Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 336 posts

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#301

Post by 0x457 »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #75
gizmo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bed Bath followed the email scammer strategy of making their scam so obvious only the most financially illiterate people could fall for it. Hard to pull of, but once you've got an investor base that's willing to believe anything you can dilute them repeatedly and they'll still believe it's 5D chess.

Eh, frankly, I think that does a disservice to the people buying the stock. Were a bunch of people buying into the meme stock hype? Sure. Does that make them financially illiterate? Well, the folks who bought Hertz sure look pretty damn smart in hindsight even though at the time they were being described in similar ways, so... who's to say if they are illiterate or just have a different view of value and risk?

I mean...those people call themselves degenerate gamblers. It's precisely what it is - a gamble. Premium for calls is cheap, so dumping some cash into $1 calls was basically free.

There are some examples that aren't gambles - Movie Pass, you have to be not just financially illiterate, you have to be illiterate to invest in it.

BBBY is probably just Hertz FOMO though.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#302

Post by 0x457 »

silisili wrote: post #217
bombcar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are various tricks around this area (the Texas Two-step is a favorite) but most of the blatant ones have clawback possibilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_two-step_bankruptcy

I don't see how this isn't illegal, or more pointedly, why everyone isn't doing it if it is legal? So you can just write off liabilities into a new company? Why wouldn't every company do this every year?

Well, it is illegal to do anything ahead of bankruptcy that would have the effect of preferring shareholders to creditors.

You can't just spin off your debt into a new company and declare bankruptcy as you wish, courts are involved, things must be approved. Clawback exists.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#303

Post by 0x457 »

bearjaws wrote: post #31

This is a huge loss IMO, buying kitchen supplies and bedding on Amazon is complete shit. Target isn't much better due to lack of variety and types of bedding. I've bought the same bed sheets for 5+ years, a few months ago I bought new ones since some bleach got spilt on one set, it comes in and I could tell immediately the quality was far worse. One wash later, its ripping & fraying. Thankfully I could return them. S…

The only thing BBB was good at is spending that 20% coupon they send on some expensive item (iRobot Roomba for example or a Dyson). Everything else is overpriced and low quality, or costs the same as on amazon.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#304

Post by Spooky23 »

bearjaws wrote: post #31

This is a huge loss IMO, buying kitchen supplies and bedding on Amazon is complete shit. Target isn't much better due to lack of variety and types of bedding. I've bought the same bed sheets for 5+ years, a few months ago I bought new ones since some bleach got spilt on one set, it comes in and I could tell immediately the quality was far worse. One wash later, its ripping & fraying. Thankfully I could return them. S…

For bedding, etc, LL Bean or IKEA is the way to go. For kitchen stuff, William Sonoma or Crate & Barrel.

It costs more but you get more. In the 1990s, you could count on department stores for this stuff, but now you need to go up market.

BBB was great until about 5-6 years ago. The previous management made some execution errors and ended up messing up the product mix.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#305

Post by joseda-hg »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #162
justinpombrio wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the Foam Factory. We've bought a mattress and separately a foam topper from them and they've been great. You can tell they're legit because their products are listed in tables and because the styling on the website is completely out of fashion. https://www.thefoamfactory.com/mattress/memorymattress.html

Holy hell you're not kidding. It's like I'm browsing a site in 1999. It's pretty refreshing, though. The entire page loads in under 1/4 of a second for me.

You made me check, 150ms from start to finish

We're really missing out

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#306

Post by kylehotchkiss »

tobias2014 wrote: post #212
linsomniac wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The prices are garbage I get the feeling that BBB, like Kohl's and Joann's, are places you just don't shop unless you have a coupon, because there's always a 30% coupon.

Add Michaels, same story with always 20% off. They even have those coupons to scan at the registers, you just have to mention it.

Great for those nice cutting mat desk pads!

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#307

Post by reducesuffering »

stusmall wrote: post #40
fullshark wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the premise behind buying a stock for a company headed for bankruptcy?

There are two big ones. 1) There is a lot of volatility in this period. There is money to be made at buying in and dumping it at a small, local spike. A lot of the money is made off others trying the same game. 2) Some of these meme stock investors have been sold a bill of goods. Go check reddit.com/r/bbby to see what I mean. Some of them believe this is a larger conflict between good and evil. There is a belief that…

Ok wth. Attempting to post on reddit.com/r/bbby an innocuous message about how BBBY was burning $1 billion a year, they are being duped by an echo chamber, and better financial advice is on bogleheads.org receives an instantaneous removal by mods.

What have we done with technology that people are getting sucked into these disastrous echo chamber filter bubbles, where any dissenting opinion is blacklisted, turning people into financial ruin and QAnon brainwashing?

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#308

Post by reducesuffering »

vkou wrote: post #30
fullshark wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the premise behind buying a stock for a company headed for bankruptcy?

Through a combination of divination by star signs and chicken entrails, reddit determined that the bankruptcy is fake, the business is actually amazing, and the only reason everyone thinks the company is doomed is because it is being shorted by bad people. If they just buy and 'hodl', the shooters will get squeezed, and all the holders will make infinity dollars. After buying mountains of stock, they've come up with…

These people are being propagandized and any dissenting opinion is instantaneously removed by moderation through keyword filters or something. Echo chamber subreddits with a certain moderation is real life brainwashing.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#309

Post by kevinventullo »

bumby wrote: post #211
kevinventullo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? Housing prices in my small Midwest hometown have risen by something like 1%/yr on average for the last 30 years.

Just curious, what's the population growth been like? If it's been declining, why would we expect housing prices to go up at all?

Right, population has been steady or even slightly declining, and there has been plenty of housing development, so it’s not a surprise that existing housing prices haven’t gone up. But even that directly contradicts the OP’s first sentence.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#310

Post by abigail95 »

cycomanic wrote: post #248
FredPret wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don’t follow any rationality anymore Anymore? When have markets ever been rational? Markets only line up with reality over the long term. You can point to any instant, and even any decade in time, and point major inaccuracies in the public's collective financial thinking. > Houses can sit empty without tenants for years but they’ll only go up. Do you have stats for how much of a problem this is? The problem seems t…

> > Houses can sit empty without tenants for years but they’ll only go up. > Do you have stats for how much of a problem this is? The problem seems to be vacancy rates that are too low, not too high. No stats on my part, but I have some anecdotal evidence from Australia a couple of years ago. I definitely knew of several apartment complexes which were significantly empty, but advertised rents did not go down. The rea…

Australian east coast capital cities are the poster children for low vacancy rates and high prices.

The indicators you need to look for are politicians making it illegal to bid for a rental to obscure prices from market participants.

The percentage of capital gain vs rental income breakdown has been decreasing in Australia since interest rates started dropping 10 years ago.

Now it's going in the other direction, rents will outstrip capital gains because of higher interest - you'll have people saying that landlords are buying up houses and refusing to sell because rents are going up and they are just hoarding cash. You can't win against this argument.

Post reply on HN