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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

#151

Post by rchaud »

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.

I remember reading Graham for a finance class in the mid-2000s, and even then it was several decades old.

It's a relevant read if you work in securities analysis. If you're an investor however, the takeaways of the book are more philosophical than actionable. Too much has changed in the market since Graham's time.

The idea of an Uber-type company using VC billions to cover its losses would have been completely alien to him. As would companies doing an end run around the IPO process with SPACs.

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

#152

Post by morpheos137 »

pram wrote: post #74
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?

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

Yeah actually deliving a product that sells is such legacy thinking...we badly need a hard crash to clear out the deadwood and hucksters in the economy.

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

#153

Post by Apocryphon »

hef19898 wrote: post #114
hogFeast wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am by no means an economic expert, far from it. To me it seems so, that there is way to much money flowing around, looking for an outlet. And with interest rates being all time lows since 2008 parking that money at a bank doesn't work anymore. Before 2007/8, the problem was too much money being made too easily. We solved that by creating more money. And we repeated that with Covid.

That's ZIRP for ya.

https://www.readmargins.com/p/zirp-explains-the-world

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

#154

Post by ineedasername »

_c3bx wrote: post #141
H8crilA wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just "Copying Tesla" is not a fraud by a mile, the whole point of capitalism is that enterprises compete by offering alternative solutions[1]. It is actually surprising it took so long for someone to copy the "electric car company with Tesla characteristics", given the insanely attractive cost of equity capital that Tesla is enjoying. Matt Levine wrote a section on this, about how Elon said good-bye to earnings calls…

Whatever you think of them, the Tesla fanboys have been proven more right then wrong and the likes of Matt Levine (and Bloomberg) are just bitter at this point. A lot of EV startups like NKLA are going to come and go but very few if any will be able to replicate Teslas success in the long term. Retail investors are not always stupid, many of the same Tesla investors have been shorting NKLA since it came on via a spac…

and the likes of Matt Levine (and Bloomberg) are just bitter

Matt Levine has also struck me as more amused-- and perhaps confused-- than bitter about this.

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

#155

Post by yup00 »

_game_of_life wrote: post #48

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…

Financial markets are not coupled to real economics anymore.

They’re coupled to speculative gamesmanship. Whoever can generate statistics to captivate the masses who do not understand them, via press releases, and media blitzes.

That sounds cynical, but I “hob nob” with people invited to Davos, and run depts at Ivy League schools.

Behind closed doors these are the conversations I’ve been privy too. How to captivate the “market” which is a euphemism created years ago to replace the religious concept of “flock”.

Mirror neurons really challenge the correctness of any wisdom to come from business leaders. It’s a pantomime, ingratiate ourselves before the socially rich

People see taxation as theft of property. I see it as reminding people there are no Gods or kings.

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

#156

Post by dasudasu »

yup00 wrote: post #125
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Weren't there VCs who put money into this? Definitely, but worse than that, real companies that really should have known better. GM associated themselves. For what reason I can’t figure out. It must have been high up because the GM engineers I know all knew it was a 100% scam. It’s like anything else that confuses me in business. Some idiot made a mistake, sure, but then their boss approved that, and all the other…

I read an article, over a year ago now, that said the GM deal was nothing but upside for GM They got cash from Nikola whether they ended up manufacturing anything for them or not, and had to put up nothing up front.

Reputational hit from propping up literal fraud. Opportunity cost from not partnering with better companies in the space.

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

#157

Post by mcot2 »

rberg wrote: post #149
itsoktocry wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a ridiculously obvious attempt to associate with Tesla. Nikola was building barely functional prototypes of their trucks years before Tesla was building barely functional Semi truck prototypes, for the record. > What were they thinking? Were they being amoral and hoping to ride this pump and dump or did they actually buy into this shit? Fundamentally, what have they done that's so evil compared to, say, the multitu…

> Nikola was building barely functional prototypes of their trucks years before Tesla was building barely functional Semi truck prototypes, for the record. If by "barely functional" you mean a metal skeleton on wheels that rolled down hills, then yes. I'm not a shill for Tesla as they definitely have made very questionable claims in the past, but to claim that Nikola's semi is in any way similar to Tesla is a bit of…

This person is a troll. The Tesla semi is not “barely functional”. They have been spotted driving all over the place and doing real world testing on actual highways and in cold weather. Production was already to be started except for a shortage of battery cells (due to the extreme popularity of their existing cars and powerwalls/megapacks) which they are working to remedy.

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

#158

Post by rchaud »

woodruffw wrote: post #42
belter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hav…

This is exactly how startup valuations work though. Some minor chunk of equity gets bought up by an investor, so by extension the entire equity of the company is now worth billions on a per-share basis.

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

#159

Post by pbreit »

_game_of_life wrote: post #48

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…

Still a $5b company: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/NKLA:NASDAQ

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

#160

Post by chirau »

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 )

I am more surprised that Mazda's market cap is only $5B. That's just about the same as Duolingo. Interesting times we live in, really.
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