Re: The Viral Economy
Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:39 pm
To be fair, the chances of Gamestop stock going up infinitely are also very, VERY low. Not zero, but lowwwwwww.
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons bring us some web forums whereupon we can gather
http://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/
Almost all of them. It's why they're doing it. They want to drive the short-sellers and their allies right into the ground and bury them as deeply as they can. No one's walking around in their camp going "Hey, guys, we're kind of screwing with a lot of people's money here" ...
GME is a <$2B company trading at $22B. Silver has a market cap around $1T. They'd have a tough time moving the needle significantly.Paingod wrote: ↑Mon Feb 01, 2021 9:50 am
News reports over the weekend about "Silver" being their new target are false flags. The subreddits over there are seething over the attempt by spam bots and media outlets to distract buyers into a different commodities than GME or AMC. They say most of the "Buy Silver" posts are coming from accounts with no post history that were made in the last week.
I wasn’t clear. I’m talking about the idiots who are jumping on the bandwagon and pouring their money into GameStop now, not the WallStreetBets crowd that kicked this off.Paingod wrote: ↑Mon Feb 01, 2021 9:50 amAlmost all of them. It's why they're doing it. They want to drive the short-sellers and their allies right into the ground and bury them as deeply as they can. No one's walking around in their camp going "Hey, guys, we're kind of screwing with a lot of people's money here" ...
It's a large number of small fish (admittedly with a few bigger ones in the school) that seem to have scented on a shark's blood and are massing to try and kill it. They're pushing for the share prices to keep climbing as high as they can go and they know what that means. They'd LOVE to see their shares they bought at $18, $25, $50, $100, $200, or $300 skyrocket to $1000 or more and are chanting for the "squeeze"
The battlecry is "HOLD! HOLD!" and they keep punting around Braveheart and 300 memes where a smaller force took down monolithic odds.
News reports over the weekend about "Silver" being their new target are false flags. The subreddits over there are seething over the attempt by spam bots and media outlets to distract buyers into a different commodities than GME or AMC. They say most of the "Buy Silver" posts are coming from accounts with no post history that were made in the last week.
Well sometimes you need to step back and just enjoy the view on the backs of your underpaid workers.
Just out of curiosity, who is your model for a CEO who doesn't underpay his workers?
What metric are we using here? The CEO's pay to his workers pay for COSTCO is 169:1. For Bezos, it's 58:1.
You know there's no correlation right? His wealth is through Amazon stock. I'm not even sure it would be legal to take his personal stock and give it to employees; let alone precedented.
But Costco must have a fraction of the ‘talent’ that Amazon needs to have, considering the nature of the businesses.stessier wrote: ↑Wed Feb 03, 2021 9:31 amWhat metric are we using here? The CEO's pay to his workers pay for COSTCO is 169:1. For Bezos, it's 58:1.
Isn't Amazon's stock price based, to an extent, on maximizing profits by minimizing employee costs? The methods Amazon uses to do so are a bit rough and I think it's fair to hold Bezos and the leadership of the company responsible. My outrage at Amazon is focused more on the sweatshop conditions in their warehouses than on the employee pay.noxiousdog wrote: ↑Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:34 amYou know there's no correlation right? His wealth is through Amazon stock. I'm not even sure it would be legal to take his personal stock and give it to employees; let alone precedented.
Only very indirectly. Amazon's stock price is purely based on what individual investors (see Gamestop craziness or Tesla) will pay for the stock. Bezos has zero control over that. And 99% of his wealth is tied up in that.
I agree it's complicated which is why I asked about metrics just to be sure I understood where you were coming from. I don't know about the living wage argument - I haven't done the research. Do you know how they arrive at the number and is it indexed for location?malchior wrote: ↑Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:19 am Fair though I think that is the trouble with ratios without context. Amazon is a conglomerate. The ratio includes a measure of AWS/Amazon corporate who get paid very high wages but also hourly warehouse workers who have low wages and have poor working conditions. Nearly everyone at Costco is paid a living wage down to the person working on the sales floor. That is why it is complicated.
What would happen to his stock value if the lowest Amazon wages were given a significant bump?noxiousdog wrote: ↑Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:34 amYou know there's no correlation right? His wealth is through Amazon stock. I'm not even sure it would be legal to take his personal stock and give it to employees; let alone precedented.
Amazon Raises Minimum Wage to $15 for All U.S. EmployeesAlefroth wrote: ↑Wed Feb 03, 2021 3:56 pmWhat would happen to his stock value if the lowest Amazon wages were given a significant bump?noxiousdog wrote: ↑Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:34 amYou know there's no correlation right? His wealth is through Amazon stock. I'm not even sure it would be legal to take his personal stock and give it to employees; let alone precedented.
No, there's no direct correlation. As CEO, though, he is responsible for the shitty conditions that the warehouse workers toil in and the comparatively poor pay they endure. And it's not just an indictment of him, but he is the most visible of the ultra-plutocrats that could easily transform the lives of those who work for him without even budging the needle on their wealth.noxiousdog wrote: ↑Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:34 am
You know there's no correlation right? His wealth is through Amazon stock. I'm not even sure it would be legal to take his personal stock and give it to employees; let alone precedented.
OK, so do you believe that CEO compensation and wealth is completely divorced from the welfare of the workers that the corporation employs?noxiousdog wrote: ↑Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:15 pm So it's not directly related, but you make the connection again.
The reality is sure, workers need more representation. I'm a fan of the German model who have at least a 20% representation on the board of directors of public corporations.
When people complain about short sellers being shitbag vultures, they're remembering things like this. I think if you want an example of "whatever the fuck a hedge-fund raider" is, it's this.Kurth wrote: ↑Fri Jan 29, 2021 1:53 pmThere's nothing wrong with short selling. It's not vultures picking over the bones of sad, dying companies. Short sellers are not "hedge-fund raiders" (whatever the fuck that means). Institutional short selling is actually a stabilizing force, or should be when not manipulated by a bunch of greedy redditors and a legion of idiots who really have no business trading but are now empowered to do so by the Robinhoods of the world.
This isn't an isolated incident. While it may not represent all short sellers, when a few go out of their way to take down companies like packs of hyenas after a zebra it sticks in people's minds and I don't fault folks who find the practice of betting on failure distasteful. Not when it's been weaponized against successful companies.About a decade and a half ago, my company came under short seller attack. We faced a highly-coordinated PR and legal campaign, and it almost brought the company down. What made no sense was that our company was thriving, on track for its best year yet and consistently crushing analyst expectations. We discovered in time that the shorts had worked the media, contacted regulators, colluded with someone in our company, and timed their trades just before bad news broke.
The damage was significant. More than a billion dollars in shareholder equity vanished, much of it into the pockets of the short sellers. These attacks can get personal, too. At one point, I faced death threats and moved in order to keep my family safe.
I know other executives who have equally brutal stories about short attacks. But we don't talk about them. Our lawyers urge us to settle; our comms people urge silence. No one wants to be on the wrong side of a short attack. But seeing what WSB did these past few weeks made me want to speak out.
A concerted attack to manipulate the market by short sellers on a business in order to kill its market value when discussing why people might not like short sellers is irrelevant?
It isn't totally irrelevant but the actual question is how much systemic risk is introduced because we allow short selling. What the Axon dude is complaining about is what can happen when big players got on the wrong side of a position. Those players will sometimes try to fight their way out of it. And that is aligned with their capability to move markets, bring nuisance share holder lawsuits, and lobby to influence regulators and lawmakers. It is a negative but is it outweighed by the positives -- price discovery, uncovering fraud, etc.? It'd take a whole lot more evidence than Axon dude *and* this WSB nonsense to convince me of that.noxiousdog wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 9:37 am Again, it's irrelevant. It's a guy whining about his personal net worth being temporarily down.
Let's assume you have a private company. It's making a nice profit. Some investment group wants to buy it and offers you 10% of it's true value. Of course you don't want to sell for that price. If that firm takes out an ad in the paper, does that change your mind?
People don't like short sellers for two reasons:
1) it destroys the illusion that the market always goes up.
2) they don't understand how the stock market works
There’s nothing at all wrong with the concept of short-selling (aside from whether you believe it makes any sense at all to allow someone to sell something they don’t have or own).Kurth wrote:This is just so much bullshit. There's nothing wrong with short selling. It's not vultures picking over the bones of sad, dying companies. Short sellers are not "hedge-fund raiders" (whatever the fuck that means). Institutional short selling is actually a stabilizing force, or should be when not manipulated by a bunch of greedy redditors and a legion of idiots who really have no business trading but are now empowered to do so by the Robinhoods of the world.
But to what end? Certainly it's temporary. As Buffett would Ben Graham, In the short term the stock market is a voting machine, in the long term it's a weighing machine.RunningMn9 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 9:58 am Hedge fund behavior is the main reason why although I get the concept of short-selling as benign, it’s clearly become a tool for outright manipulation by large investors.
Yes. Because it's an anecdote. That guy doesn't like it. Good for him. I don't like it when my stocks go down either.Paingod wrote: A concerted attack to manipulate the market by short sellers on a business in order to kill its market value when discussing why people might not like short sellers is irrelevant?
Yes, of course. There's a reason Warren Buffett has only been asked to sit on one compensation committee in his lifetime.gbasden wrote: OK, so do you believe that CEO compensation and wealth is completely divorced from the welfare of the workers that the corporation employs?
If it moves the market, then it creates investor and director concern and results in an attempt to change the direction of the company. It also gets the lawsuits pumping that need to be defended against. "If you invested more than 100,000 in x between these dates then contact the law offices of..."noxiousdog wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:05 am What is the actual impact from a hedge fund short selling... granting the real, but rare, situation of hostile takeovers?
Sure but why are you completely discounting his experience? It's possible he could have harbored some irrational long-term grudge because his net worth temporarily went down 15-years ago. However, what he is talking about lines up with the reality of hedge fund market manipulation to some extent. Especially since much of it isn't illegal.noxiousdog wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:05 amYes. Because it's an anecdote. That guy doesn't like it. Good for him. I don't like it when my stocks go down either.
Assuming the accuracy of his report, I don't like it when I get death threats and need to uproot because of them or have to explain to people who hold me accountable why I lost them billions or get involved in legal battles over lies designed to ruin me and my life's work.malchior wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:20 amSure but why are you completely discounting his experience? It's possible he could have harbored some irrational long-term grudge because his net worth temporarily went down 15-years ago. However, what he is talking about lines up with the reality of hedge fund market manipulation to some extent. Especially since much of it isn't illegal.noxiousdog wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:05 amYes. Because it's an anecdote. That guy doesn't like it. Good for him. I don't like it when my stocks go down either.
The guy wasn't an investor. He was the business owner. His company -not just his stock price- was almost destroyed by short sellers manipulating the market. His experience is not in isolation and happens to other businesses. The practice isn't legal, but they largely get away with it. That's what I'm offering as a reason why some people don't like short sellers.noxiousdog wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:05 amYes. Because it's an anecdote. That guy doesn't like it. Good for him. I don't like it when my stocks go down either.Paingod wrote: A concerted attack to manipulate the market by short sellers on a business in order to kill its market value when discussing why people might not like short sellers is irrelevant?
Well, yes, when we are talking about the entire global stock market, I'm discounting one guy's story. Just like when I get anecdotes about invisible sky gods.Paingod wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:31 amThe guy wasn't an investor. He was the business owner. His company -not just his stock price- was almost destroyed by short sellers manipulating the market. His experience is not in isolation and happens to other businesses. The practice isn't legal, but they largely get away with it. That's what I'm offering as a reason why some people don't like short sellers.noxiousdog wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:05 amYes. Because it's an anecdote. That guy doesn't like it. Good for him. I don't like it when my stocks go down either.Paingod wrote: A concerted attack to manipulate the market by short sellers on a business in order to kill its market value when discussing why people might not like short sellers is irrelevant?
The stance you're taking here is that the sky yesterday wasn't blue because someone only saw it and took pictures and they're anecdotally telling you about it?
Slander and libel nearly destroyed his business.a highly-coordinated public relations and legal campaign against our company. Within months, press that ignored us began assailing us. We were sued over 100 times, and a federal government investigation was triggered that alarmed both our shareholders and customers causing real damage.