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Ask HN: How is the SVB situation affecting your startup?

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Re: Ask HN: How is the SVB situation affecting your startup?

#171
post #2

Personally, I don't think there's a real problem unless everyone panics. Banks are well-regulated and stable and have been for decades. That said, my investors & cofounder have both expressed gratitude that our startup banks with Mercury and not SVB.

I was obviously very wrong. I've never had an HN comment age so poorly, so fast.

NB: Life lesson here is that a pretty reliable indicator of a crisis situation is when you keep mis-assessing the situation. The ground truth is either changing far faster than you can keep up with it, or conditions are well outside any of your expectations or experience. Or that the story / narrative / signals simply aren't coherent or consistent.

This is something I've noted in a number of different situations --- not just business or financial situations, though those would be among them.

Re: Ask HN: How is the SVB situation affecting your startup?

#172
post #79

We only have an SVB account because of Stripe Atlas. Back then (2020) SVB was the only option, they hadn't added Mercury yet. I wonder if you still get SVB as an option today, or if Mercury is the default. I got annoyed with SVB because the online banking feels from the 90s and they charged fees that I found excessive. Switched to Brex a while ago, and never looked back. I was planning on closing our SVB account for…

I just went through Atlas in 2023. SVB was still an option, but we went with Mercury, thankfully.

Re: Ask HN: How is the SVB situation affecting your startup?

#173
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say blindingly fancy words. I say important difference. You say basic fact. I say oversimplification. We can argue about the semantics of the word "broke", but the difference here is between losing all your money vs. having to take out a loan now that you're pretty much guaranteed to be able to repay when your bonds mature and only losing the interest payments on that loan.

But here's the the bugger: Folk don't give you loans when you're insolvent.

That's why it's so much better to be illiquid! :)

Re: Ask HN: How is the SVB situation affecting your startup?

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mistaking assets and equity. A 40% discount in asset value absolutely would wipe out shareholders. To be a bit blunt, given your thesis here I would advise against trading in individual stocks, at least in the banking sector.

In general I agree that banking sector is definitely not strongly in my circle of competence, but on my only long-term bank I'm in I've made 100+% ROI within a couple of years. That could certainly be luck. To give advise on what I should do investing seems a bit premature with no more information -- even on banking stocks. I did make a mistake in previous comment and used the word assets instead of Total Equity. The…

You keep referring to this 40% number and calling it a "significant discount", when in actuality it's only a 7-8% decrease in asset value that would be needed to wipe out shareholders ($211B assets vs $195B liabilities on their latest balance sheet). In your original comment you mention the bank selling assets at a 8.5% discount as a point _in favor_ of your thesis. You seem to not only be missing the contradiction there, but also making a vaguely optimistic case for investors getting money back in an asset firesale.

I don't mean to dunk here, I just get nervous seeing someone propose a super-high-variance trade that goes empirically wrong an hour later, and then quote Benjamin Graham. As the responder above said, given the size of the dodged bullet you should really be updating your priors on investing strategy, but you seem to barely even regard your thesis as mistaken.

Re: Ask HN: How is the SVB situation affecting your startup?

#175
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you sell them? Edit: I'm realizing now that you probably meant you have put options on other companies through an SVB account that you can't access because of account issues, not that you have puts on SVB, which was my initial read.

No, I own put options on SIVB itself. Trading was halted in premarket and has yet to reopen. Honestly, it's disgusting. The amount of profit I would have made would be more than life-changing at a time when I could really use the money.

Ah, hadn't seen that trading was halted.

So... what happens now? It would seem that the obvious thing is you'd make a boatload of money, but will you be prevented from ever collecting that if the stock doesn't trade again?

Re: Ask HN: How is the SVB situation affecting your startup?

#176
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When assets This isn't just a liquidity problem, this is a solvency problem. The bonds they have aren't temporarily worth less because nobody wants to buy them, the bonds are liquid and have a fair market value based on the current interest rate environment. Your cash isn't at the bank anymore. Your cash has been invested in bonds and those bonds are now worth less than the number you see in your bank account. That's…

It's not a solvency problem. The bonds are valued based on when they mature, not what they fetch on the open market. It is a liquidity issue, which means the money is there, but they can not access the money in the amount of time they need it by.

No, it's absolutely a solvency issue.

A 2023 USD is not the same thing as a 2043 USD; those are difference currencies with an exchange rate. (That'd be nice, but we've collectively agreed a little inflation is good.)

Liquidity is a logistical issue.

Solvency is a value issue.

You cannot with a straight face say "It's just a liquidity issue......that lasts many years."

Re: Ask HN: How is the SVB situation affecting your startup?

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general I agree that banking sector is definitely not strongly in my circle of competence, but on my only long-term bank I'm in I've made 100+% ROI within a couple of years. That could certainly be luck. To give advise on what I should do investing seems a bit premature with no more information -- even on banking stocks. I did make a mistake in previous comment and used the word assets instead of Total Equity. The…

You keep referring to this 40% number and calling it a "significant discount", when in actuality it's only a 7-8% decrease in asset value that would be needed to wipe out shareholders ($211B assets vs $195B liabilities on their latest balance sheet). In your original comment you mention the bank selling assets at a 8.5% discount as a point _in favor_ of your thesis. You seem to not only be missing the contradiction t…

The 40% number was the calculation I did off Total Equity.

I accidentally mentioned a discount to assets once, but that was it. I did mention the 7-8% off some of their assets. It is in favor of my thesis because the valuation included that and was still far below the value with the 8% included in it.

It didn't go empirically wrong an hour later -- that is factually false. What happened an hour late is the bank went under -- but that doesn't mean investors don't get their money back (and Benjamin Graham did exactly this, and I'm not trite about my research or reading a quote here and there). He did it with 100+ companies at once after the great depression, many of them didn't end up making him any money, some did, many were about net neutral or small declines after they "failed". Again, you seem to be missing that the outcome was incorporated in my original thesis, but the price dropped significantly lower.

"The size of the dodged bullet" -- is a terrible, exaggerated hyperbole. A bullet would be if I was recommending a trade that would make me blow up, or 100% of my trade. I didn't recommend a trade at all (for one), I mentioned that I was hoping to get into it, and with the portion size, even if it came out to nothing, would be nothing close to a bullet.

While I do think I've updated my priors, it's very unclear what you think I should be updating? Again -- the part that I was wrong about was accounted for in both directions in the investment thesis. I was okay with it surviving or going under, I thought it would survive. I was very wrong in that belief that it would survive, but I was okay with it not surviving.

I could be wrong about any money being returned to shareholders -- which is accounted for in the sizing of the bet I had hoped to place. In the long run, I think that the learning opportunity I would get for 1/60 of my current portfolio and being invested in a class action lawsuit to regain money from a bank in this scenario still outweighs the actual money if it did drop to 0.

Re: Ask HN: How is the SVB situation affecting your startup?

#178
post #5

> most startups in the US bank with them Is this true? And if so, how was this not a major red flag for investors earlier? From what I gather as an outsider, it sounds like SVB has most of its assets in the form of loans to tech startups and most of its liabilities in the form of deposits from tech startups. This seems like an obvious recipe for disaster in the event of a tech downturn, no? EDIT: People have clarifie…

> Is this true? And if so, how was this not a major red flag for investors earlier?

The red flag being......?

There is nothing per se that makes this situation unique to startups.

This would happen to any bank that (1) made bad investments (2) caught the public eye.

Re: Ask HN: How is the SVB situation affecting your startup?

#179
post #5

> most startups in the US bank with them Is this true? And if so, how was this not a major red flag for investors earlier? From what I gather as an outsider, it sounds like SVB has most of its assets in the form of loans to tech startups and most of its liabilities in the form of deposits from tech startups. This seems like an obvious recipe for disaster in the event of a tech downturn, no? EDIT: People have clarifie…

What could possibly go wrong running a bank by working with the most volatile companies on Earth with failure rates above 90% lol.

The financial stability of the depositors had ~0 to do with this situation.

Re: Ask HN: How is the SVB situation affecting your startup?

#180
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your link https://www.sipc.org/news-and-media/news-releases/20220928 : > Distributions to unsecured general creditors with allowed claims totaled over $9.372 billion, representing a 41.2841 percent recovery. That sure sounds like 58.7259% didn't recover what they were owed. Mind explaining why that isn't the case? And what about IndyMac? IndyMac depositors only got 50 cents on the dollar. https://www.depositacco…

Unsecured creditors in Lehman Brothers were entities like other banks and hedge funds who either offered unsecured credit lines or bank loans -- they're inherently risky and have nothing to do with retail or consumer banking. Those entities ate the losses and none of their customers lost money. It's good and appropriate they saw haircuts after the depositors and secured creditors were repaid in full. Indymac is an in…

Unsecured creditors also includes anyone holding their stock, so if you held any shares of SIVB before today, you're sitting on a big fat goose egg.
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