Current Affairs - The Bear and Badger

Funkstain

LivDiv wrote:

I wouldnt be going anywhere near either side of this if your goal is to make money. If you buy at this late stage you will end up with massively over inflated stocks. Shorting is scummy but they target companies for a reason and GameStop isn't in a good place as an actual business. The shorters are morally wrong not technically wrong.

From what I can tell (which I admit is limited!), the reality is slightly more nuanced. Obviously right now the stock is massively over inflated BUT this whole thing started because a real investor noted that the underlying business was doing OK (not amazing, but a hell of a lot better than $4 a share) so he bought in, and some of his watchers and followers bought in. Then the "bear" hedge fund arrived and shorted the fuck out of it (more than 100% of shares wtf how is that possible / legal) and everyone was like wtf? covid and other things make this business suffer but the underlying figures are still healthy enough, this isn't Debenhams or some shit, and they decided to fight back to protect their investment and that turned into a crusade

LivDiv

Yeah just reading Rouj's post there.
I mean I'm happy somebody who gives a shit is interested and invested. The shorters are pricks for sure.

Personally I still wouldn't touch it. Somebody being interested isn't the same as somebody being right.
Also consider one of the main attractions seems to be selling people's data and they perhaps aren't the messiah either.

edit: I think it comes down to if you would invest knowing that info without the shorting going on. I wouldn't, others might I guess.

Roujin

Yeah selling advertising on the newsletter is one thing, but making a serious investment into the business and purchasing over 10% of the stock with a plan to mordernise the offering of services and then getting appointed to the board is also on the table here, as well as the side effect of helping keeping people in their jobs.

Something the short sellers don't care about, as demonstrated by the repeated coordinated attempts to lower the price as much as possible when shares are returned.

Neither side are particularly good, but at least people on the ground at Gamestop have some hope for the future compared to the people with big short positions on them actively willing them to fail.

g.man

LivDiv

Everybody needs to go watch The Big Short.
Edit: it just happens to be on iPlayer

mistercrayon

That film is phenomenal. Could easily a top ten film for me.

It’s also worth watching “the other guys” by the same director - reflects a very similar politics.

LivDiv

Likewise

poprock

LivDiv wrote:

Everybody needs to go watch The Big Short. Edit: it just happens to be on iPlayer

Yep, yep, yep. And maybe watch it twice.

djchump

I mean, if you're under any illusions that the stock market, investors, banks and big business in general isn't sometimes completely irrational and batshit crazy you just need to read up a little about WeWork and Neumann: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/11/inside-the-fall-of-wework

There was a great article or video a year or two ago comparing it with IWG (an actual profitable office-leasing/co-working company that held more office space than WeWork) that had some of the most damning financial graph work I've ever seen, but I can't remember where I saw it now.
Gambling always ends up in the irrational.

[edit] Aha, found it - Gremill posted it Nov 2019:

Gremill wrote:

Interesting article about the WeWork 'phenomenon', the lunatic that ran it and the stupidity/gullibility of the rich: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/11/wework-adam-neumann-con-artist-grifter-entrepreneur

Just amazing scenes:

pantyfire

Like anything related to money and greed the technical side of it is often overshadowed by the extreme and shady side.
Short selling can be argued is a way of making money from a company that was going to fail anyway.
But when a major hedge investor buys a load of stock then puts out videos saying/arguing about how shit that stock is, then in my opinion they are crossing a line.
This happened with this GameStop saga.

Brooks

Like I said - I want everyone involved to lose. The reddit goons, the funds, Gamestop, everyone.

RedDave2

Brooks wrote:

Like I said - I want everyone involved to lose. The reddit goons, the funds, Gamestop, everyone.

Well that's kinda shitty. If gamestop lose that's a few good people out of work for no good reason.

mistercrayon

Usually if the share price increases in one of these situations it’s because jobs are going to go.

Funkstain

LivDiv wrote:

Yeah just reading Rouj's post there.
I mean I'm happy somebody who gives a shit is interested and invested. The shorters are pricks for sure.

Personally I still wouldn't touch it. Somebody being interested isn't the same as somebody being right.
Also consider one of the main attractions seems to be selling people's data and they perhaps aren't the messiah either.

edit: I think it comes down to if you would invest knowing that info without the shorting going on. I wouldn't, others might I guess.

Yeah sorry didn’t mean to say it’s a good idea to get involved. Wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. It’s still Reddit!

nick_md

Reddit's great! Just follow your subs innit. r/animalsbeingderps alone is worth keeping the whole site for

poprock

djchump wrote:

I mean, if you're under any illusions that the stock market, investors, banks and big business in general isn't sometimes completely irrational and batshit crazy you just need to read up a little about WeWork and Neumann: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/11/inside-the-fall-of-wework

WeWork continues to be mental, just not as mental as it was under the personally bonkers-in-the-nut Neumann.

Check this out from Wired just today:

“The same picture was replicated in its UK arm – WeWork International – where, despite rental income almost doubling, losses for 2019 more than tripled to £231.7m. (The company stresses that the UK business is a holding company and that a large portion of the loss – £93m – is attributable to the UK business taking on and developing the intellectual property rights of a company called WW Worldwide, a Netherlands-based entity that was established in April 2019. It is not clear what purpose WW Worldwide serves in the wider organisation.)”

(Emphasis mine.)

Roujin

We Work are straight up tech bro dudemen but for office leasing, their building managers are all about trying to big data and optioneer their way to efficiencies and savings for running and designing their spaces. Been to a couple of the offices they own though and they are noice, albeit pretty fucking expensive to lease.

I wouldn't complain if I was in one though, all that free beer and cucumber water and biscuits and hipster lounge spaces is almost worth the weird cult vibes the staff give off.

GurtTractor

I learnt of the term 'brogrammer' this week.

poprock

Roujin wrote:

… their building managers are all about trying to big data and optioneer their way to efficiencies and savings for running and designing their spaces …

These are not intrinsically bad ideas. I mean, they’re pretty essential strategies for sustainability. The problem with WeWork has always been their shady corporate structure, thanks to being started up by a complete loonball.

The fact that they’re being fucked by the pandemic is just more evidence of shitty short-term thinking … if they were in it for the long game, they’d be poised to profit big-time when Covid passes and people return to a new way of working. Their model is ideally suited to the flexible work styles that’ll be popular on t’other side of all this.

Ideally they’ll tank for good and someone else will buy up their prime buildings, so they run with a similar concept but based on an actual business model.

LivDiv

I wasnt aware WeWork was such a state.
Never even thought of it because the business concept is such a good one it negates a need for shady tactics to make money.

Then again we live on the same planet as John McAfee so anything is possible.

Yossarian

WeWork are a commercial real estate owner pretending to be a tech company.

One major issue with them that investors have bought into the tech company hype and pushed their valuation up to ridiculous levels compared to their peers. It’s like the drawbacks that all of these types of companies share are magically forgotten in the case of WeWork.

poprock

The WeWork story is an absolute belter. It’s going to make for a hilarious movie one day.

The owner was in the habit of personally buying stakes in buildings and then leasing them to the company. So the company had to pay him rent for their own buildings. Then he did the same thing with the brand name. He trademarked ‘We’ and then charged his own business millions of dollars per year to use it as part of the WeWork name. Then he started making public announcements about running for the post of ‘President of the World’.

Funkstain

That is the most accurate take. The data stuff etc is at best one of the ways they've tricked idiotic investors, like Softbank, to give them loads of money because it looks exciting and technical and data and disruptive, at worst a costly waste of time which will never recoup the investment ("we could save $5,000 per building per year by not filtering all our water!" levels of insights expected).

They could just adapt Easyjet's or Ryanair's capacity management, fuel costing and pricing software if they want to try properly dynamic demand based pricing.

Roujin

The craziest thing about their building optimisation stuff is that it only benefits WeWork! It offers no benefit to a tenant to know that they are in statistically the minimum calculable space for an office suitable for the number of people they employ. You have to pay over the odds for a WeWork office, compared to almost any other flexible office space provider for privilege of unlimited coffee, trendy psuedo industrial decor and the weird commune vibes that are going on.

Their fit out ethos is laudable, but only really from shitey business point of view of giving your tenants the smallest possible amount of space per person you can get away with, albeit a nicely decorated and comfortably maintained space.

LivDiv

"Disruptive" always gets a lol from me.
It is catnip to these people.

Not that things cant be disruptive and good but you can see pupils dilate when they hear it.

poprock

I should probably mention that Mrs Poprock’s firm design some of their buildings. Not many of them, but still. Weirdly, it seems they’re quite a good client, and pay well.

Diluted Dante

They throw money around like it's Brewsters Millions, I'm not surprised Pop.

mistercrayon

My favourite tech crash is the theranos one. I have a theory 90% of the media ire against Holmes was because a bunch of rich assholes wanted to shag her and demonstrated this by splooging billions onto what is blatantly snake oil.

RedDave2

Fixed it - but thanks Rouj

Roujin

RedDave2 wrote:

Ah for fecks sack....

I got you fam.

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