Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 150 posts

Re: Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

#31

Post by icebraining »

tanderson92 wrote: post #27
paulddraper wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investing in the S&P 500 delegates the "actual wealth creation" to others by providing them with the means. And they, on average, would have done a little better than Trump did.

No, it really does not. The S&P 500 inclusion criteria[1] states: > Treatment of IPOs. Initial public offerings should be seasoned for six to 12 months before being considered for addition to an index. So if the S&P 500 explicitly excludes equities to IPO into the index, then how is it that an investor in an S&P 500 index is delegating wealth creation? They're just trading the returns with other investors. And to be…

You can't ignore the indirect influence. The same way people care about resale value of their car or house, the investors that purchase at an IPO know that index funds will buy their shares and can therefore make more and bolder investments.

Re: Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

#32

Post by feelix »

throwaway-hn123 wrote: post #15
feelix wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything not-pro-clinton gets downvoted without explanation on any social media platform I've seen, including HN (which is supposed to be less biased, more objective, and superior to the other networks).

Oh come on, do you still need to pretend to be a victim? Aren't those days over now?

I'm not even pro trump, it's just an observation of overt bias.

Re: Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

#33

Post by deadringerr »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #22
manicdee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What came of the investigation? Republican fanatics keep missing the part that comes next, or claiming that the lack of conviction is due to the system being rigged. And of course no mention of Bush/Cheney and the private email server saga.

>> And of course no mention of Bush/Cheney and the private email server saga. This actually gave me a good laugh thank you. Invoking Bush close to a decade after he left office while simultaneously giving his own candidate a pass for using an unsecured email server. The funny thing is all you see and hear on hacker news is stories about companies getting hacked all the SV techies calling them stupid and morons. Then…

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe you misunderstood the parent post. They were pointing out the hypocrisy of caring about unprotected email servers now while not caring when it was done by a member of the same party. I don't believe the parent comment was saying that unprotected email servers are a-okay, just voicing frustration at the hypocrisy of the Republican party on that particular issue. It's possible that it is not hypocrisy, that an entirely different set of people were Republicans during Bush than those who are upset at Clinton's email controversy now; however, I don't believe that is the case.

Re: Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

#34

Post by tanderson92 »

icebraining wrote: post #29
tanderson92 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I continue to be mystified by this take. The S&P 500 index is usually the benchmark cited here. But the S&P 500 is tremendously diversified over sectors, factors, you name it. Trump managed to create actual wealth in our economic system at a rate slightly less than the S&P 500. If anything the people who invest in index funds are freeloaders on the economic engine that Trump is part of (full disclosure: I use index f…

If anything the people who invest in index funds are freeloaders No. How much wealth could those individuals create if they couldn't sell the companies on the market and invest that money, and had instead to accumulate dividends? The relationship is symbiotic. Yes, Trump created wealth, but the point is that his peers would have created even more if he hadn't used that money himself. To make an analogy, I can swim a…

I may have been a bit hyperbolic about freeloaders.

The bigger point I want to make is that the standard deviation on returns of a single venture like Trump's is so large that you cannot meaningfully compare it to a highly-diversified basket of stocks.

To use your analogy, it'd be like evaluating the effectiveness of a coach in a swimming event by picking a single one of their swimmers and comparing them to the average times of the U.S. Olympic team. Does this necessarily imply anything at all about the skill of the coach?

Re: Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

#35

Post by tanderson92 »

icebraining wrote: post #31
tanderson92 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it really does not. The S&P 500 inclusion criteria[1] states: > Treatment of IPOs. Initial public offerings should be seasoned for six to 12 months before being considered for addition to an index. So if the S&P 500 explicitly excludes equities to IPO into the index, then how is it that an investor in an S&P 500 index is delegating wealth creation? They're just trading the returns with other investors. And to be…

You can't ignore the indirect influence. The same way people care about resale value of their car or house, the investors that purchase at an IPO know that index funds will buy their shares and can therefore make more and bolder investments.

Of course I can ignore the indirect influence; if the company had no actual value at IPO its share price would plummet. Also, by definition the S&P 500 only includes companies which have had 4 consecutive quarters of positive GAAP earnings, so the shares would have value on the public markets. Specifically, they'd have to have enough value to be among the 500-or-so largest positive-earnings companies by market capitalization. Hardly value that can be attributable to indirect influence of an index fund.

Re: Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

#36

Post by r00fus »

fny wrote: post #28
r00fus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. Promises, for Trump, are fulfilled upon announcement, and then forgotten. The examples are legion.

I think, despite political affiliation, it's our obligation to hold him to the promises we believe in and galvanize his fired-up base to do so as well. I voted for Clinton and volunteered for the campaign, but I'll gladly push him to keep his word on this promise and the others that I believe will benefit our country.

Concur wholeheartedly. Just not very optimistic. But who knows?

Re: Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

#37

Post by coldcode »

I don't care about yet another stupid merger, its the net neutrality weakening that should concern everyone. In the end whether AT&Time is your ISP matters little if you only have one choice for ISP and they charge you to access Google special.

Re: Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

#38

Post by megablast »

r00fus wrote: post #6
beedogs wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either that, or he'll just break his promise and let it go through.

Bingo. Promises, for Trump, are fulfilled upon announcement, and then forgotten. The examples are legion.

So, he is already a real politician.

Any different to Obama promising to close Guantanamo bay?

And I say this as an Obama supporter.

Re: Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

#39

Post by cardine »

jackweirdy wrote: post #14
cryptrash wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, most billionaires have no idea what they're talking about. All luck. Yup. /s

Donald Trump would have more money now if he put his inheritance in an index fund. http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/

Wouldn't that be true of ~50% of companies by definition?

After all an index fund is basically just the average of all of the investments inside it.

Re: Trump, our next president, promised to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

#40

Post by paulddraper »

tanderson92 wrote: post #27
paulddraper wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investing in the S&P 500 delegates the "actual wealth creation" to others by providing them with the means. And they, on average, would have done a little better than Trump did.

No, it really does not. The S&P 500 inclusion criteria[1] states: > Treatment of IPOs. Initial public offerings should be seasoned for six to 12 months before being considered for addition to an index. So if the S&P 500 explicitly excludes equities to IPO into the index, then how is it that an investor in an S&P 500 index is delegating wealth creation? They're just trading the returns with other investors. And to be…

Are you simply pointing out that the wealth creation is delegated to mature companies?

Because that doesn't change the point. They could delegate further if appropriate.

But one way or another, those mature companies create wealth. (If they did not, the S&P 500 index would not rise.)

Post reply on HN