MA3
MA8
WEEK 1
THE HANDOFF
MOVE-IN · OPENING BELL
ALLOCATE THE WEEK0 / 6
THE TAPE
For nineteen years the above-referenced asset has been privately held. Closely held, in fact — a very small number of holders, none of whom ever indicated any interest in exiting the position. He was carried on the books at cost because there was no market to mark him to. He ate at home. He was insulated from the tape by people who chose to insulate him from it.
That arrangement ends this week. He loads two suitcases and a milk crate of books into a car and drives to Tallahassee, and at the end of that drive he is a public company.
I want to be precise about what listing costs him, because the prospectus is vague on it. Going public means the price is no longer ours to set. It means he can be marked down on a Tuesday by people who have never met him. It means a bad week is a matter of record. Nobody gets to open at a number of their own choosing, and there is no version of this where he stays private and still finds out what he is worth.
The Committee has been briefed on our culture and has indicated it intends strictly to BUILD ON IT. Their policies will be issued to him directly, by memorandum, beginning shortly after arrival. I am told there are more of them than there were here. I am told there is a soap policy, for which I am deeply grateful.
Six components will be tracked and consolidated into a single index. You will allocate his time, six slots a week, for fifteen weeks, and the tape will tell you what it made of it.
One note the Committee left out of its onboarding packet, so I will put it in mine: the layers on that chart can be reordered. Any one of them can be brought to the front. He gets to decide which — not the Committee, and past a certain point not us either. Whichever layer is in front at the closing bell is the one he takes with him.
Ring the bell. He is better than the tape will make him look in week seven.
— B.D.