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One Billion Dollars Short, Bill Ackman, and the Siege Of Herbalife (2015)

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Re: One Billion Dollars Short, Bill Ackman, and the Siege Of Herbalife (2015)

#121

Post by Finnucane »

opportune wrote: post #114
Finnucane wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>he frequently criticizes the subjects by making them appear ridiculous That is literally his job description.

John Oliver's style is more akin to pointing a finger and laughing at someone than actually deconstructing why they are wrong. And even when he does deconstruct things, I think many of his arguments hinge on emotion and non-sequitur (e.g. It's 201X). I am an anti-fan of him, personally. He's basically the young peoples' version of a right-wing talk radio host or TV personality, yet people do not at all seem to realiz…

>John Oliver's style is more akin to pointing a finger and laughing at someone

Again, as Oliver himself says repeatedly, he is a comedian, not a journalist. That's what comedians do. It's confusing to some people, because he talks about real things and sometimes manages to slip in more actual information than some actual journalists--esp the mock-journalists on TV--do.

Re: One Billion Dollars Short, Bill Ackman, and the Siege Of Herbalife (2015)

#122

Post by sharemywin »

ethbro wrote: post #112
Top19 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's with all the survivorship bias in these responses? For every person you know that's made money in an MLM, that mathematically means there were 1,000 people AT MINIMUM below them who were scammed somewhere around $300 to usually $20,000 (when you're poor that can be 3 months worth of savings and the difference between taking multiple overdraft hits + a title loan) to live a hijacked version of the American Drea…

A shorter way of putting it is probably: If products don't get sold to actual consumers in sufficient numbers to pay everyone, then the money has to come from somewhere. It generally comes from "lower" distributors that one signs up. Those who are successful and see a profit by doing this talk about it; those who lose money do not. Ergo, no social good, the majority of people talking about it are successful, and it r…

kind like the whole venture/startup industry. promote lottery mentality. pay below market rates for the effort and time put into to startups. only a few get rewarded. Only difference they seduce you with your own ideas.

Re: One Billion Dollars Short, Bill Ackman, and the Siege Of Herbalife (2015)

#123

Post by sharemywin »

Top19 wrote: post #110
Vanayad wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I know people that made a living and brought up two children with the help of Herbalife, so it is not THAT bad. It is not easy, and not a good job, on those points I do agree though.

What's with all the survivorship bias in these responses? For every person you know that's made money in an MLM, that mathematically means there were 1,000 people AT MINIMUM below them who were scammed somewhere around $300 to usually $20,000 (when you're poor that can be 3 months worth of savings and the difference between taking multiple overdraft hits + a title loan) to live a hijacked version of the American Drea…

How many people spend thousands of hours building "start ups"

Imagine if venture, incubators, etc. had to pay market rates for all the work that goes into it.

Re: One Billion Dollars Short, Bill Ackman, and the Siege Of Herbalife (2015)

#124

Post by sharemywin »

opportune wrote: post #105
sharemywin wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me you're kind of misusing the term scam. To me it's no more of a scam than buying a stock at the wrong time or working for a startup with options or any affiliate program. A lot of the time the products are really good at first they're usually hard to sell in retail and then usually the market catches up at the retail level and the product becomes a commodity. And at the same time the market saturates with reps a…

Often with MLMs you have to buy the product yourself first and then sell it. So people end up buying $1000 worth of energy drinks they can never sell, because their "employers" fed them so much bullshit about it being easy money. I would call that a scam

how many hours of useless time has this forum encouraged. only to pick the plumpest cherries.

Re: One Billion Dollars Short, Bill Ackman, and the Siege Of Herbalife (2015)

#125

Post by monochromatic »

ajuc wrote: post #106
monochromatic wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change skepticism does not belong in the same bucket as anti-vaccination.

Why? Both beliefs are held against current scientific consensus and have only a few supporting studies, while vast majority of studies support the contrary. You could argue that technically "climate change scepticism" only means you don't know, but in practice climate change sceptics argue for political actions (or inaction) basing on their (lack of) beliefs. Similarly I can be anti-vacc without claiming "vaccines ca…

The science in favor of vaccination is very straightforward and well-understood. It's easy to run double-blind tests and determine the truth of the matter.

The science in favor of anthropogenic global warming includes two parts: well-understood physics and chemistry (which is quite trustworthy and is actually science), and a bunch of conflicting computer models of a chaotic and poorly understood system with a huge number of inputs and feedback loops (which I'm not sure why anyone trusts).

This blog post puts it pretty well: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158778029326/how-to-change-my-b...

Re: One Billion Dollars Short, Bill Ackman, and the Siege Of Herbalife (2015)

#126

Post by anotherbrownguy »

herbst wrote: post #91
anotherbrownguy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've known people desperate enough to start selling that crap (as well as others-their friends-that have to buy it just due to friendship), so please stop spreading MLM scams. They offer 100% buyback for distributors for unopened products and they stopped lead generation completely 4 years ago. So, their distributors are no different from what cell phone carriers are to Apple. >They either sell snake oil products, o…

Next to the other guys argument why apple is a poor argument. As much as I dislike Apple they are actually in the middle price range of laptop's with that kind of specs and quality. Same for the phones. Apple ain't expensive if you assume it is a quality product.

>Same for the phones. Apple ain't expensive if you assume it is a quality product.

Same with Herbalife.

Re: One Billion Dollars Short, Bill Ackman, and the Siege Of Herbalife (2015)

#127

Post by anotherbrownguy »

gehsty wrote: post #83
anotherbrownguy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've known people desperate enough to start selling that crap (as well as others-their friends-that have to buy it just due to friendship), so please stop spreading MLM scams. They offer 100% buyback for distributors for unopened products and they stopped lead generation completely 4 years ago. So, their distributors are no different from what cell phone carriers are to Apple. >They either sell snake oil products, o…

I think the main difference is that there is a chain of people who profit from selling to their 'downlines', not when a product is sold to an actual customer. The analogy to apple is poor. Apple sell a product that the majority of people like and they are actively trying to sell directly to the customer. They use networks as it is their only option in many markets and once a phone is sold to the network it is then so…

>I think the main difference is that there is a chain of people who profit from selling to their 'downlines'

How is it different from 3rd party Apple resellers?

>Apple sell a product that the majority of people like

As does Herbalife.

>they are actively trying to sell directly to the customer

Herbalife lets distributors handle sales, not very different from Apple's resellers.

>They use networks as it is their only option in many markets and once a phone is sold to the network it is then sold to the customer, there isn't a series of transactions with each level profiting of the previous level.

Apple -> Authorised Resellers -> Stores. While this is not Apple's only channel (because they have their own stores plus online shop), it is one of them... and there is multiple transactions with each level profiting.

Re: One Billion Dollars Short, Bill Ackman, and the Siege Of Herbalife (2015)

#128

Post by yesiamyourdad »

Illniyar wrote: post #61

This raises an interesting notions - can shorting be an effective option for funding legal/social action against a misbehaving company? So far there has only been two ways to fund social activism against companies - donations and feeds on class-action lawsuits.

Whether or not Ackman is right, his method is what's questionable. Let alone what seems like insanity to me: he's making a very public short bet against a company. He's _borrowing_ shares of stock to prove the management is wrong and publicly announcing that fact. So everybody can pile into the short squeeze, irrespective of the facts or morality of the situation. This is one reason why the quote "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” applies. The market is irrational because it's in the participants' short term interest for it to be irrational.

> Conventional activists like Carl Icahn and Nelson Peltz buy shares and then “try to fix the company,” observes one hedge fund investor. Ackman, by contrast, is trying to annihilate a company. “I’ve never heard of short-selling activism in my life,” this investor says. “Are we comfortable that a private individual named Bill can try to put somebody out of business?”

Shorting a company as a method of activism just seems like a terrible strategy on the face of it. A short is a really risky strategy for investing, for activism it just seems even worse. If you want to change a company using its stock, the effective way is to be rich enough to buy enough stock to influence the board.

Re: One Billion Dollars Short, Bill Ackman, and the Siege Of Herbalife (2015)

#129

Post by cardiffspaceman »

anotherbrownguy wrote: post #127
gehsty wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main difference is that there is a chain of people who profit from selling to their 'downlines', not when a product is sold to an actual customer. The analogy to apple is poor. Apple sell a product that the majority of people like and they are actively trying to sell directly to the customer. They use networks as it is their only option in many markets and once a phone is sold to the network it is then so…

>I think the main difference is that there is a chain of people who profit from selling to their 'downlines' How is it different from 3rd party Apple resellers? >Apple sell a product that the majority of people like As does Herbalife. >they are actively trying to sell directly to the customer Herbalife lets distributors handle sales, not very different from Apple's resellers. >They use networks as it is their only op…

The Apple retail price, the one paid by the ultimate, sales-tax-paying consumer, is unaffected by these levels in their channels. This model cannot tolerate more than two or three levels. There is no version of the Apple sales channel where more levels means more profits. With some MLMs it appears that the more levels the better, at least in theory.

Re: One Billion Dollars Short, Bill Ackman, and the Siege Of Herbalife (2015)

#130

Post by lawrenceyan »

ringaroundthetx wrote: post #57
lstyls wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: how the heck do you time a margin call for a whale like that apart from knowing someone on the inside?

The fund's holdings are known, and the fund manager's dispositions are easily inferred by how much they talk about something. ie. How married they are to a position. So for example, when Valeant Pharmaceauticals was tanking from its highs of $220, all the way to $16, after Bill Ackman defended it, doubled down, joined the board, and bought calls, and then admitted to not having more funds available. You just short ot…

How was Ackman able to get away with having lost so much money on Valeant?
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