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I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

hindenburgresearch.com

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Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#161

Post by sidewndr46 »

tines wrote: post #57
dktp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. The way shorting works is you borrow a stock (and keep paying premium for the duration) and sell it Premiums are usually small, so you can make many multiples of paid premium And since their business model is releasing the findings, which in turn makes the stock drop, they can time their short position very well and don't need to pay premiums for long

I think you misunderstood what I meant by "your money" in "double your money" (and I was unclear). You can only earn the value of the stocks you borrow. When trading long, the gain is unlimited. According to Investopedia, "the Federal Reserve Board requires all short sale accounts to have 150% of the value of the short sale at the time the sale is initiated" so it's the same principle as going long with margin. You c…

uhh, no. When trading long your gain is limited by the depth of the order book. Stock price isn't relevant if there are 3 buyers out there looking to buy 2 shares each and you're sitting on 100,000 shares

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#162

Post by sidewndr46 »

tines wrote: post #64
BeetleB wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You borrow 10 shares that are currently worth $10 each. You immediately sell and get $100. The price drops to $1 per share. You spend $10 to buy those shares and return your loan. So you spent $10 and made $90. That's a 9x gain. Yes you cannot make more than $100. But of course you can! Do the short on 1000 shares instead of 10. The more confident you are of the share price going down, the more shares you borrow. Unl…

Isn't this a bit like arguing that you can make infinite money by borrowing infinite money and going long? You have to maintain margin requirements which limits how many shares you can borrow so again, you can really only double your money (not even double, iiuc your account has to have 150% of the value of your short), unless there's something I'm not seeing.

The same argument can be made with roulette. Just place all your money on black and assume you'll win each time.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#163

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #157
WalterBright wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've ironically lost more money the more closely I've paid attention to my investments Money Magazine a few years ago compared various investment strategies in stocks. The #2 best performing one was investing in the S&P 500. The #1 best performing strategy was the "dead man strategy". The dead man strategy comes into play when the investor dies, and his estate gets frozen until it winds its way through the courts.…

The conventional wisdom is to sell your profitable stocks, to "lock in your gains", and sell your losers to "cut your losses." I call that "minimizing your gains" and "locking in your losses", and just hold instead. If I "locked in the gains" I would have missed out on 10x returns. Of course, I did ride Enron all the way to zero (!), but it didn't matter. Think of it this way - buy 10 stocks. 3 go to zero. 6 have mod…

I have a friend who retired, and decided to go into day trading. He spent hours each day glued to the trading portal, making trades. After a year, he ruefully admitted that he'd have made significantly more money if he'd simply done nothing.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#164

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #147
gmd63 wrote: post #59

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've ironically lost more money the more closely I've paid attention to my investments Money Magazine a few years ago compared various investment strategies in stocks. The #2 best performing one was investing in the S&P 500. The #1 best performing strategy was the "dead man strategy". The dead man strategy comes into play when the investor dies, and his estate gets frozen until it winds its way through the courts.…

P.S. I'm not a financial advisor. Make your own decisions.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#165

Post by _2d30 »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #111
spoaceman7777 wrote: post #108

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.

Adani Group which was charged in November by the SEC for bribery?

https://www.hindustantimes.com/business/adani-group-shares-p...

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#166

Post by chii »

WalterBright wrote: post #157
WalterBright wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've ironically lost more money the more closely I've paid attention to my investments Money Magazine a few years ago compared various investment strategies in stocks. The #2 best performing one was investing in the S&P 500. The #1 best performing strategy was the "dead man strategy". The dead man strategy comes into play when the investor dies, and his estate gets frozen until it winds its way through the courts.…

The conventional wisdom is to sell your profitable stocks, to "lock in your gains", and sell your losers to "cut your losses." I call that "minimizing your gains" and "locking in your losses", and just hold instead. If I "locked in the gains" I would have missed out on 10x returns. Of course, I did ride Enron all the way to zero (!), but it didn't matter. Think of it this way - buy 10 stocks. 3 go to zero. 6 have mod…

> 1 is a 10x winner

out of 10 stocks, 1 being a 10x winner is an absolutely rarity and the fact that you would manage to pick it is pure luck tbh.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#167

Post by manquer »

bruce511 wrote: post #139
mv4 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without fraud, the markets seem incredibly forgiving. For example, one would think that what Crowdstrike outage did to the airlines and businesses worldwide (and the levels of incompetence displayed) in 2024, would have destroyed the company. Instead, the stock has recovered nicely and it's business as usual. Or the massive security breaches - same outcome, it's as though nobody cares.

People don't invest because they think a company is competent. They invest because they are looking for a return. The mistake CrowdStrike made will likely have little to no effect on their revenue. Since the stock dropped a bit (emotional investors getting out) it became a good value proposition, so people bought it cheap. The reasons companies use CrowdStrike haven't gone away. Existing contracts can't just be termi…

There are consequences, with significant financial impact, not necessarily world ending for them.

There are already lawsuits filed around this incident. If a court sides with the customers or if CrowdStrike settles them, it will not be cheap.

Even if they don't end up loosing or settling, the lawyers will not be cheap with so many suits , I don't think there is a major class action, every contract is unique after all, customers can easily afford their own lawyers and don't need to share.

Beyond that, in next renewal cycle, customers are likely to demand much stronger penalty clauses in the contract, they won't let the mistake of not putting strong financial penalties slide while they may not change the vendor. This will make insurance for CrowdStrike much more expensive, another mistake would be far more financially expensive even if this one doesn't turn out to be.

The insurer will also want a stronger internal process controls and paperwork which also won't be cheap.

Consequences in B2B are never immediate but over time they do happen, larger an org longer it takes, but eventually it does catches up, look at Intel or Boeing today.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#168

Post by chii »

bruce511 wrote: post #139
mv4 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without fraud, the markets seem incredibly forgiving. For example, one would think that what Crowdstrike outage did to the airlines and businesses worldwide (and the levels of incompetence displayed) in 2024, would have destroyed the company. Instead, the stock has recovered nicely and it's business as usual. Or the massive security breaches - same outcome, it's as though nobody cares.

People don't invest because they think a company is competent. They invest because they are looking for a return. The mistake CrowdStrike made will likely have little to no effect on their revenue. Since the stock dropped a bit (emotional investors getting out) it became a good value proposition, so people bought it cheap. The reasons companies use CrowdStrike haven't gone away. Existing contracts can't just be termi…

There was a case of food contamination in a fast food joint (can't remember which, let's say it was burger king). The stock fell as a result, but recovered relatively quick afterwards - you would've made bank buying it low.

The thing is, individual, one off events usually don't break a company, but the stock falls temporarially as a result of some people expecting it to. Of course, it's possible that one event breaks a company, and this is the risk you do take buying it low after the event.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#169

Post by pclmulqdq »

whatshisface wrote: post #132
_yb2s wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you are the only person who thinks that it might fail, one cent put options will be free and you can buy them until the price hits zero, and then you can make a cent. For example, the opportunity to sell $TSLA for $180 in one month costs about thirty cents right now. Keeping this up for ten years would cost $36.

Put options are worthless once the price of a stock hits $0. At that point, the stock will be frozen and/or de-listed and your ability to exercise your put will be gone.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#170

Post by ylee »

Animats wrote: post #21
salynchnew wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the number of ultrarich and powerful people that already hate the Hindenberg folks... my guess would be that there is some calculus here about the incoming U.S. presidential administration's enmity towards whistleblowers and their prior statements about changing libel laws in the U.S.

Um, yes. Starting next week, it's open season on suckers. It's going to be like the glory days of the Tel Aviv binary options scammers, who at one time were 40% of the Israeli finance sector and had good political connections.[1] Crypto deregulation is coming. No more CFPB enforcement! No more SEC enforcement! There are still people who haven't lost money in crypto yet who can be targeted. They're all little people.…

>It's going to be like the glory days of the Tel Aviv binary options scammers, who at one time were 40% of the Israeli finance sector and had good political connections.

When I started at Goldman Sachs 25 years ago, I was told early on of an "Israeli discount" and "Canadian discount"; that is, investors were more skeptical of companies based in those countries.

I was not told of any more details than that at the time, but I now wonder if what you said is the cause?

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