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Elon’s Out

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Re: Elon’s Out

#601

Post by extheat »

threeseed wrote: post #583
extheat wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost everything in this comment is wrong or misleading. Feel free to point out specific inaccuracies. I think it's pretty clear. > Just because EM wants an escape hatch, doesn’t make it so Yes, never suggested it's legally permissible. > affirmative obligation This is armchair speculation. Even if the text might seem to be clear in outsider interpretation, this is a matter solely for the courts to determine and b…

I think it's the fact you think that Twitter has been misleading in how it communicates MAU and bot percentage to the markets. There is no basis to this. And even if there was it's such a grey area that they have plenty of legal wiggle room. So it's really to comprehend how Musk has any sort of bargaining position over this issue.

Going through court will lead to even more dragged out speculation and hurt Twitter more than any other party. They can't be 100% sure that they will win the case, and will also have to work to run the company on the side in a continuing state of limbo with the acquisition litigation. In the end, even if they win, and Musk must buys the company at the deal price, by the time that goes through the markets may as well have rebounded to make the acquisition price reasonable again. Buying a company isn't like buying a piece of candy and eating it to the point of no return. The amount of money Elon has on paper won't be impacted, which a lot of people are not understanding. The winners at the end of the day would be the lawyers and millions of dollars dumped into fighting a case instead of settling.

Re: Elon’s Out

#602

Post by Lazare »

vehementi wrote: post #544
erk__ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here is that only twitter knows who they count as a mDAU. So there could be a lot of bots that are simply not included in their counts.

Well, it depends on what is in the firehose. What twitter really knows that you can't just see, is how (with what client) users are logging in and whether their ad tracker URLs are being triggered (i.e. the user really did result in an ad impression). If Musk can determine that directly or indirectly from the firehose then he could say "here's how I calculated it and it's 9%" or something, I guess.

Using entirely made up nunbers, I think the situation is something like:

* Firehose shows 800m accounts were active yesterday

* Using data from the firehose (user agents, IP addresses, behaviour analysis, etc.) you can flag 500m of those accounts as fake, spam, bots, etc., leaving 300m

* Twitter then uses their experience, intuition, business judgement, etc., to apply an additional adjustment to those numbers, reduces them by 25%, and announces a mDAU of 225m

* Musk calls foul, and says they should have used a bigger discount, because a lot of that 225m are still fake or spam accounts

* Twitter says no, they're pretty sure it's like 11m of that 225m at most

In this hypothetical, the firehose data isn't helpful, because it's just one of the inputs, and not the one that's in dispute. Musk isn't arguing about whether there were 800m (or whatever) total active accounts, or 300m seemingly real accounts, but over whether 25% was a good guess for how many fake accounts were hidden in that seemingly real accounts.

Re: Elon’s Out

#603

Post by throwaway09223 »

tsol wrote: post #546
roenxi wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tax & plane seizures are 1. A surprising departure from the rules and norms - I assume probably illegal. 2. Part of a campaign designed to ruin Russia. You might have misunderstood the argument the anti-taxers (pro-property?) people are bringing up. There isn't a physical problem with taking wealth away from people, that part is very easy to execute. The problem is the 2nd order effects where it will turn into an…

>There isn't a physical problem with taking wealth away from people, that part is very easy to execute. The problem is the 2nd order effects where it will turn into an unfair confiscation and do substantial damage to the ability of the host country to invest and prosper, bringing general ruin to us all. But this does not apply to us when we seize Russian assets? By your very logic if seizing wealth is so problematic,…

No, because the goal with sanctions is explicitly to cause this kind of economic damage by denying capital to the country under sanctions.

It would be bad if we did this to ourselves. We do it to our enemies to hurt them.

Re: Elon’s Out

#604

Post by ratww »

tptacek wrote: post #152
petilon wrote: post #71

This article says Musk agreed to buy Twitter mostly as a joke. I think there's a far better explanation. This wasn't a joke for Musk because after agreeing to buy Twitter he proceeded to sell billions of dollars' worth of TSLA stock, supposedly to finance the purchase. Even for the richest man in the world that's not a joke. I think a better explanation is that Musk offered to buy Twitter as a cover for selling billi…

That seems like an enormous amount of risk to take on just to sell stock that he actually owns and avoiding "looking like a hypocrite". It's not just plausible but somewhat likely that he'll be forced into an 11-figure settlement with Twitter to avoid the actual worst case outcome of being forced to take custody of and actually operate Twitter until he can unload it on someone else.

It's not about avoiding looking like a hypocrite, the major theory is that it's about being able to sell 8.5bi without causing the value to go down too much.

Re: Elon’s Out

#607

Post by betwixthewires »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #501
ethagknight wrote: post #276

I find it amazing that not one of the top comments gives Elon ANY consideration that maybe, just maybe, he has a legitimate case against Twitter. We don’t know what he’s found, what he was told, what he was promised, what changed on Twitter’s side. Some very top level people bailed or were fired shortly after Elon’s acquisition proposal was announced. It sure appears that Elons is just balking, but what is far more l…

Maybe, instead of the "Elon is a genius playing 4D chess" speculation, we can simply look at his actions and conclude than no reasonable person would seriously go about buying Twitter the way he did. Given this and previous behaviour it seems pretty reasonable to assume that Musk was doing it for the lolz and to get attention as "the savior of free speech". It's useful to note that after he signed the contract the ma…

His character flaws aside, you don't become worth 275 billion dollars by throwing 45 billion away for the lulz. I think it's a safe bet that a man who has an entire top notch law firm working exclusively for him knows a thing or two more about what he's doing than we do. Even if it is a mistake, even if he's trying to back out of something and being disingenuous, it's still almost certain that our online speculation colored by our character sentiment is not what is actually going on here.

Re: Elon’s Out

#608

Post by betwixthewires »

jenny91 wrote: post #427
ethagknight wrote: post #276

I find it amazing that not one of the top comments gives Elon ANY consideration that maybe, just maybe, he has a legitimate case against Twitter. We don’t know what he’s found, what he was told, what he was promised, what changed on Twitter’s side. Some very top level people bailed or were fired shortly after Elon’s acquisition proposal was announced. It sure appears that Elons is just balking, but what is far more l…

For Musk to get out of it he has to find a materially adverse effect (MAE), which is incredibly difficult and almost never happens. As Matt Levine explains in the article, it basically has to mean that Twitter is a complete fraud and has been covering up a fraud for a long time (think Enron), which is very unlikely given that users obviously use it, and advertisers obviously advertise on it quite happily.

I'm tired of people parroting this line. It is factually incorrect. This line has been started by the author of the article we are discussing, and picked up by people who like the way it sounds, but if you'd read the article the author also clearly states (significantly less dramatically) that he has an out if Twitter lied because that would be breach of contract. He goes on to say there's no evidence that Twitter lied, which may be true, but it's a fact. If twitter lied about their numbers it is a breach of contract, MAE be damned.

Re: Elon’s Out

#609

Post by roenxi »

BoorishBears wrote: post #599
roenxi wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has stealing random stuff from Russians helped? I'm not a maritime lawyer or an expert on how war in the 2020s looks, but I don't think Russia was sailing troops into the Ukraine on billionaire pleasure yachts. There is a pretty good chance this is just making people feel bad and making it harder to normalise the situation. This is action is literally not helping, and is a breach of good norms against stealing. It me…

> It means the Russian billionaires will be forced to spend more of their money in Russia and have a great reason to bear a grudge against the more Western powers. Any Russian billionaires that don't realize that this is more of Putin's incompetence than western antagonism deserve a random punitive gesture. In reality the majority of them will see this as a great reason to bear a grudge against Putin.

I'm still not following. How do you think this has helped the situation? What do you expect to happen differently in the future that will be to our benefit?

Maybe I've missed out on some life experiences, but I've never seen petty theft help defuse a tense situation. It is not going to be beneficial to achieving a sane outcome.

> In reality the majority of them will see this as a great reason to bear a grudge against Putin.

This is wishful thinking. All of the thievery was done by NATO - there is a very high chance that they will identify NATO as the threat to them.

And if they do blame Putin (which I think is unlikely, groups tend to close ranks when threatened) how is that supposed to help? What are the billionaires supposed to do that the Ukraine military or US State Department can't do? Billionaires aren't that big compared to a government military.

Re: Elon’s Out

#610

Post by SamReidHughes »

remarkEon wrote: post #605
unforeseen9991 wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, with a straddle or strangle strategy

Can you explain this?

You can sell a call and/or sell a put with the expiration and strike prices you think are appropriate. Maybe you'd buy covering calls/puts as well, forming a pair of vertical spreads (an iron condor or iron butterfly). There are different names for different basic combinations of options contracts: https://www.optionsplaybook.com/option-strategies/

I've been keeping a close eye on this market (TWTR options) and in my opinion, there were no great bargains. Especially with longer term contracts, you'd need to chip into wide bid-ask spreads, and the prices didn't offer stunning deals on either side of the trade, unless you held an extreme opinion.

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