Good. After the details of the sources on the absurd hitjob they did on Super Micro came out recently, they should be deeply embarrassed. The whole thing was basically just the claims of a disgruntled sales manager, of very dubious character, fluffed up to seem like there was some legion of internal whistleblowers. Not to mention relying heavily on mixing in details of long settled previous issues at the company to l…
Yea the Adani report already had me skeptical but the Supermicro hit job, and the fact that multiple independent auditors haven’t found the same claimed problems in their accounting, has made Hindenburg look a lot more shady. This to me looks like an incompetent firm that profited from big short positions and potentially false reports, now closing shop so there’s no assets to claim in a lawsuit.
I've ironically lost more money the more closely I've paid attention to my investments because I was naively confident in the market's ability (or as I've come to suspect, willingness) to react to evidence of fraud. The amount of deceit put out into the world and gobbled up, on purpose, in business is obscene and seriously depressing. The magnitude of damage to psyches and thus economies that anyone acting in a fraud…
The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. The market will tolerate infinite BS for arbitrary periods of time. Which also means being careful of short selling. It can put you at unlimited risk even if you are absolutely right.
> Which also means being careful of short selling.
There are a number of businesses I know are badly run and will eventually fail, but I cannot find a way to monetize that safely without knowing the timeline for failure.
> Many self-important people online are quick to pounce on short sellers as being evil, and that will forever be a serious red flag to me thanks in no small part to Nate Anderson and the folks at Hindenburg Research. Credible arguments can be made however that short-selling itself, especially naked short selling, is an unethical thing to do as the pure possibility of short-selling makes some forms of crime possible i…
1. Naked short selling basically doesn't happen anymore. To the extent that it does happen it's a mere technicality and the borrow is found after a couple of days. 2. There is very little money in shorting. Pumping and dumping by making up positive news is much more lucrative. "to the moon" has been a trope for years, and there is no equivalent on the short side. Even the world's most successful short seller Jim Chan…
As for 3. Looking at the HR targets they don't look like hunch targets to me.
They seem to be going after egregious high flyers with a pattern of grift who are vulnerable to a short.
Literally every time I shorted (our bought puts) I lost money. One particular short of Beyond Meat (via puts) I was right about eventually, just not in the timeframe needed. I knew Beyond Meat was BS but unable to sustain the losses as it kept climbing in a complete bubble.
The right music at the right time can be transformative.
I remember listening to the theme song for "The Social Network" often when I was frustrated at work about 12 years ago in a different job in a different state in a different life. Scala & Kolacny Brothers -- Creep It's a haunting choral cover of the Radiohead song.
The Social Network soundtrack is essentially mandatory to listen to when coding, I've heard it thousands of times by now.
I've ironically lost more money the more closely I've paid attention to my investments because I was naively confident in the market's ability (or as I've come to suspect, willingness) to react to evidence of fraud. The amount of deceit put out into the world and gobbled up, on purpose, in business is obscene and seriously depressing. The magnitude of damage to psyches and thus economies that anyone acting in a fraud…
I won't name names but a very popular so called "app growth king" launched recently and it's just full of dark patterns. Even going so far as giving out a "free month", when it's just a way for the user to lock into a yearly plan after a one month trial.
Isn’t that virtually every (mobile) subscription app in existence…?
> It can put you at unlimited risk even if you are absolutely right. The risk is in borrowing, not short selling. How many momo jockies out there think about the "unlimited risk" from buying Tesla on margin? In that case, you're shorting USD, but no one talks about that because it always will be fashionable to short USD. Just like it always will be fashionable to short JPY, for carry and more. Until it's not.
You can short USD by buying Bitcoin or a similar non-correlated asset but how could buying a usd correlated asset (TSLA) be shorting?
Stocks are generally not considered tied to currency- if the company has some fundamental value, that should be inflation proof.
So technically buying almost any stock can be a way of shorting the USD in that you are selling it now and will buy it back later.
The risk - besides that of the company itself- I suppose is that if you have massive deflation you will end up with less USD. I don’t think anyone is worried about massive deflation of the USD, since the Fed can and would prevent that.
I've ironically lost more money the more closely I've paid attention to my investments because I was naively confident in the market's ability (or as I've come to suspect, willingness) to react to evidence of fraud. The amount of deceit put out into the world and gobbled up, on purpose, in business is obscene and seriously depressing. The magnitude of damage to psyches and thus economies that anyone acting in a fraud…
Keep in mind, fraud isn't necessarily a big deal for the shareholder, not all fraud is Enron-tier. For example, I fully believe they were right about Adani, but it was basically just skimming money off the top. If Adani is an embezzler, but also good and funneling bribes to get gov't contracts, then the overall effect on profits may just be breakeven or even positive. The losers would be the Indian citizenry. The com…
True. Small frauds are common. I know people that have gotten away with pump-dumps. I know people that have raised obscene money for terrible ideas. I even helped close one customer while at one company, and then when I moved to another company, I had to meet the same buyer and he chewed me out in front of my rep because of the shady deal from my last company. And I even had a customer that kinda defrauded us! And when I was younger, I saw a lot of tiny behaviors that might be considered fraudulent if looked at from the angle of a transaction. I had to stop working for a while because it was destroying my soul. Nate says there was no danger or specific reason to close, but I very much doubt this.
What no one touches is that he used to unmask the devil and also let the regular folks (if they trust him) take short positions just like he did. Sort of Robin Hood with weak reference.
That's not how that works. They take out short positions and then release the info to profit off the drop when they announce. Announcing publically is how they make their profit, not them letting you in on it. Informational advantage is their entire strategy.