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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

#41

Post by shawnz »

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.

> History says speculative 'investing' ends poorly

Does it? If you look past the biggest scams and bubbles, I think most research shows that a moderate amount of speculation actually decreases volatility and makes market manipulation more difficult. Speculators after all are the ones who correct the prices of assets which are being wrongly valued.

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

#42

Post by woodruffw »

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...

That deli isn't "worth" $100 million: it's thinly traded on an underregulated market (OTC). The headline is eye popping and drives readers; the more mundane reality is that the deli's 60-or-so shareholders can stake whatever prices they want between each other without ever realizing an actual valuation of anywhere near $100 million.

This is in contrast to Nikola, which is currently listed on Nasdaq and appears to have gone out of its way to deceive retail investors.

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

#43

Post by hogFeast »

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.

Just in my experience as an investor, I have never seen anything like this. And I am somewhat familiar with financial history, and I have never heard of anything like this happening either.

It isn't just all the fraud SPACs, it is GME, it is AMC. You can have a business that is overvalued based on the fundamentals, but the future is always unknown. What is interesting about now is that you have companies with huge risks, that are already doing poorly today, and the market is just ignoring it (and btw, you have started to see papers appearing, both theory and practical, that explain how retail money is pushing these stocks...this is something that people in the market already understand but there is point blank ignorance from govt, media, economists, etc.). With dot-com, there was theoretical growth there. With housing, there was structural reasons why the market didn't function. There are often fundamental reasons why these things happen. With this, it is just a wave of money crashing into this small section of the market.

The only exception that occurs to me is HTZ. There was a huge media furore about that, and it turned out that was totally wrong (people who bought at the bottom got more than 10x their money in six months).

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

#44

Post by f38zf5vdt »

snarkypixel wrote: post #35
chasebank wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They used to. In the era of quantitative easing, governments just pump money into any failing major player.

edit: I see I rustled some jimmies. Feel free to have a look yourself at "modern capitalism".

https://money.cnn.com/news/specials/storysupplement/bankbail...

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

#45

Post by [deleted] »

imglorp wrote: post #28
raesene9 wrote: post #19

Interesting how even after this was announced, their market cap is over $5b ( https://www.google.com/finance/quote/NKLA:NASDAQ ) in the same ballpark as established car companies like Mazda ( https://www.google.com/finance/quote/MZDAF:OTCMKTS )

What? How? Is there any potential upside at all, unless it's another pump and dump or short squeeze game?

[deleted]

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

#47

Post by andybak »

hogFeast wrote: post #43
chasebank wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just in my experience as an investor, I have never seen anything like this. And I am somewhat familiar with financial history, and I have never heard of anything like this happening either. It isn't just all the fraud SPACs, it is GME, it is AMC. You can have a business that is overvalued based on the fundamentals, but the future is always unknown. What is interesting about now is that you have companies with huge ri…

HTZ = Hertz?

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

#48

Post by _game_of_life »

This should not be surprising to anyone. Arstechnica has followed Nikola's terrible and obvious fraud(s) for years now:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/02/nikola-admits-to-making...

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/12/nikola-stock-craters-af...

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/nikola-patented-a-stole...

And many more...

The speculation around this stock has been insane for many years now:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/11/nikola-stock-soars-afte...

Top quote: "The market can remain irrational longer than you can roll your eyes at it."

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

#49

Post by rvz »

ffggvv wrote: post #34

now do elon

Like many famous people that have a massive cult following, some people like the current Tesla CEO, are allowed and able to get away with lots of fraud and can still continue to mislead their own customers. Like the dangerous and faulty 'Full Self Driving' software that is killing their customers. [0]

The villains of this week is Trevor Milton and Nikola Motors. Tesla will probably get away with [0] no matter how many people expose FSD which puts lots of drivers lives at risk.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/business/tesla-autopilot-...

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