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

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

#71
post #57
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you just proved his point. NKLA was an outright scam, and Tesla wasn’t, but the way many people talked about Tesla was as if it was a scam selling vapor ware. It took a very keen eye indeed to tease out fact from fiction. Tesla may have “mediocre growth” as you claim (I strongly disagree) but the number of Tesla cars I see on the road are a testament that the company is no scam.

Interested how you define 'scam'. Would you say Wirecard was a scam (their payments network is still in use today), or Enron?

My point is that the fact a company is producing a product does not necessarily disqualify them from being a 'scam'.

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

#72
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

If it ends poorly for someone(s), then it ends fabulously for someone(s) else. The same could be said for gambling... the lure of easy money is difficult for people to resist.

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

#73
post #20
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 invested too, doesn’t mean it was necessarily a bad investment. You gotta take risks if you want to get in early on potential huge gains. Luckily I didn’t put too much in. Let that be a lesson to anyone, don’t invest into speculative companies unless you’re willing to lose it all.

don't conflate investment and speculation

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

#74
post #28

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?

Given this market, the fact that it’s wholly fraudulent is incredibly bullish

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

#75
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

Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, founder of Nikola fraud

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

#77
post #28

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

#78

Nikola is one of Crystal lang largest sponsors[0]. I wonder if this is going to have repercussions. It's no fault of the Crystal community but might cast a shadow nevertheless. [0] https://crystal-lang.org/sponsors/

I see Mozilla always complaining about privacy matters and violations of its largest partner, critiquing the very hand that feeds them and they still take in the money that keeps them alive and accounts for 80% of their entire revenues YoY.

That partner is Google, the anti-privacy company that stands against what Mozilla is fighting for and supporting (and also funds many other open-source projects). Nothing has happened or changed and zero repercussions for Google's actions. The same for Crystal.

I do not think you will find any clean hands in the tech industry and everyone knows it.

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

#79

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.c…

Even the name screams transparent fraud, a ridiculously obvious attempt to associate with Tesla.

Weren't there VCs who put money into this? What were they thinking? Were they being amoral and hoping to ride this pump and dump or did they actually buy into this shit?

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

#80
post #40
post #34

now do elon

Are you claiming that Tesla vehicles are fraudulent and only drive when rolling down hills?

No, parent is likely saying Elon could be indicted for fraud as well. He wasn't exactly exonerated by the SEC for 'funding secured', and there are a number of lawsuits outstanding, most notably the Solar City one.

Just because you have an innovative and popular product doesn't mean you can't conduct fraud?

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