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I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

hindenburgresearch.com

261–270 of 430 posts

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Per grok it's not true and per me it's not a problem in practice.

A put option is a contract between buyer (me) and a seller of the option. The contract guarantees me a right to sell stock at a strike price to the seller of the option.

If current stock price is lower than put contract strike price, I can exercise the contract and make money: I buy the stock from market at e.g. $78 (current price) and sell at e.g. $128 (strike price).

If stock is delisted the contract is still valid and enforced by the clearing house. They'll just assume that current price is $0 and force the option seller to just fork me cash without receiving the (unavailable) shares.

But it doesn't happen in practice because stocks are not just delisted without warning.

For example, Bed Bath & Beyond announced bankruptcy in April 23, Nasdaq announced delisting in April 25 and trading stopped in May 3.

So there was a week for option holders to settle their trades.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#262
post #199
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I've done it repeatedly over the past ten years while DCA'ing. I basically made my own custom funds with 5-10 stocks, set daily purchases for a specific amount, and didn't think about it. Unfortunately I didn't invest enough each time for the amount to be significant, and I also stopped DCA'ing as soon as I couldn't resist checking, saw that I had reached or was approaching a 10% loss in my overall DCA portfolio, and…

I'm guessing "DCA" means "dollar-cost averaging": https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dollarcostaveraging.asp

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

10+/trade is going back to the early 2000s for the US.

Now it's effectively 0 for most common trades. Here is Schwab for example:

https://www.schwab.com/pricing

If someone is a big options trader they can probably find a better per contract price out there.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#264

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.

You also pay a spread every time you trade, especially if you're using a retail brokerage like robin hood that sells order flow to market makers.

It doesn't show up anywhere in your statement, but it's a real trading fee nonetheless, so it's still better not to trade too much

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#265

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.…

I can think of at least one situation, like expiring options, that you wouldn't want to have happening during your "court frozen" period...

I assume that in-the-money options are automatically exercised at expiration in the dead-man situation?

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#266

"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…

It's 11 people. It's a band breaking up, not Microsoft choosing its fourth CEO.

They have a well-known brand with a large audience and reputation.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can short USD by buying Bitcoin or a similar non-correlated asset but how could buying a usd correlated asset (TSLA) be shorting?

You can also short the USD by buying a different currency. BTC would be more like shorting all currencies.

Buying BTC is shorting money printing by your government.

Today the only government (that I know of) committed to not printing money is Argentina but they have other issues affecting their economy and therefore inflating their currency.

Given that governments don't seem to have desire stop money printing any time soon, buying BTC is sound.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#268

"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…

Short selling is extremely stressful and mindspace-heavy, especially if you're going with a global approach like these guys. It makes sense to exit once you've made your cheese.

Some of the team members clearly want to continue, and have his blessing in it. Still others want to get hired elsewhere too. All of these are normal. The Hindenburg name will carry them far.

Him open-sourcing them (for free) is so that others may continue the fight against unscrupulous market players. That's just his Principles.

What he's doing is the smart thing. The employees are likely worth a few millions and debt-free, while he has made enough to fund a small family office. The smart thing would be to leave the game, especially when as an outsider like him, you don't have the connects to fundraise (which is what most fundmanagers tend to spend most of their time on these days). IIRC even DeepFuckingValue did the same.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#270
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. The market will tolerate infinite BS for arbitrary periods of time. Which also means being careful of short selling. It can put you at unlimited risk even if you are absolutely right.

> It can put you at unlimited risk even if you are absolutely right. The risk is in borrowing, not short selling. How many momo jockies out there think about the "unlimited risk" from buying Tesla on margin? In that case, you're shorting USD, but no one talks about that because it always will be fashionable to short USD. Just like it always will be fashionable to short JPY, for carry and more. Until it's not.

Short selling has unbounded downside. If you borrow $1,000 to short sell TSLA and then it soars you might end up losing $100,000.

If you borrow $1,000 to buy TSLA your downside is limited—you can’t possibly lose more than $1,000.

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