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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

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QQQ is up 5x in 10 years. Being an ETF, that means many of its components must be 10x. I suppose it's dependent on your time horizon. MSFT is up around 10x since Nadella took over. It's more common over 20 years, obviously.

The other neat thing about ETFs is that there are so many similar, you can effectively use them for TLH to help offset future gains.

The IRS disallows wash sale deductions if you reinvest in a substantially similar investment within 30 days.

I'm not an IRS agent and have no idea what they mean by substantially similar. You might want to talk to your tax accountant.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sometimes I ask GPT to run Bayesian analyses on varying hypotheses. I just did that for the several parent comments to see if we could get some reasons as to "why day trading doesn't work." Perhaps this will amuse you as well: https://chatgpt.com/share/67888cf4-1aa4-8011-b46b-77e5e9da12...

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#183
post #64
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.

> your account has to have 150% of the value of your short

yep, people who aren't professional traders, and don't actually have an account with a broker to do shorting with, and dont know the margin requirements.

The thing is, a broker will _never_ put themselves at risk of losing money. If they offer you a shorting service, they require a method to make themselves whole. If you short, they will guess some sort of margin of safety for said short (calculated based on the liquidity of the stock) - if it's very liquid, the margin could be lower, but for illiquid stocks, it's even higher. This margin of safety is what the broker will use to close your short position if the market moves against you - you don't get a choice in the matter. You don't even have access to those funds from the sale of the short - the broker holds onto it until the short is closed.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#184
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> P.S. If you are chasing something you think you want or need, or are doubting whether you are enough, take a minute and give this a listen. It had a big impact on me at a pivotal time. He shared something that helped him at a pivotal time. Your expectations are your own. :)

The right music at the right time can be transformative.

Like listening to “Lose Yourself” before every major interview. :)

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#185
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…

> Hindenburg's reports were a true pleasure to read, and their track record proves their positive contribution to society. 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. Short sellers taking positions and then putting out report and marketing to bring…

> Short sellers taking positions and then putting out report and marketing to bring a company’s price down can also be perceived as market manipulation.

Sure, in the same sense that releasing a 10-K can be perceived as market manipulation. In fact, if we define "market manipulation" to mean anything that might affect the market, many things can be perceived as market manipulation!

The question I think is more important is, is it bad? Sharing investment information you believe to be true and material to investors seems good to me.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#186
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.…

This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

Most of my investing is just in passive S&P index funds, but I do occasionally buy individual shares.

Sometimes I make decent money, sometimes I lose money…turns out I consistently do worse than the S&P long term.

I treat buying individual shares as yuppie gambling at this point. It can be fun, but it’s usually a bad strategy.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#187
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sometimes I ask GPT to run Bayesian analyses on varying hypotheses. I just did that for the several parent comments to see if we could get some reasons as to "why day trading doesn't work." Perhaps this will amuse you as well: https://chatgpt.com/share/67888cf4-1aa4-8011-b46b-77e5e9da12...

Yes, thanks for posting it!

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link to that article?

I wish I had clipped and saved it. I can't even tell you what year it was. Sorry. But what I wrote is all one needs to know about it. Here's a similar article: https://www.businessinsider.com/forgetful-investors-performe...

Thanks anyway, this is still interesting.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other neat thing about ETFs is that there are so many similar, you can effectively use them for TLH to help offset future gains.

The IRS disallows wash sale deductions if you reinvest in a substantially similar investment within 30 days. I'm not an IRS agent and have no idea what they mean by substantially similar. You might want to talk to your tax accountant.

> substantially similar investment

They actually use the word 'identical' instead of 'similar', if that matters. It seems to be a grey area with ETFs, and I'm not a financial advisor, so won't make any further claims.

> You might want to talk to your tax accountant.

Absolutely agreed. You can also just let a reputable robo do it for you if you don't have the time or energy for it, there are multiple. It is what I ended up doing. It's modest but every bit helps.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right music at the right time can be transformative.

Like listening to “Lose Yourself” before every major interview. :)

I wonder if this is that blasted song a college roommate used to play on infinite repeat back in the day :/
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