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No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

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Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#211

Post by nradov »

nyeah wrote: post #202
triceratops wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like your assumption is that a stock buyback is a short term gain. My argument is a stock buyback isn't a gain for a long-term, buy-and-hold investor. Unless a) they sell some of the stock or b) it pays dividends they don't see the benefit of a higher stock price or reduced share count. Qualified dividends and long term capital gains are taxed at the same rate. So anyone who says "buybacks are more tax-adv…

I think I'm mostly agreeing. Anyway here's my story. Buybacks can be good or bad for shareholders, depending on the buyback price. Example. I take $1000 and securitize it as 1000 shares. The company sells the shares for $1 each. This is a no-fee closed fund, whatever. I'm the "CEO". I personally buy 1 share. Anyway, one day the stock trades at $0.90 and the company buys back 500 shares at that price. (How $0.90? Mayb…

That's not a valid example of things that can happen in the market. You're making up ridiculously unrealistic numbers and clearly don't understand the basics of how the process works.

Share buybacks are always executed at the current market price. The company doesn't offer a higher price. A large buyback order might move the share price up a tiny bit but triggering an increase from $1 to $2 is impossible for any company traded on a major US exchange.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#212

Post by nyeah »

nradov wrote: post #211
nyeah wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm mostly agreeing. Anyway here's my story. Buybacks can be good or bad for shareholders, depending on the buyback price. Example. I take $1000 and securitize it as 1000 shares. The company sells the shares for $1 each. This is a no-fee closed fund, whatever. I'm the "CEO". I personally buy 1 share. Anyway, one day the stock trades at $0.90 and the company buys back 500 shares at that price. (How $0.90? Mayb…

That's not a valid example of things that can happen in the market. You're making up ridiculously unrealistic numbers and clearly don't understand the basics of how the process works. Share buybacks are always executed at the current market price. The company doesn't offer a higher price. A large buyback order might move the share price up a tiny bit but triggering an increase from $1 to $2 is impossible for any comp…

Pardon my bluntness, but you apparently don't understand how the process works.

I'm not claiming the price jumped from $1.10 to $2 without hitting any intermediate prices. That's your idea.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#213

Post by nyeah »

badpun wrote: post #199
nyeah wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Dividends work as well for executives rewarded with stock (unless it's options).

Buybacks are sort of pay-in-kind dividends, sure. Nobody really loves returning actual money to investors. It's contrary to nature.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#214

Post by zkmon »

selimthegrim wrote: post #197
zkmon wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you are a Scientist. I worked as a Scientist (not a data scientist etc), worked on pure science projects that ran under grants from government, spoke at international conferences presenting the findings etc. Believe me. Every single move in this "science" work was guided by funding. Not just my projects, but all of them.

So nobody in your department ever ran out of stipend or research funding?

Nope. The grants were always sort of 5-year projects. They just keep on going. We were employees, doing the work we were asked to do, not doing something we were curious about. For example, do this experiment, get field measurements, correlate them to some factors and publish a report. Ensure it takes 5 years and nothing less.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#215

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

mike_hearn wrote: post #52
photochemsyn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't mention that Bayh-Dole made it legal for a university to exclusively license a patent generated by a government-financed researcher to a corporation. Prior to this, if a corporation wanted to have exclusive rights to basic patents, they'd have to run their own private research labs to generate those patents. Prior to Bayh-Dole, university inventions were patented but there were no exclusive licens…

> So corporations largely stopped funding private research labs like Bell and instead entered into public-private partnerships They didn't though. Bayh-Dole was 1980. All the big tech firms have invested massively in R&D since then, and I think it's also true for many non-tech industries or tech-adjacent (e.g. chip manufacturing, oil and gas).

Most tech companies appear to put basically all their engineering/ product orgs down as R&D. That's probably not how most people understand the term.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#216

Post by [deleted] »

nradov wrote: post #207
nyeah wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt your sincerity. But there's a big difference between believing something very sincerely and actually knowing whether it's true or not.

I actually know it's true that having an industrial policy has been a net negative in the majority of countries where it was tried.

[deleted]

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#217

Post by nradov »

nyeah wrote: post #212
nradov wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a valid example of things that can happen in the market. You're making up ridiculously unrealistic numbers and clearly don't understand the basics of how the process works. Share buybacks are always executed at the current market price. The company doesn't offer a higher price. A large buyback order might move the share price up a tiny bit but triggering an increase from $1 to $2 is impossible for any comp…

Pardon my bluntness, but you apparently don't understand how the process works. I'm not claiming the price jumped from $1.10 to $2 without hitting any intermediate prices. That's your idea.

Well there you go again, lying and making things up. No stock buyback has ever caused a doubling in share prices. Going through intermediate prices is irrelevant.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#218

Post by nyeah »

nradov wrote: post #217
nyeah wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my bluntness, but you apparently don't understand how the process works. I'm not claiming the price jumped from $1.10 to $2 without hitting any intermediate prices. That's your idea.

Well there you go again, lying and making things up. No stock buyback has ever caused a doubling in share prices. Going through intermediate prices is irrelevant.

Yes, it was a made-up example. I feel that was obvious.

If your point [about share price jumping suddenly] was irrelevant, then maybe you shouldn't have mentioned it. How is this my problem?

I see that you edited your previous comment before replying. Very clever. Now (12:03 Pacific) you have a company worth $1000 trading on a major stock exchange. Ok.

Maybe you can make a spreadsheet similar to what I described in words, but using more believable numbers. If so, you can see the kind of effects I'm talking about. Buybacks are good for some shareholders and bad for others. Buybacks can be used to reward management, though others will be affected (+ or -) at the same time.

Or maybe you won't/can't make that spreadsheet. Again not my problem.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#219

Post by selimthegrim »

zkmon wrote: post #214
selimthegrim wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So nobody in your department ever ran out of stipend or research funding?

Nope. The grants were always sort of 5-year projects. They just keep on going. We were employees, doing the work we were asked to do, not doing something we were curious about. For example, do this experiment, get field measurements, correlate them to some factors and publish a report. Ensure it takes 5 years and nothing less.

All I have to say is that it was not uncommon for people to run out of funding at my research university, nor others I was at.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#220

Post by nradov »

triceratops wrote: post #185
saulpw wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't group #2 sell 4% of their holdings, thereby remaining shareholders, and delivering to themselves the tax-advantaged equivalent of a 4% dividend?

> delivering to themselves the tax-advantaged equivalent of a 4% dividend? Long-term gains and qualified dividends (shares held longer than 60 days) are taxed at the same rate. What's the tax advantage here?

The tax advantage of stock buybacks is that investors aren't forced to immediately realize gains. They have the freedom to time sales to minimize overall income tax liability, for example by harvesting losses in other investments in a future year.
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