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Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

cnbc.com

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Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#31

Post by koolba »

belter wrote: post #22
dreyfan wrote: post #2

And yet NKLA still has a $5B market cap despite the entire company being 100% fraud. Amazing. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/nkla

Well if a Deli can be worth 100 million... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/theres-a-single-new-jersey-d... Maybe all these valuations are correct and its the dollar that is going the direction of the zimbabwean dollar ? https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-BA632_ZIMDLR_DV...

Apples and oranges. NKLA has a daily volume of 11M shares. I’m not saying there isn’t shenanigans involved, but it’s much harder to do at that scale v.s. a handful of thinly traded OTC shares.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#32

Post by bluetwo »

squarefoot wrote: post #24
typon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This company was an obvious scam from the beginning...the EV hype brought on by Tesla swept up so many naive people. Some of my family invested in this stock and lost a lot of money.

The company name alone should have been a hint that they were building on Tesla's hype. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Exactly. First rule is making a fraud is to associate it with something credible.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#33

Post by hef19898 »

ajross wrote: post #27
typon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This company was an obvious scam from the beginning...the EV hype brought on by Tesla swept up so many naive people. Some of my family invested in this stock and lost a lot of money.

I think that's very much a hindsight kind of thing. I mean, yes, Nikola was a scam. But in "the beginning" the only people willing to say that it was a scam were ones who sounded exactly like the much louder, better funded, and media-accessible people screaming that Tesla was a scam. This very site was filled with $TSLAQ nonsense. And it was all wrong, much of it deliberately so. The investment world is drowning in d…

In all fairness there was a non-zero chance of Tesla running out of money at one point. At the final word on Tesla being worth what it is hasn't been spoken neither. I do have to give Musk credit for being able to maintain Tesla the way he does, under everyone else the company wouldn't exist anymore. Not that I think Tesla is particularly well run so, but Elon's ability to entertain the market and keep money flowing is impressive.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#35

Post by snarkypixel »

chasebank wrote: post #30
dreyfan wrote: post #2

And yet NKLA still has a $5B market cap despite the entire company being 100% fraud. Amazing. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/nkla

Older I get, more I realize the market is just a game of human psychology. Stocks, housing, crypto, etc. History says speculative 'investing' ends poorly but this time, who knows? If you happen to have the answer, I'm all ears.

"The father of value investing, Benjamin Graham, explained this concept by saying that in the short run, the market is like a voting machine--tallying up which firms are popular and unpopular. But in the long run, the market is like a weighing machine--assessing the substance of a company."

Boring answer, but in the long-term, great businesses go up, whereas crappy businesses go bankrupt.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#36

Post by gpt5 »

chasebank wrote: post #30
dreyfan wrote: post #2

And yet NKLA still has a $5B market cap despite the entire company being 100% fraud. Amazing. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/nkla

Older I get, more I realize the market is just a game of human psychology. Stocks, housing, crypto, etc. History says speculative 'investing' ends poorly but this time, who knows? If you happen to have the answer, I'm all ears.

It’s still all rational: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#37

Post by ericmay »

samizdis wrote: post #11
ericmay wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they fell only slightly (surprised they fell at all actually) because Trevor Milton was named, not Nikola. So they let him go and now he personally is getting sued, not the company.

The CNBC article said 11pc in early trading. Just checked the price and it's 7.9pc down atm. That's still quite a drop, I'd say.

Gotcha - I think the parent said it only dropped slightly so I was reacting to that news at that time. It's definitely a significant drop as you point out. I'm a little surprised at such a large drop though, the small drop made a little more sense to me.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#38

Post by RC_ITR »

ajross wrote: post #27
typon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This company was an obvious scam from the beginning...the EV hype brought on by Tesla swept up so many naive people. Some of my family invested in this stock and lost a lot of money.

I think that's very much a hindsight kind of thing. I mean, yes, Nikola was a scam. But in "the beginning" the only people willing to say that it was a scam were ones who sounded exactly like the much louder, better funded, and media-accessible people screaming that Tesla was a scam. This very site was filled with $TSLAQ nonsense. And it was all wrong, much of it deliberately so. The investment world is drowning in d…

Hey, you’re not going to like hearing this, and feel free to ignore, but $TSLA is c. 20% below it’s peak valuation and still is trading at 100x earnings on pretty mediocre growth.

It’s still wildly overvalued, people don’t talk about it as much though since the price is flat, not up. Be careful of confirmation bias.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#39

Post by yashap »

Invictus0 wrote: post #14

If you haven't seen the Hindenburg report, I recommend reading it for the comedic value: https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/ Notable laughs: * Nikola rolled their semi truck down a hill to show that it worked * Trevor appointed his brother Travis "Director of Hydrogen Production/Infrastructure" when his only experience was pouring concrete driveways * The infamous "HTML5 supercomputer" comment: https://www.youtube…

Wow, thanks for sharing, I’d never seen this before:

> "The entire infotainment system is a HTML 5 super computer," Milton said. "That's the standard language for computer programmers around the world, so using it let's us build our own chips. And HTML 5 is very secure. Every component is linked on the data network, all speaking the same language. It's not a bunch of separate systems that somehow still manage to communicate."

The founder of an apparently very technically challenging company speaking like that should have been an instant red flag, that’s absolute nonsense.

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