Last month, I spilled a considerable number of pixels explaining why Rupert Murdoch’s Time Warner bid had no significance to whether or not this is a market top.
My short list included complaints of cherry picked data that somehow ignored most of Murdoch’s M&A activity over the past half century; a laughably small sample size of just two; and every statistician’s favorite foible, assuming correlation equals causation, and not a merely random outcome.
We get to revisit that exercise in debunking that silly chart this morning on the news that wily ole Rupert has withdrawn his bid for Time Warner. And just to show how serious he – that his offer is really off the table – 21st Century Fox announced a $6 billion buyback, disposing of the cash that could have used to purchase Time Warner.
Its as if he is saying: “Stop me before I acquire again!”
Forget the M&A news for a moment, and think about the arc of this takeover bid, and withdrawal relative to the claim that the bid itself was proof a top was imminent. What implications does the withdrawal of the bid have?
10 Questions Investors Should Be Asking Themselves Now
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