What's up guys and welcome back to wall street millennial on this channel, we cover everything related to socks and investing today we're talking about the billionaire investor bill ackman, whose hedge fund pershing square capital has over 13 billion dollars of assets under management. He has become one of the most influential figures on wall street with over 400 thousand twitter followers and making many appearances on outlets like cnbc and bloomberg tv. In recent years he started using his large twitter following to commentate on social and political issues, often in a controversial manner. Just a few days ago, he published a lengthy twitter threat talking about russia's invasion of ukraine and his opinions are rather chilling.

He said - and i quote - world war iii has already started a few days earlier. He said that the us needs to start thinking about direct military intervention against russia. After receiving harsh criticism. He clarified that he doesn't want to see us boots on the ground today, but instead wants to leave it as an option on the table if putin crosses any so-called red lines, but it doesn't really help his case when just a few days later, he starts talking About world war, three putin has already put his country's strategic nuclear forces on high alert and their foreign minister.

Sergey lavrov says that if world war iii happens, it will be nuclear. Russia has 6 000 nuclear warheads and the us has 5 000. These include hydrogen bombs, which are orders of magnitude more powerful than the ones used in japan in 1945.. If the united states and russia end up engaging in a full-scale military conflict, it will be the last war humanity ever fights.

That's why the nato secretary general said that the alliance will not get directly involved in the war as it risks escalating the situation to a civilization, ending scale bill ackman is a hedge fund manager whose expertise is in picking stocks. So why is he talking about world war 3 and putting american soldiers in ukraine as it turns out? This is not the first time that ackman has come out with some highly provocative statements in march of 2020, he went on cnbc saying the pandemic could cause a great depression level disaster, and unless the government takes extreme measures, companies like hilton boeing and many others will See their share prices fall to zero, it's completely fine to have an opinion about kovid and he should even get credit for sounding the alarm before most people thought the virus was serious, but what he didn't talk about on that cnbc appearance was that he had a Massive credit default swap position that benefited to the tune of 2.6 billion dollars from the market crash. At the end of the day, bill ackman is not a disinterested observer he's managing a portfolio of 13 billion dollars. He has a responsibility to his clients and himself to make as much money as possible being one of the most influential people on wall street.

It's very possible that his public statements will have a material impact on the stock market, especially during times of panic such as the early stages of the pandemic and the current geopolitical crisis. We find ourselves in now he's raising the stakes even higher by talking about world war iii. We don't know if he's putting on trades in the background to benefit from the current market. Panic in this video we'll look at ackman's history to try and gauge his true intentions.

Bill ackman is an activist investor. That means that he either buys stakes in companies that he thinks are being mismanaged and tries to pressure them to change their business strategy or he shorts. The stock of a company that he thinks is either flawed or fraudulent and tries to publicly expose them being an activist investor necessitates having a public profile so that people listen to your ideas. When you make a new position over the years, ackman has built up a track record of some high profile successes, as well as some high profile failures in 2011.

He bought a second canadian pacific railroad and installed a new ceo under ackman's new business strategy. The stock tripled over the next few years, giving ackman a more than one billion dollar gain. On the other hand, he shorted the multi-level marketing company herbalife in late 2012 and then went on a multi-year campaign to try and say it was operating on illegal pyramid scheme. The stock more than doubled in the following years, and he covered the position for a multi-billion dollar loss.

But overall, his track record has been good enough that he is well respected in the financial world. His public comments about individual stocks certainly have the ability to impact their prices and it's possible that he's become such a big name, that he can influence the level of the entire market. Since 2020 he's become increasingly outspoken about his views on various market-moving economic and political situations, as we talked about before, he made his infamous hellish coming speech in march of 2020, saying that the coveted pandemic could cause a total collapse of the us economy. He was very emotional during the interview and many people considered it as fear-mongering.

In fact, fellow billionaire mike novogratz tweeted that ackman needs to be taken off the air before people start jumping off bridges in the interview he did disclose that he was actively buying the dip on hilton and other stocks, as he believed, the government would eventually take measures To end the pandemic and to be fair, he did disclose earlier that he took on a position to hedge his portfolio against the market declines, but we didn't find out until later that he was actively unwinding. His credit default swap position at the same time as he was giving the interview in 2021. He was at it again making more macro bets on the market. This time he thought that the fed's excessive money printing during the pandemic would result in high and persistent inflation.

In october of 2021, he met with the new york federal reserve and gave them a presentation showing why inflation was worse than people thought and they need to start tightening monetary policy as soon as possible. He also built a massive put option position against u.s treasury bills, which benefited him to the tune of one billion dollars as fears around high inflation caused yields to increase ackman is a hedge fund manager and it's to be expected that he makes trades based on his Views of the markets and economy that is his job. It's also fine to give public comments about his opinions as long as he's being truthful and transparent. This is his first amendment right, but when you're listening to bill ackman or any other hedge fund manager, you have to consider the fact that they have billions of dollars on the line and this could impact their judgment.

This brings us to his latest comments about world war iii having already begun, and the potential need for the us to directly engage the russian military. We've all seen the horrific pictures of war in ukraine, it's possible that ackman's statements are just his own personal opinion about the situation and nothing more, but ackman is making some of the most aggressive statements of any public figure. He is literally saying that world war iii has begun. Currently he has not disclosed any positions that could benefit from the current market panic, but if an investor really thought the ukraine situation would escalate, how would they benefit if it actually devolves into world war? Three, like ackman suggests this would mean the end of the world.

It's never a good idea to bet on the end of the world trade because it only happens once and even if you're right, there's nobody to collect your winnings from. But if you think things will stop short of nuclear armageddon, there are ways you could benefit. The first thing you could do is short the stock or bond market. The spread between junk bonds and investment grade bonds has increased from three percent at the beginning of the year to almost four percent.

Today such a move would benefit a credit default swap position. The current crisis is already jacking up. Oil prices on fears of declining russian imports - brent crude, has already skyrocketed to 130 per barrel, which is the highest level in more than 10 years. As of the time of recording this video us and eu leaders are actively considering banning russian oil imports.

This would almost surely send prices even higher ackman himself has advocated in favor of this move, saying the u.s should stop importing russian energy immediately, and the eu should stop in the spring once demand for natural gas declines. A trader could clearly benefit from this move by initiating a long position in oil, futures or european natural gas futures. You could also buy oil companies that benefit from higher prices. The xle u.s energy etf has increased almost 40 percent since the beginning of the year, even while the s p 500 is down 12.

This chart shows the composition of bill ackman's portfolio as of december 31 2021. He owns shares of lowe's hilton chipotle restaurant brands, international, which is the parent company of burger king. The real estate developer, howard hughes, domino's pizza and canadian pacific railways, notably absent from the list, are any oil companies which could benefit from the current russia. Ukraine situation.

In fact, some of his positions, including lowe's and howard hughes, could even be big losers, as higher oil prices will be bad for the construction sector. Keep in mind that this is only his portfolio as of december 31st, it's possible that he initiated new positions in the first quarter and we won't know until mid april when he has to file his 13th filing. But given his track record of profiting from market panics, there's a pretty good chance that he has another billion dollar trade lined up alright, guys that wraps it up for this video. What do you think about bill ackman's world war iii? Comments? Do you think they're reckless, given how precarious the current situation is? Let us know in the comments section below as always.

Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one wall, street millennial signing out.