My Favorite Current Special Situation

I love special situations.

Especially ones that are only available to small shareholders.

The classic opportunity is the “split off” transaction where the parent company allows shareholders to swap their Parent shares for Spin-off shares and make a quick $1,000 to $2,000 in a couple weeks.

These trades generally contain an “odd lot” provision which means they are only available to shareholders who own 99 or fewer shares, not large institutions.

Examples include Eli Lilly’s split-off of its Elanco business (~$1,100 profit in 2.5 weeks) and Danaher’s split-off of Envista ($1,500+ profit in little over a month), and Ecolab’s split-off of ChampionX ($1,135 profit in 2 weeks).

Unfortunately, these are quite rare (usually one or two per year).

But I also look for non-market related “special situations.”

The best example was available in the sports betting markets.

Sports betting was legalized in Massachusetts in 2023. And many (all!) of the sports books rolled out incredibly generous incentives to open an account.

For example DraftKing and FanDuel both offered $5,000 risk free bets. If you lost your $5,000 bet, you got another $5,000 bet for free.

There was a way to convert those welcome offers to cold hard cash through “matched betting.”

This Bloomberg article does a nice job of explaining the system.

Here’s an excerpt:

“There, a presenter explained how people in Colorado had used a system called matched betting to make tens of thousands of dollars harvesting intro bonuses and free bets from online sportsbooks. It was simple, the man said. Use a promo offer to bet on one team to win a game, and then hedge the bet by wagering a mathematically precise amount of cash on the other team. This system, he claimed, could guarantee a predictable, risk-free profit, no matter which team won. And you could keep at it for as long as sportsbooks continued to offer more giveaways.”

Unfortunately, all the welcome offers have dried up in Massachusetts.

But, luckily there is another opportunity…

Credit Card Welcome Offers

I used to dismiss credit card offers as they seemed too complicated and time intensive.

But I’ve recently revisited the “credit card points” game and realized I was leaving thousands of dollars on the table.

The best offer that is available today is the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card

When I signed up for this card, the Welcome Offer was 60,000 which was pretty good.

But Chase has recently upped the offer to 100,000.

The great thing about Chase points is you can transfer them to a ton of travel partners:

How much are 100,000 chase points worth?

At a minimum, they are worth their cash back offer of $1,000.

So the annual fee of $95 is well worth it.

But the best way to unlock maximum value is by transferring the points to a travel partner.

The most generous travel partner is Hyatt.

Why?

Hyatt employs a fixed award chart for most properties, meaning the number of points required for a free night doesn’t fluctuate with cash prices.

In contrast, other hotel partners such as Marriott employ a dynamic pricing model where the number of points required for a free night fluctuates based on factors like demand, seasonality, and cash rates.

Here’s an example to illustrate how much more valuable Chase points are than Marriott points.

You could stay at the St. Regis in Deer Valley on January 14, 2026, for $1,926/night or 130,000 points.

In this scenario, each point is worth 1.5 cents. So 100,000 Marriott points are worth ~$1,500.