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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

#341

Post by Workaccount2 »

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.…

Just yesterday it was announced that Bitfinex will be returned the 95,000 bitcoin that were lost in a 2016 hack. These coins will be returned to the account holders which were affected by the hack.

At the time the bitcoins were lost, they were worth ~$575 each.

Today those returned tokens are worth close to $100,0000 each.

I doubt anyone who was affected by that hack realized they just got involuntarily forced into the best investment of their lives.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#342

Post by gmd63 »

bboygravity wrote: post #209
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…

Here I was thinking Hindenberg was part of the problem and you seem to think the opposite? To me they seemed like partners of shorting hedge funds (similar to CNBC) who just spit out bs articles so their hedgie friends can trade on it. DOJ seems to agree with me? https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2022/02/16/doj-... There are more and better sources.

That article says nothing that suggests Hindenburg is "part of the problem", only that they had received requests for information in line with an investigation.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#343

Post by Workaccount2 »

fakedang wrote: post #214
tombert wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I treat buying individual shares as yuppie gambling at this point. It can be fun, but it’s usually a bad strategy. I would actually recommend the opposite - buy shares of a few companies that you know exceptionally well. That is, not just the companies, but also the market, the industry trends, etc. Charlie Munger recommends holding 5 stocks at max, while Peter Lynch suggests industries that are tangential to your…

The problem with ETFs is that many of them have crazy management fees.

Don't just blindly buy an ETF that fits your investment goals. Many of those bespoke ETFs have 1%+ management fees.

You can look up how even a 1% fee can gobble up piles of money over years.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#345

Post by biminb »

WalterBright wrote: post #173
chii wrote: 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.

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.

Are 'many of its components up 10x'??

Isn't it the case that a few large cap stocks have the vast majority of the growth? If you didn't like Tesla, didn't like Nvidia, didn't like big 5 tech, you might have had very mediocre returns.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#346

Post by tombert »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #343
fakedang wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I treat buying individual shares as yuppie gambling at this point. It can be fun, but it’s usually a bad strategy. I would actually recommend the opposite - buy shares of a few companies that you know exceptionally well. That is, not just the companies, but also the market, the industry trends, etc. Charlie Munger recommends holding 5 stocks at max, while Peter Lynch suggests industries that are tangential to your…

The problem with ETFs is that many of them have crazy management fees. Don't just blindly buy an ETF that fits your investment goals. Many of those bespoke ETFs have 1%+ management fees. You can look up how even a 1% fee can gobble up piles of money over years.

That's why I am partial to the Vanguard funds. If you look at VUG and VTI and VOO, the fees are on the order of ~0.03-0.04%.

I know that passively-managed ETFs aren't necessarily "optimal" (as your parent comment mentioned, there's a risk of them having a few duds there for legacy reasons), but I think the value that they provide come down to the fact that they're automatically rebalanced and diversified, and 0.04% seems like a pretty reasonable cut for them doing that for me.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#347

Post by _fat_santa »

sgerenser wrote: post #37

I’ll always remember them for exposing the Nikola motors fraud: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24436721

I think their two biggest breaks a Nikola and WeWork. Jesus I still remember the days after the WeWork short report dropped, crazy times.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#348

Post by NickC25 »

twic wrote: post #89
NickC25 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The song remains the same - the stock can only go to zero. The upside of a put is effectively capped at (strike price minus stock price) * 100. Going long via shares or calls is unlimited.

Right, but the price of the put is much less than the price of the stock, and the price of the put is the denominator. Right now, Walmart is at $91.34, and you can buy a put at $88 expiring on 24th January for $0.18 [1]. If you buy one, and the stock goes to zero by then, you spent $0.18 and gained $88, a 488x return. January 2026 at $86.67 is $5.35 - a mere 16x return. [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stoc…

You'd spend $0.18 per share, yes, but the option's price is $18, not $0.18. So your return would be roughly 4.1x, not 488x. Remember options contracts are counted in hundreds, so $0.18 is the price per share, not per contract.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#349

Post by rsynnott »

dinp wrote: post #86

The impact this organization had was incredible. I doubt they would have been able to do this work if they were based out of any other country, which makes me wonder how the US legal system, regulators and law enforcement in general are not extremely corrupt. What reasons or incentives make the system work in the US? Of course there are many instances of corruption and injustice, but in comparison to almost any other…

> I doubt they would have been able to do this work if they were based out of any other country

Here's a British one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viceroy_Research

There were a _number_ of British and German ones involved in the whole Wirecard mess.

Hindenburg's probably the world's most prominent, but there's nothing about the model that inherently requires being in the US.

Re: I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research

#350

Post by crayboff »

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…

> The amount of deceit put out into the world and gobbled up, on purpose, in business is obscene and seriously depressing.

In business, politics, everything. It almost seems like everyone is quietly agreeing that "if we pretend the pesky truth doesn't exist for long enough, we can literally change reality to be what we want".

I feel like I'm going crazy. There's no way that's how things can work for long, right?

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