how his investment has gone.

Let's dive into the 120-page plan 👇

Cracker Barrel stock is down nearly 50% over the last year, compared to a 28% gain in the S&P 500.

Over the last five years, the stock is down 70%, compared to a gain of 108% in the index.

🧵 “Why care about California? It’s more Mexican than American at this point.”

Respectfully, no. This is wrong. California isn’t just American; California is America itself, every bit as much as the colonies of New England or the plains states of the Heartland. We must cherish and protect every inch of it, no less than we would the forestland of Georgia or the prairie brush of Texas. When tens of thousands of gold prospectors braved the Rocky Mountains and the Great Basin Desert in search of the quintessential American promises—self-reliance, wealth, a new beginning—it was to California’s mines they trekked. California is where they built San Francisco from a remote backwater of just 200 souls into the 19th century's most important city in America and the most significant trading hub in the world.

I can’t stop laughing at all the Chicago pope memes. Truly one of the best days on Twitter in the last 2,000 years.

Here’s a thread with some of my favorites 😂🧵
#humbled #servantleadership

https://twitter.com/1289342590299512832/status/1920528938255757702

President Trump is walking on a tightrope.

The tariff situation is causing massive ripple effects throughout the economy. Failing to resolve the situation quickly means risking the return of a disastrous condition from 50 years ago.

Let’s talk about stagflation 🧵👇 If you’re not familiar with it, stagflation is the combination of three painful economic phenomena:

1. High inflation
2. Slow or negative economic growth
3. High unemployment

Our parents experienced it in the 70s and 80s. The effects were devastating, and the remedy was costly.

THREAD: Here's what a dive bar in Memphis taught me about tariffs, global trade, and domestic manufacturing.

(Yes, I'm being serious.)

Let's talk about why it's so hard to produce things in America, what it means for our country, and what we can do about it 🧵👇
Years ago, I worked on a corpdev team at a large industrial conglomerate. This company was a major player in basically every material in the world, from crude oil to glass to fertilizer.

There was only one thing missing: Steel.

So—naturally!—we decided to build a steel mill.

Private equity is coming for the accounting industry. They’re rolling up practices, cutting costs, raising prices, and doing what PE does best.

There’s just one problem:

It’s not going to work. They’re lighting capital on fire, and they don’t even realize it.

Let’s dig in!👇🧵 This is going to be a loooong thread, touching on everything from the unique structure of the CPA industry to the inter-generational culture war within many firms to how PE firms structure exit opportunities.

Stick with me, though, and I promise I’ll tie it together. 😉 (2/28)

US CANADA MEXICO TRADE DATA THREAD 📊🧵

By now, we all know about the new tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico. But what does this actually mean for businesses and consumers?

I just downloaded and analyzed a bunch of Trade Department data to find out.

Let’s dig in! 👇


Every year, the US runs a trade deficit with both Canada and Mexico. In simple terms, we import from them more than we export to them.

In 2023, Canada sent us $419B of goods (blue), while we sent them $354B (green). This resulted in a $64B deficit (yellow).

H-1B DATA MEGA-THREAD 🧵

I downloaded five years of H-1B data from the US DOL website (4M+ records) and spent the day crunching data.

I went into this with an open mind, but, to be honest, I'm now *extremely* skeptical of how this program works.

Here's what I found 👇


Before I start, one note: All charts in this thread are for applications that were “certified” (in other words, approved for entry into the H-1B lottery). I filtered out applications the gov rejected.

All numbers here are therefore for visas employers actually and realistically attempted to obtain.

My wife is in the middle of a Mexican standoff in the church nursery.

Our two year old got mad and threw a cup of animal crackers on the floor.

My wife refuses to leave until she picks them up. My daughter refuses to clean up until we promise her a cake pop and Bluey at home.

My wife (former Marine) is the most stubborn mom on the planet. My daughter (personality of an ISIS prison guard) will happily scream for hours on end.

I just dropped off a peppermint mocha for my wife. She’s digging in and playing the long game. Our pastor offered to broker a truce, but he left when the toddler hurled an elephant cookie at him, grumbling that our denomination doesn’t pay well enough to deal with situations like this (which is totally fair).

Will keep everyone apprised. If there are any hostage negotiators here with experience defusing toddler meltdowns, please reach out. Update: My daughter is now demanding the removal of all US troops and naval vessels from the Middle East. This is really escalating out of hand.

The Economist published a brutal takedown of the woke movement this week.

tldr: Wokeism isn’t dead yet, but it’s suffering a significant (and much needed) statistical decline.

Let’s dive into the numbers 👇 Contrary to what many believe, 2020/2021 represented the *peak* of wokeism, not the genesis.

The woke movement gained much of its momentum in 2015, with—you guessed it—the announcement of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Don’t get an MBA. You don’t need to spend $200k to learn how to be a business leader or an entrepreneur.

You can get a better business education for $8 per month on Twitter, and in way less time than two years.

From finance to marketing to business law, here’s who to follow! 👇 BUSINESS ETHICS

Business is the voluntary exchange of goods and services. And the foundation of this is ethical behavior.

If you want to learn how to do business the right way, there’s no better teacher than @moseskagan. He’s brilliant, wise, and just a thoroughly decent guy.

What's happening on the southern border right now is nothing less than a catastrophe. But I had no bad it truly was until I looked at the data myself.

I downloaded and analyzed 23 years of Border Patrol data today. Here are six charts showing just how bad the situation is 👇 How much worse has Biden been than other presidents when it comes to the border?

In the 34 months for which data is available, Biden has had a staggering 6.7M encounters at the southern border.

In comparison, at this stage, Bush had 2.8M, Obama had 1.2M, and Trump had 1.4M.

There will never be a US vs. China hot war.

Why?

It’s not because of iPhones or TikTok.

It’s because we feed the Chinese people.

If China ever attacks us, farmland roughly the size of the state of Utah stops supplying them.

Read on for just how huge 🇺🇸/🇨🇳 ag trade is. Before I get into all the back story and details here, let me just say:

Yes, you read that correctly.

The land mass in America dedicated to Chinese agriculture exports is about the size of the entire state of Utah. All 85,000 square miles of it.

Stop scrolling! Don't shake this thread off!

Introducing...

Private equity firms as Taylor Swift looks! 🔥🔥

(Look what you guys made me do.)

Starting with:

BAIN CAPITAL

(1/16) KKR

(2/16)

Stop reading threads about office politics at the PGA.

Forget about paying Phil $200M, or offering Tiger $800M.

If you want to grasp how Saudi Arabia took over American golf, you need to understand Aramco, the greatest cash-generation machine in world history.

Let's dive in. You're probably familiar with Aramco. In fact, a lot of you have probably read books about it—the history of it is fascinating.

But, if Aramco is a new name to you, just know that it's the Saudi oil company.

And it absolutely prints money. A staggering amount of it.

My former boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss controls a $100B+ conglomerate, w/ a personal net worth of $68B.

Think he has nothing in common with the world of small business?

You're wrong.

Here's what Charles Koch can teach us about the silver tsunami of SMB owners retiring. 🌊 This is going to be a looooong thread. So I'm going to break it into 3 parts.

In part 1, I'll talk about succession dynamics at Koch.

In part 2, I'll relate that to the world of SMB.

In part 3, I'll talk about a novel approach that most searchers overlook.

Ready? Let's go! 🚀

There's still *a lot* we don't know about the effects of the East Palestine train derailment.

But, if dioxins do get in the water table and the soil, the impact to the local farm industry could be disastrous.

Here's a quick summary of what the economic fallout could look like.

https://twitter.com/adoricko/status/1628162396106915841

In part one, we'll cover some background on industry dynamics, including a group referred to as ABCD, a pretentious word called "oligopsony," and Chinese political theatrics.

In part two, we'll cover why all of this matters to the East Palestine region.

Let's get started.

⚠️ Rare Serious Post Alert! ⚠️

I am one of those people who, most of the time, is annoyingly happy and positive about life. Think Ted Lasso with Jordans and in a board room instead of on a soccer field (sadly, though, no mustache).

But, on rare occasions, I lose that.

(1/n) I spent the past couple days in a funk—unmotivated. Struggling. Doubting myself.

And for no good reason. It just sort of… happened.

For 3 or 4 days, I thought it wouldn’t end. Because that’s how something like that works, right? It kills the light at the end of your tunnel.

I've been thinking a lot about the debate @thesamparr started a few weeks ago about the ethics of tech workers holding 2+ FT jobs

Many ppl said "if they can pull it off, more power to them"

Here's why I think that's wrong and why it will cause problems across the tech workforce Before I start, if you didn't see the thread when it first hit, it's absolutely worth a read. There are thoughtful comments from @moseskagan, @Jack_Raines, @girdley, and many other smart people.

https://twitter.com/thesamparr/status/1582386730501431296

The guys at @DoombergT are some of the best thread creators on this platform. This thread should give all of us pause, and the deafening silence of the American left during Trudeau’s crackdown on the protests (tweet 2) is still frustrating to me.

https://twitter.com/doombergt/status/1586301441420820485

As noted, this is not an issue on which the left or the right has more credibility or moral superiority. I have zero doubt that, had this oppressive crackdown occurred in Orban’s Hungary, it would have been front page in the NYT every day, while celebrated by the American right.