Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy • Hacker News Board

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#271

Post by lbwtaylor » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 9:03 PM UTC

adam_arthur wrote: post #186

humanlion87 wrote: post #8

I find the whole situation fascinating. Bed Bath continued to sell hundreds of millions of shares while they were preparing for bankruptcy and retail investors (or meme stock investors) continued to buy them. I assume Bed Bath did all the paperwork that is necessary (like calling out risks, that the raised capital will go to creditors first, etc) for such a stock sale. But it is clear they were doing it out of bad-fa…

They didn't sell nearly enough shares. They could have probably saved their business, at least in the short term, by selling more. Their shares outstanding barely increased even as the price rocketed unjustifiably higher on meme energy. I'm consistently amazed by the poor management by CFOs of companies not selling shares when their P/E or even P/S multiples are 100x+. This is 100% free and exploitable money availabl…

> They didn't sell nearly enough shares.

This doesn't seem to be right. From Matt Levine:

>On Jan. 20, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. had about 117.3 million shares of common stock outstanding; the stock closed that day at $3.35 per share. On March 27, it had about 428.1 million shares outstanding, at $0.7881 each. On April 10, it had 558.7 million shares outstanding, at $0.2961 each. Yesterday, April 23, when it filed for bankruptcy, it had 739,056,836 shares outstanding. 1 The stock closed at $0.2935 on Friday.

https://archive.is/PXnpB

Seems like they sold as much as possible, enough to crater the stock, but not save the company.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#272

Post by bumby » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 9:07 PM UTC

nemothekid wrote: post #229

rcme wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the market acting like infinite growth is baked in, or is inflation simply out of control? And I’m not talking about CPI over the last three years. Stocks have been insane over the last decade. Real estate has been insane over the last decade. Neither of which is measured by CPI. So yea… the market is pricing things like the Fed will keep printing money to prop up assets it explicitly ignores in its inflation calc…

> Is the market acting like infinite growth is baked in, It's this. America has decided that: 1. The most important retirement/wealth vehicle is your home. 2. Home prices must only go up or your wealth will be destroyed. 3. The government should use it's power to uphold (1) and (2), which results in NIMBYism, all the tax breaks you see around mortgages, and of course the 2008 bailouts. w.r.t stocks I largely think th…

You forgot the part where people use their home equity as a revolving line of credit, which exacerbates #2.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#273

Post by Xeoncross » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #262

Xeoncross wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is acting very rationally. If you print trillions of dollars out of thin air every year, there is more money and more demand. So everything else goes up in price. Everything still costs the same relative to the amount of US dollars that exist. Wages just aren't keeping up with printing press.

Money printing (aka QE) stopped 13 months ago and money shredding (aka QT) started 10 months ago.

Check the charts again, the new lending vehicles to banks just wiped out half the QT that we had gained last year.

Set the chart to a 1yr scale: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL

You'll see our QT was already paltry to begin with compared with the total balance sheet, now we're close to our ATH again.

Prices are the result of years of strong printing (since 2008) ballooning our cash vs asset ratio compared with what it was in the 90's or 00's. It takes time for the economy to react, but we certainly had a bull run decade since the printing started.

In 2018 they started the same slow sell off of assets, but then quickly surpassed it during the 2020 lockdown printing.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#274

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

sharkweek wrote: post #246

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything has been fundamentally detached from reality, from stocks to housing. Houses can sit empty without tenants for years but they’ll only go up. Companies can be unprofitable for literal decades but they’ll keep finding funding and buyers. Commercial properties can bleed tenant but the prices will only be up. In a world of shrinking growth , stalling productivity, and dying demographics, the market behaves lik…

I live in Seattle. There was a house on my street that had been torn down in maybe 2013-2014, that the owner of the lot sat on for a bit (it was one guy). He spent the next five-ish years slowly building a big, new house. I’d laugh at how long it was taking him on a week-by-week basis while taking my dog on a walk. There it is, the house that will take almost half a decade to complete. Well he finally does, and he se…

[deleted]

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#275

Post by vkou » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #165

rvba wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markets dont follow logic because central banks pump incredible amounts of dollars via money creation. Quantitative easing, 0% interest, massive inflation - are all just facets of the same problem - that central banks dont work for the common people. Market looks irrational, but it is rational - money is "free" - so zombie companies can exist. Inflation just ruins the low and middle class, but who cares - it is conve…

> Licence to create money out of thin air is like license to steal. Is the purchasing power of your savings account shrinking 6% a year from inflation, or it is shrinking 6% a year from bank robbers? Same effect either way.

If I'm sitting on a mountain of corn/a pile of gold/a warehouse full of NVIDIA GTX 3080 cards, and someone else starts growing corn/digging up gold/selling 4080 cards, my savings' purchasing power is going to drop, but it would be disingenuous of me to complain that I'm being robbed.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#276

Post by vkou » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

treeman79 wrote: post #238

netrus wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having one spouse at home is a tremendously expensive form of child care, from an economists point of view. But the cost is mostly flat with the number of children, that's true for sure.

Not really. Lower tax rates for remaining spouse. Huge reduction in food expenses from having time to cook at home. Cost of childcare for even 1 child is huge. Unless spouse is making major money, it just isn’t worth it from a money standpoint.

> Huge reduction in food expenses from having time to cook at home.

Most people already cook most of their food at home, regardless of whether they have children.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#277

Post by cjohnson318 » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

treeman79 wrote: post #85

cjohnson318 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 19 Kids and Counting I think the birthrate in the US has been falling consistently for years and years. After people have one kid, they realize how expensive childcare is, and usually don't have more than one more.

If one spouse stays home, it’s not much more to have multiple from a day to day perspective. If you put in the effort to teach kids to manage age appropriate chores, the workload can be kept sane.

> If one spouse stays home, it’s not much more to have multiple from a day to day perspective.

Sure, if you're the one working. Even with both of us watching our kids at the same time, it's still exhausting to keep up with them. The hardest days of my week are Saturday and Sunday.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#278

Post by cjohnson318 » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

no_wizard wrote: post #175

cjohnson318 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 19 Kids and Counting I think the birthrate in the US has been falling consistently for years and years. After people have one kid, they realize how expensive childcare is, and usually don't have more than one more.

It was a TV Show[0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_Kids_and_Counting

Oh, from the context I assumed GP was listing general, pervasive trends from the 2000s.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#279

Post by slaw » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #79

cratermoon wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite of the moment is 'gluten free'. Seen on things that physically cannot have gluten in them, unless it's contaminated somehow.

It started with vegan and then lactose free. But hey, free marketing for a ton products, right?

I remember times when everything was cholesterol free. I even started joking I am buying cholesterol free gasoline.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#280

Post by rilindo » Tue, Apr 25, 2023, 9:48 PM UTC

pjmorris wrote: post #263

crooked-v wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing prices keep going up in the US because, fundamentally, there's not enough housing and hasn't been enough housing built for decades [1]. In most big cities, this is a self-inflicted problem caused by bad zoning and by planning and permitting processes that can take years and add huge amounts to home prices. (This is a big part of the reason there's so much "luxury" housing; adding a superficial high-end gloss…

I just went and looked up 'San Francisco empty residences'... it's somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 depending on where you look. I then looked up 'San Francisco homeless population'... somewhere around 8,000. I am not convinced of the narrative that there isn't enough housing.

Those 40,000 - 60,000 "residences" are not necessarily available or even occupy-able. And the number of homeless is very like an under-estimate[0].

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xZXdXxYBGU