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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

#251

Post by matwood »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #224
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…

This sort of thing is part of my personal motivation for getting into business. Lying is so rampant, so universal, so quietly accepted by everyone in a position of even mild power in business that it's easy to take for granted that you simply cannot succeed without it. I wanted to know if that was actually true - so far, it doesn't seem to be. But I don't blame people for worrying that it might be. People in position…

I hear what you’re saying, but it feels a bit too cynical to expand it to all business. Did you tell your boss you’d finish some task today? If something comes up, as often does at work, and you don’t finish, did you lie? Predicting the future is hard even as soon as what will happen today, now do that for the next quarter or 4 quarters. Of course there are fraudsters out there, but I view most founders as rampant optimists instead of liars. And you kind of have to be an over top optimist to be founder.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#252

Post by rib3ye »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #77

"just feeling like it" seems insufficient explanation for dismantling a successful organization rather than transitioning it they just completed their "pipeline of ideas" with "the last Ponzi cases" - seems like a surprisingly clean and abrupt end for an investigative organization the team members are "brilliant" and "family to me" but heis disbanding rather than transitioning leadership He mentions some team members…

Even Buffet shutdown his first successful firm in 1969.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#253

Post by graemep »

matwood wrote: post #247
graemep wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing nothing saves trading costs which are a major drag. The standard advice for equities investors (at least in the UK) has been to invest in tracker funds for a very long time. it is possible to beat the market. Many years ago I double my money in approx an year - but I invested heavily in I had been covering as a analyst (one of my previous careers) until immediately before. I am more cautious now.

Trading fees are at or near zero in the US now unless you mean capital gains.

Not what I meant, but capital gains are another issue, but I am not in the US. In the UK we pay a 0.5% tax on ever transaction and often around £10 per transaction, so its quite substantial. I should probably have said costs, not fees.

How much are total costs in the US?

If you trade frequently even low costs add up. If its 0.1% and you trade monthly it ends up being 1.2% over the course of an year.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#254

Post by lucianbr »

gizmo wrote: post #91
mschuster91 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> The authorities can't and shouldn't base an exhaustive investigation on vaguely shifty CEO behavior.

Moral hazard. We are in this thread, where many people complain about the irrationality of the market, of bad choices having no ill effects, and at the same time it is argued that authorities should prioritize and only investigate and prosecute large cases where the ROI is good.

I think the ethical landscape created by this "selective investigation and prosecution based on ROI" is part of the problem. We officially abandon the concept that wrong-doing will get caught and punished as a rule and then we marvel that the markets are irrational and that bad actors profit and keep profiting over large time horizons. Who could have expected such?

I think over a longer time period these effects will compound and there will be larger and larger problems. You can't just abandon the rules because enforcing them is not cost-efficient and hope everything will be alright. But it does take time to see the effects so who knows when the larger problems will show up.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#255

Post by agos »

kqr wrote: post #233
Galanwe wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with you 100%, I did the same simulations and found the same result. I would suggest a step beyond though, because rebalancing your portfolio is fun year 1-5, but not so fun year 5-20: have a look at e.g. Vanguard retirement target funds. Essentially, it's an ETF with a rebalancing rule included for a specific target date. For instance if you buy the target 2050 (your hypothetical retirement age), the ETF rebal…

This is one of those things where again, one will have to weigh the costs of both alternatives. A rebalancing ETF usually has higher costs (management fees, but possibly also internal trading costs that show up as performance beneath benchmark index), but of course, manually rebalancing also has a cost – the cost of one's time and effort!

Vanguard's ETFs are really cheap. The retirement funds in question are like 0.24%, which is in the cheaper range for ETFs

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#256

Post by celticninja »

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.…

This is the same for cryptocurrency. The people who lost accessa and subsequently regained it usually made more than those with ready access who sold earlier or played the market.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#257

Post by dmos62 »

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.…

So invest in s&p 500 and do nothing, right? That's a good strategy for someone young, because it makes sense to be risk tolerant then. As you age you want more and more of your portfolio in bonds/cash, because you want the reduced fluctuation in purchasing power (i.e. comfort) that that brings you. These are the bare fundamentals of portfolio management.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#258

Post by low_tech_love »

Oh, that's a shame---at least from my perspective as a reader---but Nate seems to be quite ok, and I guess it makes sense to quit when you're "winning". As a victim of burnout, I wish I had that insight too.

At least we still have Coffeezilla and Data Colada!

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#259

Post by davedx »

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…

Exactly. I started buying NVDA in 2020 and I still hold almost all of it.

If you do rebalancing then you might as well hold an ETF that does it for you at the lowest cost. If you hold individual equities, keep your winners.

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