I woke up the morning of January 29, 2020, opened up Twitter, and saw that Barstool was announcing a deal with Penn National Gaming (PENN).
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Penn National Gaming Inc announced a $163 million investment in sports media company Barstool Sports on Wednesday, seeking to capitalize on the growing popularity of sports betting and its legalization by more U.S. states.
As a long time Stoolie, I immediately logged into Fidelity and loaded up on PENN with all available cash in the account. I got in at $28.10 and, lets just say it has been quite the ride. Stock immediately went up and was trading in the mid to high 30’s for a few weeks and then kept going into the 40’s. They even had El Pres ring the bell at Nasdaq on Feb 27.
Know what else happened on February 27, 2020?
And Corona hit! stock market plunged and the PENN stock got hammererd. It cruised back past the $28.10 mark (on the way down) and seemingly dropped every day. The worst industry to be in during a global pandemic just might be casinos. Penn operates small to mid-size casinos in smaller cities (think Plainridge Park in Plainville). If the people can’t come in to blow their money, then casinos don’t make $$. Not to get to technical, because I really don’t know what I’m talking about, but the Barstool deal was all about online gambling becoming legal, and the popularity of Barstool and the sportsbook they started. Basically degenerates get the ability to live bet during games, and Barstool can make up any parlay or prop bet they want.
Anyway, during the worst of the Corona Virus sell-off in March, PENN got down to $3.75/share. At this point, I was trying to figure out a way to tell my wife I blew a bunch of money on Barstool. El Pres went from having “unlimited money” to possibly having the company that just acquired Barstool going bankrupt and Pres probably not left with much.
But what really tortures me is why I didn’t do what I usually do….Procrastinate? If I had only waited. I rarely ever buy stock, so why on the morning of the deal did I act so quickly and buy? If I just did nothing, if I only had the cash in hand when it to to $4.
Now, I know it’s easy to look at it now and say you would buy at $4 in the middle of a stock market crash/global pandemic. I know I would have, this is the one I’ve been waiting over a decade for. People who know me, most likely have heard me ramble on about Sirius XM stock. Long story short, when I first opened a Fidelity account, the only advice I got was to invest in what you know. At the time I listened to Howard Stern on Sirius everyday. I first bought Sirius at 70 cents, stock dropped and I bought more at 30 cents. The subprime meltdown happened and Sirius stock went to 4 cents heading into MLK weekend in 2009, with a probable bankruptcy filing coming on Tuesday. I remember sitting at my computer thinking how fucked I was with all the money I’d lose w the bankruptcy, but part of me was like fuck it, buy more! Go all in a 4 cents, Howard Stern was heavily invested in the stock and he was confident that CEO Mel Karmazin would figure it out.
After coming close to filing for Chapter 11 only months after the 2008 merger, having gone so far as to hire lawyers to prepare a possible bankruptcy filing,[49] Sirius XM was able to avoid declaring bankruptcy with the assistance of a US$530 million loan from Liberty Media in February 2009, which Mel Karmazin negotiated in exchange for a 40% equity stake in Sirius XM.
Anyway, I pussed out, didn’t do anything. Every once in a while I’ll break out the calculator on the phone and figure out how much I would have made if I bought $5000 in Sirius stock at 4 cents. If my math is right, as of today that would be worth $742,500. So I have been waiting for this…..for 9 years! This was the one, and I blew it again.
Well, I guess I can’t complain with almost quadrupling my investment (the kids call that a “flex”)
Well anyway, people at pool parties will have to listen to me go on and on over the Penn stock for the next decade.
Dave is back to unlimited money, and I got a blog with 70 pageviews!
Gooters blog 