For previous installments of this story: Part I; Part II.
*NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE*
**DO NOT TAKE RISKS**
***MAY CONTAIN LITE DD***
****FICTIONAL/EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE****
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So here we are 📍. Now we're the main characters of this story 📖, except there's no 'we', just you, an individual investor 👩🏿💻👨💻 who likes NAKD 👍🏽 and wants to know more about it 🧐. Later, when people look back on this moment, they will probably say that this company was pulled out of a hyper-shorted death spiral ⚰ by retail money 💰.
The truth is, however, that retail investors could have taken their money out. No 🙅🏾♂️: in fact, what saved this company was that people liked it enough 😘 to learn about it 👩🏻💻 and, when they learned about it, they liked it some more 🥰. Money 💵 is money 💶, it's people that make value.
✔ People make value when they enjoy something together.
What retail investors enjoy is watching 👀 something 🌻 grow out of nothing 🌱, and doing so together. It's a lonely 👤 and confusing 😵 experience to invest on one's own. HF's 🦔 don't do it, banks 🏛 don't, governments 🗽 don't, and neither do retail investors 👩💻. On the other hand, it's joy to see that your success 📈 is others' too and joy to know that your failures 📉 are not solely your own.
A stock 〽, an antique car model 🏎, a rare record 🎶 brings people together and, in turn, their association can create value as others observe and want to take part over time 🕰. In the end, the growth that's desired is always communal growth.
No, this growth is not, as was recently suggested by Mr. 🎩 Lou Carlozo when covering NAKD for Investor🦔Place, an unnatural 👽, Frankenstein-esque gamble 🎲 that's being sought after:
I get it, I get it, I get it: Companies otherwise pronounced dead on arrival can move some investors to kick away the cemetery dust with glee.
Or a high 🎢🤑🤯:
For those who delight in calculating such run-ups — usually the investors who got there first...
Or pure greed:
No doubt, the quest for vacation homes and champagne baths plays a role.
Instead, it should be stated very clearly that the retail investor seeks out a community of shared experience.
The battles ⚔ for every high 📈 and at every low 📉 are real memories 📷🖼 that are shared, treasured, relived by average investors as much as the history 📚 of a culture. I know the feeling of every nudist (no, Carlozo, please don't say 'nudies') who bought the peak 🗻 and with every penny gain I feel some of their relief and joy. The fact is that for those who were/are/going to be there, these events shape 📐 your identity as an investor going forward. Each NAKD investor holds a part of a story, a story that they can immediately recognize in others.
✔ People make value when they don't give up on something because others want them to.
What for the NAKD investor is a piece 🧩 of personal history, is for Wall Street one big meme 🐱👤🐱🏍🐱💻. I wrote elsewhere about how Wall Street may have begun shorting NAKD because of sick memery. It appears that the institutional voice continues to express the view that the retail investor is in on some kind of joke about women's clothing...and other very random, somewhat troubling shit 💩:
Naked Brand could somehow, someway work its way out of its baffling funk. Reddit rebels could ride to the rescue. Or, a band of marauding space goons from Planet Au Naturel could enlist their birthday suit blasters to zombify those who would not otherwise buy either Naked’s lingerie or NAKD stock. Sure, throw $1,000 in disposable income at NAKD stock. It’s the equivalent of 241 grande mochas. If those 600 or so shares hit $20, you’ll soon have a hefty $12,000 to buy all the funky bras you want. Either that, or you’ll be strapped.
Oh I get it: you'll be strapped like a bra strap.
OK, here's one: We're going to hold like a bra strap.
They'll try everything they can to convince you that what you have is worthless. But the more you HOLD like that bra strap, the more they're going to have to work to get you to give it up.
But here's the thing: it's you that gets to decide what is and is not worthless. The best part is, you can have fun doing it 😆.
✔ Remember to have fun with this experience now, because you'll definitely be looking back on it later.
The best thing we can do for this stock (besides buying, holding, SLH, making DD) is have fun 🎉 holding it and let others know how much fun 🎈 it is for us to hold.
I know you might be hurting right now as you read this. Stock goes down, stock goes up: only you can control your sentiment. As I wrote here, when you invest as a bull 🐂 in good faith in a stock, then it's important for you to create and signal optimism. As I said, one way to do that is to broadcast your future goals 🎯: for me this was donating 🎁 to women's 👩🏾👱♀️ charities.
You can get creative. For example: I decided to take the NAKD product and turn it into crypto art (i.e., NFT's): Cryptobras [ignore my other projects on my page]. I wanted a way to have an object that represented the company and that, as a permanent part of the crypto blockchain 🔲🔳⛓, was stamped with the history of this event.
For those who need a crypto-explainer, let me know---but the point is that in buying one of these a fellow nudist:
- Stakes out a piece of the community's shared history (each NFT is only minted once);
- Provides money that will be used to create more such tokens;
- Provides money that will be donated to a women's charity.
The first Cryptobra I sold was ~$100 (each NFT is set to NAKD's own price). Half was used to pay the gas fees to mint a new token, half was donated to the 1000 Dreams Fund (can provide proof if wanted; note that each token, when exchanged after first purchase, provides 5% proceeds to me that will also be directly sent to charity). This is just one way for the community to continue to share and enjoy NAKD together. It's a fuck you to the people who decided to crush women's apparel retailers wrapped in a bit of fun while signaling the ultimate goal (for me at least) of doing something good with this historic opportunity.
Because if the bras can hold, we can too.
Who knows: maybe one day soon the crypto plans of 2018 will pan out for NAKD and we'll be trading Cryptobras for real ones.
Because we will get the funky bras.
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Thank you NAKD fam for the support with these crazy DD. I just want everyone to have a laugh, relax, and take themselves away from the angst of the market for a moment. Whatever happens today or tomorrow, each of us was there with one another.
