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Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

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Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#81
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the reports, he made 800x on his investment. He's held on for a while already.

Should Warren Buffet sell on his total investment? I mean he's got a return of 10000000x, and he's been in it for a really really long time..

A) he has sold a good portion of it. B) Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company. It is diversified already. So there is much less of a need to sell it.

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#82

Peter, if you are reading this, there's one question I'd love to ask. Why did tou even buy Facebook shares in the first place? Just to say you owned a part of Facebook? It was a clear failure from the beginning when they hit the market, way overpriced - surely you must of known this too. And then comes why other question. Why sell now, after loosing so much money? If you were willing to take a gamble in the first pla…

I wish I could take back my downvote. T_T

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#83

Everyone keeps focusing on Facebook as an ad platform, and pointing to the difficulty in monetizing mobile via ads. But I'm betting Facebook is on the brink of rolling out a digital wallet. They already act as an authentication/identity service with hundreds of millions of users. If those users linked their FB accounts to their bank accounts, they'd be able to buy anything on any integrated website that they log into…

> "I'm betting Facebook is on the brink of rolling out a digital wallet." I'm betting they're on the brink of slicing dicing and selling everyone's personal information. It's more profitable. It makes use of their principle asset. There are few comparable companies to act as competitors. It's a really big and lucrative market. And it solves their problem with monetizing mobile.

You could both be right. Login with Facebook, buy with 1 click. And let the merchant know all kinds of information about you to show you the right products.

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He converted a $500,000 investment into more than $1,000,000,000, which is at least 200,000% ROI. Would you recommend against diversification at this point? Do you provide financial advisory services by any chance?

I am positive he is doing diversification but not with facebook as part of his portfolio; as he sold pretty much all of his facebook stock. So once again. Facebook insider chooses to sell most of his stock prior to IPO, and prior to first quarter results. Very highlightable..

he sold 80% of his stock IIRC.

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#85

Peter, if you are reading this, there's one question I'd love to ask. Why did tou even buy Facebook shares in the first place? Just to say you owned a part of Facebook? It was a clear failure from the beginning when they hit the market, way overpriced - surely you must of known this too. And then comes why other question. Why sell now, after loosing so much money? If you were willing to take a gamble in the first pla…

Did you even skim read the article? He invested $500k as one of their earliest investors, and turned that into $400 million. He sold when he did because of a lock up period.

Christ, I must of been asleep while reading that article! You're right.

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#86
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are calling more things social than the word pre-supposes. If you call 4chan "social", then you have the wrong definition - 4chan is a forum, a place people discuss things. Facebook, or "the social web" as its coined these days, is about the friend graph (ditto with twitter - its about who you follow, and who follows you), not about discussions. Imho, the web will function perfectly well without facebook…

As I said in my post, I'd include forums in "social." Facebook has the graph, but you could construct a weaker form of that graph using any of the popular community-focused sites.

Not really. Facebook and other social sites nowadays all rely on one true personal identity. On forums on the other hand you can be whatever, multiple times, and have a discussion with yourself (even a meaningful one).

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#87
The 10b5-1 is actually bit fuzzy on whether you can cancel trading plan. SEC basically says that if you cancel the trade than you are not legally liable because no transaction actually occurred and so one cannot claim that you profited from insider trading. So in theory you can cancel the trading plan if you like. However if SEC feels that you cancelled only because of price drop then they can come after you for ALL your future trading plans or may even re-examine previous trades to see if you were trying to game the system. Therefore executives are advised by to cancel only under extraordinary circumstances.

So I think Thiel had lot of legal pressure, although technically not an obligation, to sell as per his trading plan filing. He could have taken risk but it's probably not worth it for another half-a-billion of profit if you are already multi-billionaire and if you are already cultivating 1000X returns as it is.

On the other hand it is surprising that he decided to sell most of his stock instead say only quarter or so. I would think Thiel as a long term investor in FB from what I've read in the book "Facebook Effect". Thiel is one of the few person that probably knows most upcoming plans and products in works and problems at FB. A typical strategy for investors like Thiel is to cash out in stages instead of dumping most stock at once like regular VCs do (10-25% each quarter, for example). Considering his level of insider knowledge this only means he did not expect FB stock going up at the time of trade filing in at least 1 to 2 year horizon.

This is even more surprising because I keep thinking FB is going to come out with something like AdSense any day now and almost instantly double its revenues bringing stock back to $25-30. Obviously Thiel has calculated things differently.

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#88

Everyone keeps focusing on Facebook as an ad platform, and pointing to the difficulty in monetizing mobile via ads. But I'm betting Facebook is on the brink of rolling out a digital wallet. They already act as an authentication/identity service with hundreds of millions of users. If those users linked their FB accounts to their bank accounts, they'd be able to buy anything on any integrated website that they log into…

Thats what up at previous discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4042495

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#89
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But i thought facebook's revenues are in the billions? Where is that money coming from?

A little over 3.5 billion. I think he was saying that the revenue considering the company size and user base (almost 1 billion) is not very much.

Yup. Especially considering their revenue has also been falling, that there are concrete reasons to think that it will continue to do so, and that they're operating in a notoriously brutal and fickle space. There's money there, but not enough to cushion a fall.

Re: Peter Thiel Sells Majority Of His Facebook Shares In Deal Planned Pre-IPO

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should Warren Buffet sell on his total investment? I mean he's got a return of 10000000x, and he's been in it for a really really long time..

A) he has sold a good portion of it. B) Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company. It is diversified already. So there is much less of a need to sell it.

So you're saying Berkshire Hathaway is much better setup as a long term business than Facebook; therefore a better investment. I don't disagree at all.
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