Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy • Hacker News Board

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#331

Post by red-iron-pine » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 7:56 PM UTC

FredPret wrote: post #318

wintogreen74 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You can point to any instant, and even any decade in time, and point major inaccuracies in the public's collective financial thinking. Examples: today Halliburton and GE Health both posted numbers that be the market and saw big drops in value, while Spotify missed big time and swung to a loss, yet saw their stock price go up. Everybody points to potential but totally dismisses today's reality.

The key thing to remember is “market” is simply a collective noun for “investor”. It doesn’t have to follow any logical law. People can buy or sell at any time, for any reason, and the market price will move along with it.

At this point the average individual (aka retail investor) is functionally irrelevant for big moves like the one the parent poster made.

Large firms, often leveraging complex, autonomous systems, are the ones pushing around $20MM worth of stocks and moving the markets (or keeping them from moving). Jim the SE III dropping $30k in RSUs isn't doing to do anything except alter Jim's opinion on the capital gains tax.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#332

Post by red-iron-pine » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 7:57 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #272

nemothekid wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the market acting like infinite growth is baked in, It's this. America has decided that: 1. The most important retirement/wealth vehicle is your home. 2. Home prices must only go up or your wealth will be destroyed. 3. The government should use it's power to uphold (1) and (2), which results in NIMBYism, all the tax breaks you see around mortgages, and of course the 2008 bailouts. w.r.t stocks I largely think th…

You forgot the part where people use their home equity as a revolving line of credit, which exacerbates #2.

aka we got a head start and are now able to leverage that head start even further

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#333

Post by bumby » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 11:20 PM UTC

red-iron-pine wrote: post #332

bumby wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the part where people use their home equity as a revolving line of credit, which exacerbates #2.

aka we got a head start and are now able to leverage that head start even further

I was thinking of it differently, more in terms of how debt-laden Americans tend to be. This is just another mechanism of perpetuating that.

It would be one thing if people are leveraging that equity to buy appreciating assets, but too often they are leveraging that debt for depreciating assets.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#334

Post by gamblor956 » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

somehnguy wrote: post #219

gamblor956 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alibaba is super cheap because you're buying the literal bargain basement version of the product, and what you're getting almost always violates local product safety laws that domestic manufacturers and/or sellers must contend with. Yes, the mattress at Costco is 5x the price. But it's probably 20x the value.

My experience is the opposite - I've bought the exact same products from Alibaba that I could have gotten on Amazon for 4x the cost. The only difference being random brand printed on the plastic.

The stuff on Amazon is the stuff from Alibaba.

The stuff in Target, Walmart, etc., is not. (And specifically, I mean the stuff physically sold in retail stores.) That is because retail stores are held to product liability laws in a different way than Amazon is (was? depends on the outcome of several pending product liability lawsuits against Amazon).

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#335

Post by xsmasher » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 6:11 PM UTC

stusmall wrote: post #40

fullshark wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the premise behind buying a stock for a company headed for bankruptcy?

There are two big ones. 1) There is a lot of volatility in this period. There is money to be made at buying in and dumping it at a small, local spike. A lot of the money is made off others trying the same game. 2) Some of these meme stock investors have been sold a bill of goods. Go check reddit.com/r/bbby to see what I mean. Some of them believe this is a larger conflict between good and evil. There is a belief that…

"Waiting for NESARA" is a real eye opener about how people can latch onto crazy ideas and make it part of their identity. I think about it whenever r/bbby or r/superstonk conspiracy theories escape their subs and make the main page.

Re: Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy

#336

Post by patriciaaa » Tue, May 02, 2023, 2:52 AM UTC

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #250

humanlion87 wrote: post #8

I find the whole situation fascinating. Bed Bath continued to sell hundreds of millions of shares while they were preparing for bankruptcy and retail investors (or meme stock investors) continued to buy them. I assume Bed Bath did all the paperwork that is necessary (like calling out risks, that the raised capital will go to creditors first, etc) for such a stock sale. But it is clear they were doing it out of bad-fa…

That's why I call it the stock market casino. Don't invest what you can't afford to lose.

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