STRATEGY BUYS ZERO BITCOIN, STACKS $6.69 BILLION CASH — SAYLOR LOADS THE GUN INSTEAD OF FIRING IT

Strategy didn’t buy a single bitcoin last week, and that’s only bad news if you’ve never run a balance sheet. Michael Saylor’s company still holds 840,447 bitcoin, close to 4% of every coin that will ever exist, and instead of adding to the pile it built up $6.69 billion in cash and spent $136 million of it buying back its own preferred stock. That’s not backing off, that’s a man clearing his throat before he talks. The company says it owes almost nothing against what it owns, which is the kind of sentence a bank loves to hear. Buying back preferred stock cuts what the company has to pay out down the road and props up its own paper, while the cash sits ready for the next dip in the price or the next chance to move fast. This is what a serious operator does before a big purchase: he doesn’t empty his pockets on the way into the store, he keeps a fat wallet and waits for a good number to show up on the register. Nobody handed Saylor a trophy this week, and he didn’t ask for one. He built a war chest instead. A checkbook with no debt beats a shopping spree every time — this week Saylor kept the powder dry and let the bill collectors go hungry.