SPACs — blank-check shells, mined for carry, shorts, and long/short busts.
Blank is a member of the Blaque Baux family. The core repo is the engine and blueprint — a governed, systematic platform (Julia) with a venue-agnostic execution controller and a Layer-3 live-money safety gate. Blank points that engine in its own direction and inherits the governance wholesale.
Not investment advice. Educational/research software. Nothing here is validated. See LICENSE.
git clone --recursive https://github.com/blaquebaux/blank.git
julia --project=engine -e 'using Pkg; Pkg.instantiate()' # one-time engine setupA SPAC is a blank-check company — a listed shell that raises cash into a trust, then hunts for a private company to merge with (the "deSPAC"). The structure is riddled with asymmetries: sponsors get a cheap ~20% promote, investors get a redemption right plus warrants, and the post-merger entity often arrives over-promised and debt-inflated, facing a redemption cliff, heavy dilution, and lockup expiries. Many bust. That mix of a protected pre-deal instrument and a structurally fragile post-deal one is exactly the kind of terrain a long/short book can work.
Blank studies three distinct trades, not one. (1) Trust carry — pre-deal SPACs often trade at or below the cash in trust; buying near/below trust NAV and holding to redemption is a low-risk, bond-like carry with an option on the deal. (2) The deSPAC short — after the merger, dilution, warrant overhang, and lockup expiry are identifiable, dated catalysts for decline. (3) Long/short around bust signals — pairing survivors against the shells that are visibly running out of runway. The sleeve is honest that this is a crowded, borrow-constrained corner: the short leg lives or dies on locate cost and timing, and the base's "you cannot fade the prop" caution applies.
- Trust-NAV carry. Measure the pre-deal discount-to-trust across the SPAC universe and test the buy-below-trust, hold-to-redemption carry — return, risk, and capacity, net of the tiny edges.
- The deSPAC decay curve. Characterize post-merger returns around the dated catalysts (lockup expiry, warrant overhang, redemption-driven float collapse). Is the decline systematic and short-able, or already priced?
- Bust signals, long/short. Build a runway/dilution/deterioration score and test a market-neutral long-survivors / short-shells book — net of borrow cost, which likely dominates the P&L here.
- Crowding and capacity honesty. This trade is well known; stress it for locate availability, squeeze risk, and how quickly the edge decays. A "real but uninvestable after borrow" verdict is a valid, valuable outcome.
Full detail in research/README.md. The scorecard (Alpaca SIP, 2022–2026;
surviving names only, so the decay is understated — the busts delisted):
| # | Question | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Is the de-SPAC complex structurally bad? | ✅ confirmed — basket −8.7pp/yr vs SPY, 52% vol, −62% DD; 60% trade below the $10 trust price |
| 2 | Can you just short the basket? | ❌ flagship null — naive short −26%/yr, −89% DD; ASTS +643%, RKLB +429% run it over |
| 3 | Does shorting only the broken subset work? | ❌ null — gross short still bleeds (squeezes); at 5–50% borrow it's −13% → −58%/yr |
| 4 | The pre-deal trust carry? | ⏸️ parked — real near-cash carry (~3.9%/yr floor) but the edge needs SPAC-level data, not daily bars |
The synthesis: the thesis is confirmed — the de-SPAC complex is genuinely bad (and worse than shown, since the busts delisted) — but every route to monetize it is closed. You cannot short the basket (the right tail, ASTS/RKLB/HIMS, hands it a −89% drawdown); you cannot cleanly short even the broken sub-$10 subset (dead-cat/meme squeezes like OPEN's 2025 rip, then borrow of 20–100%+ buries it — the base's "you cannot fade the prop" law in its purest form); and the one structurally sound trade, the pre-deal trust carry (T-bills + a redemption floor + a free option), needs per-SPAC trust NAV and redemption dates that don't live on daily bars, so it is parked. Blank joins Bubble and Brute-Force on the honest shelf: a real market pathology that resists being traded. A risk map, not a sleeve.
Research: first pass complete — a diagnostic null (research/). The de-SPAC decay is real but
untradeable (short run over by the tail, then buried by borrow); the sound trust carry needs data
beyond daily bars and is parked. No keeper, no live driver; nothing validated to the spine's bar.
Blaque Baux is a quantitative research initiative and a subsidiary of Carter Warrens. BlaqueBaux.com is the home for the work; the code lives here on GitHub — open to study, test, and build bespoke strategies on top of.
Anyone can point an AI at a market. The edge is understanding what the data actually says — and turning it into something you can act on. We test relentlessly and put most of it on the record as rejected, with the reason; what survives is built, governed, and validated before it is ever called real. That combination — honest research, reproducible evidence, and execution you can trust — is why Carter Warrens leads on strategy and implementation, not merely uses the tools everyone now has.
This repo is one sleeve of the Blaque Baux family — a single governed engine steered in many directions. The core repo is the base/blueprint and holds the full family roster.
engine/ the Blaque Baux platform (git submodule -> blaquebaux/base)
research/ four Path-A sketches (decay, short-danger, short-net-borrow, trust-carry) + scorecard
live/ governed live drivers (once a sleeve graduates to paper A/B)
MIT. (c) 2026 Carter Warrens.