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Elon’s Out

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Re: Elon’s Out

#721

Post by edgyquant »

IX-103 wrote: post #194
edgyquant wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A simple requirement that no coordinated individual or organization have sway over more than 25% of political seats, and political organizations at the federal and state levels must be separated, would do wonders for decentralization and better representation. and would be undemocratic

How is that? Popular parties would split to express a wider array of views. Of course first-past the post voting systems won't work here, but that doesn't make it undemocratic.

You are restricting who can be elected based on ideology and setting percentages. That’s as in democratic as a single party state

Re: Elon’s Out

#722

Post by FabHK »

Majromax wrote: post #681
CaptainZapp wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually less trouble than short selling, where the loss, in theory, is unlimited. On options losses are capped to the money invested. Nevertheless, you should consider that a host of professional traders with much better equipment and connections are betting against you.

> On options losses are capped to the money invested. On long options -- a purchased call, purchased short, or a combination -- then losses are capped to the money invested. On short options, losses are potentially unlimited. Understanding the difference is obviously extremely important. > Nevertheless, you should consider that a host of professional traders with much better equipment and connections are betting agai…

> On short options, losses are potentially unlimited.

On a short call, your loss is unlimited. On a short put, it is limited to the strike price, because the stock price can't go negative.

Re: Elon’s Out

#723

Post by FabHK »

jacquesm wrote: post #670
xiphias2 wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

,,The deal he proposed is beyond stupid’’ The price in the deal was set by professional lawyers at Goldman Sachs, so if it was beyond stupid, it was not Elon’s fault. The deal was proposed before the recession, and at that time there were people proposing that the price is too low, because Twitter stock was over $60 at some point. Of course in the current market Elon would pay a few billions to get out of the deal, b…

If I have a classic car appraised and don't like the appraised value I'll pass. Goldman Sachs was working for Twitter, of course they are going to try to maximize the valuation. Musk should have done DD before agreeing on a price, it's that simple.

GS was offering a fairness opinion to the board, so they need to say, in essence, that "54.20 is a good price, because it is more than Twitter is worth by itself."

So they aim to provide a somewhat lower valuation.

Re: Elon’s Out

#724

Post by FabHK »

DarkmSparks wrote: post #645

Why does it have to be that complicated? Twitter says only 5% of its active users are bots. Anyone who has paid attention to say Joe Bidens follower count[1] would put it closer to 50% [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10829675/Almost-hal... Bloomberg says there is no evidence of this... yeah, personally I dont really see any evidence of twitter having more than 200 or 300 million real users, and only a sm…

So? That doesn't absolve Musk from his obligation to buy Twitter, as agreed in the merger agreement.

Re: Elon’s Out

#725

Post by jjeaff »

roenxi wrote: post #588
BoorishBears wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a certain irony in picking this high horse to ride, when we're taking about the response to a western european ground-war in the year 2022. As if that's not evidence of far more barbaric mechanisms at play in geopolitics...

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…

I wouldn't call it stealing so much as temporarily seizing stolen property. The oligarch's live on almost exclusively ill-gotten gains.

Re: Elon’s Out

#726

Post by FabHK »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #292

Does anyone else see the complete pointlessness in all the cock-sure but entirely speculative comments on this? You don’t know Musk, or the backend, or anything at all besides what the media tells you and that isn’t 1/10th the whole story. I get why people wanna talk about it, just not be absolute “well I know this for a fact” smugness that most of the comments here have. The reality is NONE of you actually KNOW anyt…

Eh? The merger agreement is a legal contract between Twitter and Musk, and it is a matter of public record [1].

And some people are certainly qualified to opine on these issues, particularly Matt Levine, who has worked as an M&A lawyer and investment banker.

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312522...

Re: Elon’s Out

#727

Post by BobbyJo »

spullara wrote: post #172
BobbyJo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk has sold billions in stock at this point, so this whole "it's stock that's increased in value independent of Musk" line of thinking is a bad misdirection.

And every time he has sold he has paid huge taxes on those sales.

Yes, but how much? Most of the rich pay taxes, but how much "should" they pay? Should someone worth 100M pay higher income taxes than someone worth 1M if they make the same income in a given year? Should there be a "limit" on the amount of wealth one can transfer in a given year as which point taxes hit 100%?

Tax schemes and how they affect wealth, inequality, consumption, etc. is an interesting line of thought, and a necessary one, if you accept that the current one has allowed some individuals to get so rich that the rule of law breaks down in their presence.

Re: Elon’s Out

#728

Post by FabHK »

zackees wrote: post #699
majormajor wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears that that's the remedy for failing to get funds, not for cold feet; there's a performance clause for the latter, so Levine suggests "Musk’s goal here is presumably to walk away from Twitter and pay only $1 billion in damages." - that Musk is negotiating by making a stink to even be able to pay instead of going through with the deal he signed.

Your repeating opinion of someone with extreme biases for clickbait. This fantasy of forcing musk to buy the company doesn’t exist in any contract. Your asking the court to make up a new contract and enforce it. That’s not how the court works, except in extreme circumstances which don’t apply to this twitter acquisition attempt. Also, Musk asserts that upto 50% of twitter users are bots, which is totally believable.…

> This fantasy of forcing musk to buy the company doesn’t exist in any contract.

That is precisely what the merger agreement is: a contract forcing Musk to buy Twitter.

Re: Elon’s Out

#729

Post by haliskerbas »

HWR_14 wrote: post #189
haliskerbas wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s a genuine danger that the result of this case will be “some people are too powerful to be regulated by the US system, and this is now obvious”. This should have been obvious by now. Cash rules everything around me.

> Cash rules everything around me. Serious question: Are you in the US? Any Western European country? There's a tendency for people in corrupt areas to assume the whole world works like that.

> Serious question: Are you in the US? Any Western European country?

The United States of America

> There's a tendency for people in corrupt areas to assume the whole world works like that.

Exactly. I live in a corrupt area and start with the assumption that most of the world is corrupt.

Re: Elon’s Out

#730

Post by ProfessorLayton »

ethagknight wrote: post #718
webkike wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sure appears that Elons is just balking, but what is far more likely is that he has uncovered some deep Twitter bullshit and he plans to unveil it in court. Forced to air the dirty laundry by the court, he avoids defamation suits. I have no idea how you can claim that that is far more likely. You think it is more likely that Elon is going to expose the numbers Twitter reports to the SEC as off by an order of mag…

From the actual SEC filing: As further described below, Mr. Musk is terminating the Merger Agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement, and is likely to suffer a Company Material Adverse Effect (as that term is defined in the Merger Agreement). I’d…

>I suspect Twitter has no real evidence that their value proposition to customers is worth anything close to what they claim

What?? The value of their service is what their customers are willing to pay, which they've done so to the tune of BILLIONS per year. They would not continue to do so if they didn't get the value Twitter charges for their service.

Customers care about return on investment, and if spending $1 on the platform bring in more value than that, then they'll continue to spend on that platform. It really is that simple. Ad platforms have tools to help customers make the most of their spend, but ultimately ROI will dictate how much they'll spend on it.

I'm also a small-time Adwords user, and while I'm sure there's some click fraud going on, what I care about is getting more value per dollar than I spend.

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