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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

#61

Post by marvin »

RC_ITR wrote: post #38
ajross wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure I'd classify 100% year-on-year growth to revenues of $12 billion as mediocre, during a year when the production lines of two of their three cars were shut down for almost an entire quarter and we also went through the worst pandemic since 1918.

The valuation is still steep by earnings and compared to likely competitors, but it's not based on speculation devoid of observations.

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

#64

Post by adventured »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #51
imglorp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I also think it’s overvalued, but the company distanced itself from the criminal founder long ago. The company also has about 3/4 of a billion dollars in the bank. It’s basically an extremely well funded startup with a bit of a head start on the EV market at this point.

> I also think it’s overvalued, but the company distanced itself from the criminal founder long ago.

September 2020 is not long ago in terms of distancing yourself from the foundations of an enormous fraud.

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

#65

Post by CPLX »

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…

One thing you’re ignoring is that investment doesn’t occur in the abstract. It’s literally an investment in the company, and it’s not just a bet on future results it actually can and does change the outcome.

For example GME and AMC were able to wipe out their debt snd get a bunch of cash in the door to run their business with via all this retail investment. It’s quite possible having that money will change their story from failure to success.

Betting on horses doesn’t make the horse go faster but betting on companies can.

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

#66

Post by tankenmate »

eplanit wrote: post #8
the-dude wrote: post #4

Original title Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, founder of electric carmaker Nikola, on three counts of fraud Suggested title which does fit : Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, founder of Nikola, on three counts of fraud

I wondered why there is a superfluous comma in the title.

There isn't a superfluous comma, the two commas are use to delineate the relative clause "founder of electric carmaker Nikola".

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

#68

Post by sirspacey »

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.

This is a wildly optimistic way of framing the long-term value of the market.

It’s more likely that the crappy companies will live for the long term - if you measure “crappy” by anything resembling consumer/client benefit.

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

#70

Post by shawnz »

chasebank wrote: post #53
shawnz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Copy / paste from elsewhere but here's a recent list of speculative investing bubbles and their outcomes: The Japanese Nikkei is still down 40% from 1989. That was 31 years ago. The Shanghai Composite index is down 45% from 2007. That was 13 years ago. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index is down 10% from the peak in 2007. The German DAX is a “total return” index that includes dividends. So it cannot be compared to the other…

Yes, but what about all the speculation that happened that didn't lead to bubbles and actually led to improved market efficiency? My point is that you can't just look at the most obvious examples of past bubbles with full hindsight and say that all speculation is a net negative because of those.
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