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SuperMicro is a Shaky House of Cards Because of Over-Reliance on Facebook?
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SuperMicro is a Shaky House of Cards Because of Over-Reliance on Facebook?

raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

There is a new short seller report that paints SuperMicro as a company on the edge. Quoting from the intro:

"After conducting a forensic review of Super Micro Computer, Inc. (Nasdaq: SMCI or the Company) – a computer server and storage hardware manufacturer – Spruce Point has grave concerns about the accuracy of its financial reporting and sustainability of its recent stock price performance.

"SMCI and its CEO have a troubling history that recently resulted in delinquent filings, financial restatements, and a delisting of its shares. In 2020, the SEC levied a massive $17.5 million fine and ordered the return of $2.1 million by the CEO for unjust stock sales in what the SEC described as “widespread accounting violations” tied to revenue and expense recognition.

"We believe investors are chasing SMCI’s outlandish long-term revenue goals that ultimately won’t convert to cash flow while signs of financial troubles and new financial reporting pressures emerge. Our biggest concern is that SMCI has become reliant on Facebook (Meta Platforms), now a ~22% customer, which itself is struggling and is already reportedly suspending datacenter capital spending. Follow the money: SMCI’s founder and CEO has sold a record amount of stock in the recent months while the CFO sold 70% of his holdings."

More: https://lowendbox.com/blog/supermicro-is-a-shaky-house-of-cards/

Comments

  • lentrolentro Member, Host Rep
    edited January 2023

    P/E ratio under 10.

    As of their 2021 clickbait, assets / deferred income to liabilities / debt is 2:1… if they shuttered operations, they’d have 1bn left.

    Financials are audited because it’s listed on the NASDAQ.

    Take away 20% of revenue, and that’s a storm they can weather just fine. I feel like this post is fear mongering and clickbait.

    If the stock is overvalued, sure — but in my mind, that’s not grounds for titling this post to imply that the company would collapse or something.

  • jbilohjbiloh Administrator, Veteran

    Can't believe SuperMicro hasn't been acquired yet by some deep pocketed entity that sees value competing in the server space with Dell/HP/IBM.

  • davidedavide Member
    edited January 2023

    I have a Supermicro for Intel 771 dual socket currently running 24/7 since like 2008. It's peculiarly indestructible and has tolerated abusive temperature and voltages all along my nefarious ownership. Memories are at 70°, cpus perpetually at 88° which is 1° short of triggering thermal throttling. Just last Sunday both the UPS and the PSU failed dramatically on that computer, surge protection breaker opened leaving the house w/o power, the motherboard survived the "event". Still happily humming the hell out of my ears.

    Supermicro is a fit name for what it is: a small form factor, reduced components count, with all the performance of a server board.

    Thanked by 2raza19 maverick
  • ralfralf Member
    edited January 2023

    Bear in mind that short sellers are scum whose ultimate goal is to try to make a viable company go bankrupt. Sure, they usually pick on companies that are having problems, but that's just because it makes their life easier.

    The short version is that they pick their target company, find someone who's willing to lend them a lot of stock that they sell, and then do their best to create as much bad publicity for the firm as they can. They don't care if any of the crap they're saying is true, often they'll twist anything to try to sway people's opinion on the stock, they'll accuse the CEO of things to try and discredit the company. Absolutely anything to make the stock price go down, so they can buy back the stock at a lower price and give it back to the lender.

    But if it was just that simple, it wouldn't be too bad, but they've worked out that it's not enough to just lower the value of the stock. They want to utterly destroy a company. If they manage to create so much bad publicity that it starts to affect the company's ability to trade normally - i.e. lost customer confidence, lost contracts / sales, harder / more expensive to have debt, fewer investors, etc. All this is seen as great by the short sellers, because the top prize for them is to force a company into bankruptcy, because they then never even have to returned the shares lent to them.

    As far as I'm concerned short sellers are bottom-feeding pond-scum. They have no positive effect on the economy at large, and a purely destructive effect on the companies they target. Often they use illegal methods or outright lies to defame people seen as key in the organisation they want to take down.

    The market in general would be best if short-selling was banned, except it won't, because traders make a lot of money from it, and the lawmakers are beholden to them.

    But regardless, by publishing this article, you're doing the short-sellers' dirty work for them, and contributing to the problem.

    Thanked by 2maverick TimboJones
  • @ralf said:
    Bear in mind that short sellers are scum whose ultimate goal is to try to make a viable company go bankrupt. Sure, they usually pick on companies that are having problems, but that's just because it makes their life easier.

    I'm gonna disagree with you there. There is such a thing as malinvestments and people shorting them are heroes. I don't know whether SMCI is it and I have no position. In a liberal system, nobody is gonna be right or wrong all the time but they have to be given a 'vote', including short sellers.

    As far as I'm concerned short sellers are bottom-feeding pond-scum. They have no positive effect on the economy at large, and a purely destructive effect on the companies they target. Often they use illegal methods or outright lies to defame people seen as key in the organisation they want to take down.

    The people shorting toxic assets of 2008, the everything bubble fueled by free money in 2020-2021, or the energy market in 2022 had a net positive effect on society. Even if short term the effect tasted like bitter pill.

    We have laws against false claims (as long as they don't originate from a sitting president). The defamation and lies can be sorted.

    Thanked by 1maverick
  • ralfralf Member
    edited January 2023

    @woteti said: We have laws against false claims (as long as they don't originate from a sitting president). The defamation and lies can be sorted.

    The laws aren't adequate though.

    Think of it from the perspective of a business owner who's struggling through hard times, but managing to keep the company going, turning a small profit, and employing however many people.

    The short seller sees this victim, digs up anything from the past that sounds like a scandal, even if it wasn't, accuses the CEO of incompetence, says this, says that, whatever.

    The effect on the company can be swift and fatal. Many companies have been pushed into bankruptcy this way, and by that point it doesn't really matter any more.

    Sure, maybe the CEO can sue for defamation or libel, but it'll be long and drawn out, and even if they win, it won't help the now bankrupt company or the staff who've now all lost their jobs. It's also unlikely that they'll pursue such charges in most situations, as ongoing legal situations like this would make them less employable elsewhere.

    Normal investing is about choosing companies that you think have potential. Nothing wrong with that. Arguably, making a bet that a company will loose value isn't inherently bad. But when short-sellers take massive positions and actively try to force a company into bankruptcy, just so they can profit personally, that is utterly despicable. They're not creating anything of value, they're just destroying other people's hard work.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    Meanwhile, 12months +77,39%, 3y +200,38%

    $SMCI has VASTLY outperformed the market. On sector where most are taking a huge downturn in market, $SMCI has done essentially the exact opposite.
    P/E is still rather conservative for IT industry, albeit this type of infrastructure / backend, B2B companies tend to have smaller P/E valuations than B2C companies.

    Would have made a brilliant investment on the Media Virus downturn, which i personally did consider back then.

    Insane run for the past 6months for $SMCI

    $SMCI also happens to be the only(??) server vendor who's platform is more or less open and commodity. Therefore $SMCI will always have demand from some datacenter operators, just like us.

    This also means $SMCI hardware retains their value better at the secondary market.

    Thanked by 2maverick ralf
  • wotetiwoteti Member
    edited January 2023

    @ralf said:

    OK my take on defamation was indeed too simplistic. In practice, lawsuits are indeed money and time consuming.

    But on the other points, capitalism is not a place for the faint-hearted. One creature's death is another's nutrient, cleared space, and reduced competition. If one is in it for unlimited upside, the downside comes with the package.

    In general, I'm for allowing some death and destruction (edit: including the short-seller's death and destruction if they are wrong). They're essential for healthy ecosystems.

    Thanked by 1maverick
  • jackbjackb Member, Host Rep

    Short sellers have predicted 21 of the last 3 financial crisis.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    @ralf said: Bear in mind that short sellers are scum whose ultimate goal is to try to make a viable company go bankrupt. Sure, they usually pick on companies that are having problems, but that's just because it makes their life easier.

    This is not true at all.
    They serve a market function. Say a company having runaway bull run on their stock price they can curtail it a little bit.

    That's not saying some are not total scum, but that's true for every single field and type of operator in absolutely everything.

    Like politicians, short sellers might just have above average % of said sociopaths/psychopaths etc. Which actually is true of CEOs as well.

    @ralf said: The short version is that they pick their target company, find someone who's willing to lend them a lot of stock that they sell, and then do their best to create as much bad publicity for the firm as they can. They don't care if any of the crap they're saying is true, often they'll twist anything to try to sway people's opinion on the stock, they'll accuse the CEO of things to try and discredit the company. Absolutely anything to make the stock price go down, so they can buy back the stock at a lower price and give it back to the lender.

    Most of that is true of those who go LONG as well.
    More true for those who use margin.

    Infact, it's the exactly same thing, just mirrored.

    @ralf said: But if it was just that simple, it wouldn't be too bad, but they've worked out that it's not enough to just lower the value of the stock. They want to utterly destroy a company. If they manage to create so much bad publicity that it starts to affect the company's ability to trade normally - i.e. lost customer confidence, lost contracts / sales, harder / more expensive to have debt, fewer investors, etc. All this is seen as great by the short sellers, because the top prize for them is to force a company into bankruptcy, because they then never even have to returned the shares lent to them.

    Yes, $GME was one of those situations. Still doesn't mean short selling does not have a function in the market, a valuable function.

    Let's flip the board, there was tons of shorting on $TSLA too. It made it more affordable for those of us who saw what $TSLA truly is to acquire stock, but admittedly, they got less from public offerings than they would have otherwise.

    Now let's flip the board to ACTUAL function of short selling:
    Nikola Motors. Obvious fscking scam operated by a fraudster. Short selling was a huge importance for the market here, to limit the amount they could scam from the market.
    Without short selling the stock price would have been much higher, and they could have gotten away with even more scamming with the increased hype on their Real Real Trucks(TM)

    It's insane that company has not been closed yet oO; I guess there is a sliver of chance that legit business owners took owner, or future will show the next round of scamming.

    Nikola is the only company ever i have considered shorting, unfortunately my broker did not offer that option :( Would've made a killing! Was considering this before the short seller reports.

    The short seller reports finally started to unveil the curtain of the scam. Without them this scam would have continued for much longer.

    Would you have preferred that Trevor would have gotten so-far away with it, and gained 10-100x more fraudulent income? Without that short seller report they could still be operating the fraud!

    @ralf said: The market in general would be best if short-selling was banned, except it won't, because traders make a lot of money from it, and the lawmakers are beholden to them.

    So YOU WOULD PREFER If Trevor Milton would still be operating that fraud and get it to do free? How about Theranos, perhaps they should be "in business" still?

    Thanked by 2kait maverick
  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    @ralf said: The effect on the company can be swift and fatal. Many companies have been pushed into bankruptcy this way, and by that point it doesn't really matter any more.

    In that case they probably should've already gone bankrupt.

    Other companies do just fine no matter how much attempts of libel, scandal and cancel culture there is. These are called profitable, solid businesses.

    I might be wrong, but i somehow recall you commenting elsewhere here on LET similarly shortsighted ideas and opinions, with adamant absolute confidence you are absolutely correct. I am suspicious of potential Dunning-Kruger effect going on here.

    It might be good idea for you to study the market mechanisms a bit more.

    Albeit admittedly, you are correct, some short sellers are absolutely evil and scummy, but as said, every field has these.

    Here is some research material for you, albeit i have not seen these myself (yet):

    (YUCK! CNBC but it's about $GME so it might actually be accidentally legit journalism)

    I will check these out myself later today as i get back from the DC and picking up latest sea freight.

    Maybe @ralf you can show something in support of your claims that short selling is absolutely evil and should be banned?
    Tho when it comes to banning, what else would we ban then too? Private stock ownership / retail investing as well? People loose money all the time going long too. Perhaps gasoline cars, nuclear power plants, coal power plants as well? Maybe private ownership of properties too as that hinders the govts ability to build stuff?

    Thanked by 1kait
  • jsgjsg Member, Resident Benchmarker

    @raindog308 said:
    "After conducting a forensic review ... Spruce Point has grave concerns

    Hahaha!
    Btw, SuperMicro is known the world around but WTF is "Spruce Point"?

    SEC

    aka the organisation known to ignore earthquakes but "detecting" problems at the sub-atomic level, depending on who is concerned.

    "We believe ..."

    "Forensic" hahaha

    Our biggest concern is that SMCI has become reliant on Facebook (Meta Platforms), now a ~22% customer, which itself is struggling and is already reportedly suspending datacenter capital spending.

    Would they be as "concerned" if it was, say Dell?

    TL;DR When one needs to fart one should do it in the washroom or at least discreetly . Unfortunately Spruce Point hasn't "forensically" detected that simple rule yet, it seems, and farts publicly and noisily ...

    As opposed to certain "forensic" gossip generators SuperMicro offers lots of tangible products of decent quality.

  • @jsg said:

    @raindog308 said:
    Our biggest concern is that SMCI has become reliant on Facebook (Meta Platforms), now a ~22% customer, which itself is struggling and is already reportedly suspending datacenter capital spending.

    Would they be as "concerned" if it was, say Dell?

    Probably not, but Meta (Facebooks parent company) is down over 60% the last 12 months and have publicly announced that they will cut costs wherever they can. It will effect SMCI of course, the question is only how much.
    I would not give a rats ass about the rest of Spruce Points "forensic" or their entire business idea for that matter, but they do have a valid point with the Facebook thing.

  • jsgjsg Member, Resident Benchmarker

    @rcy026 said:

    @jsg said:

    @raindog308 said:
    Our biggest concern is that SMCI has become reliant on Facebook (Meta Platforms), now a ~22% customer, which itself is struggling and is already reportedly suspending datacenter capital spending.

    Would they be as "concerned" if it was, say Dell?

    Probably not, but Meta (Facebooks parent company) is down over 60% the last 12 months and have publicly announced that they will cut costs wherever they can. It will effect SMCI of course, the question is only how much.
    I would not give a rats ass about the rest of Spruce Points "forensic" or their entire business idea for that matter, but they do have a valid point with the Facebook thing.

    Largely d'accord. You just worded it nicer than me.

  • @rcy026 said:

    @jsg said:

    @raindog308 said:
    Our biggest concern is that SMCI has become reliant on Facebook (Meta Platforms), now a ~22% customer, which itself is struggling and is already reportedly suspending datacenter capital spending.

    Would they be as "concerned" if it was, say Dell?

    Probably not, but Meta (Facebooks parent company) is down over 60% the last 12 months and have publicly announced that they will cut costs wherever they can. It will effect SMCI of course, the question is only how much.
    I would not give a rats ass about the rest of Spruce Points "forensic" or their entire business idea for that matter, but they do have a valid point with the Facebook thing.

    I've always heard you never want any one customer to be more than a 1/3 of overall business as a rule of thumb. So losing 22% of business sure would hurt, but not killer.

    Top management selling a disproportionate amount of stock sounds bad, too, until you find that stock is trading really high, and then it makes more sense than a fire sale impression it was trying to make.

    But I'm the kind of person who would be more bothered if there's a history of late filings and incorrect "accounting practices" like OCZ did years ago and found that management was running accounting schemes to "save face". In my experience, late financials was the giant red flag of shit hitting high pressure fans.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    @TimboJones said: I've always heard you never want any one customer to be more than a 1/3 of overall business as a rule of thumb. So losing 22% of business sure would hurt, but not killer.

    We like to keep this at around 10% maximum.
    We once had a customer (well known in seedbox industry too) which accounted for something like 20-25% at peak. It was a fscking nightmare.

    Our own plans got delayed by a year or two because of that, and the whole deal winded up costing us more than just opportunity cost.

    and the damn jackass ran wget 24/7 in a loop on many machines just to consume bandwidth because "i paid for it, so i damn well will consume it!".

    We were cash strapped at the time, but it still was a relief when we got rid of that account.

    We should never have onboarded that customer. My greed got ahead of me and was very detrimental for the business overall.

    OFC, SMCI is not in such a "startup" situation like we were back then, it was circa 2013 when we were first moving to our first own DC. We knew nothing about nothing back then, and were at edge of our budget for several years. It was very normal to do twice a month cashflow budget analysis to the tee back then. Hell at worst point 150€ investment was a really tough call (this was when tax agency was bullying us at the same time!! ~10 months of profits were locked with tax man or something of the sort)

    @TimboJones said: Top management selling a disproportionate amount of stock sounds bad, too, until you find that stock is trading really high, and then it makes more sense than a fire sale impression it was trying to make.

    Makes perfect sense, top management part of their compensation most likely is the stocks. Some big company top management automatically sell their shares all or a portion of them everytime they receive some.

  • @PulsedMedia said:

    @ralf said: The effect on the company can be swift and fatal. Many companies have been pushed into bankruptcy this way, and by that point it doesn't really matter any more.

    In that case they probably should've already gone bankrupt.

    Other companies do just fine no matter how much attempts of libel, scandal and cancel culture there is. These are called profitable, solid businesses.

    My point was specifically about companies that are just about managing to chug along, operating their business, but who are pushed into bankruptcy by somebody who has zero interest in the business itself, but just see it as an easy prey. Much as a lion doesn't attack the strongest animal in the pack, it attacks the weakest one in the herd.

    I might be wrong, but i somehow recall you commenting elsewhere here on LET similarly shortsighted ideas and opinions, with adamant absolute confidence you are absolutely correct. I am suspicious of potential Dunning-Kruger effect going on here.

    I'm going to ignore some parts of your post and just reply to pertinent parts, because I understand the coded message behind what you're saying here. If you wanted to say that I know nothing about the subject, and using as evidence that I once disagreed with you somewhere else, why didn't you just outright say it? So sorry, I'm not going to be trolled again by you.

    It might be good idea for you to study the market mechanisms a bit more.

    Obviously, because I have a different opinion to you, I must understand nothing about how the market works, riiiiight.

    Albeit admittedly, you are correct, some short sellers are absolutely evil and scummy, but as said, every field has these.

    And again, both my posts were entirely about the actions of these evil and scummy ones. But instead of seeing the point I was arguing, you decided that I must be wrong.

    I guess my error was by over-generalising my personal opinion:

    @ralf said: The market in general would be best if short-selling was banned, except it won't, because traders make a lot of money from it, and the lawmakers are beholden to them.

    While I understand the benefits of short-selling too, and the history behind hedging in general, I still believe that those benefits are only to serve greedy traders, and are not working in the interests of companies.

    Think back to the history of how trading began - it's a way for companies to raise capital to fund expansion, with the potential for much later earnings if the company is successful. This is entirely a positive effect - a company needs money for some endeavour, people who agree that the company's business plan is promising put in capital, the company does whatever it was they planned, and all the new shareholders share in the profits with the existing ones.

    The ultimate result of short-selling is to make it harder for a company to raise capital when they need it. This effectively puts the breaks on a company's business ability to conduct normal operations.

    Obviously, there exist many cash rich companies, where they have huge cash reserves. In these cases, the share price isn't really of much concern, because if they really need capital for a new project, they can use their cash reserves. However, even for these cash rich companies, you may be surprises to learn just how much debt they have in addition to their massive cash reserves. It's usually far cheaper to leverage debt to finance new projects, while investing the company's cash into other projects, with different levels of risk and time horizons for returns. The basis of capitalism is about leveraging ability to obtain debt to produce profits.

    So in these cases too, even short-selling can negatively affect massive cash-rich companies too, because it makes the cost of their debt more expensive, so they are inclines to use more of their cash directly, which makes their own internal proposition more risky because more of their assets are invested on a single project.

    In general, short-selling does not help any companies at all, it only serves to make traders richer at the expense of struggling companies, by stabbing them when they're vulnerable and hoping to destroy them.

    I understand the effects of short-selling on improving liquidity, but again, I don't consider these as that important because ultimately it still works against a company's interests. If a stock is illiquid, it just means that the people who own the shares are happy with the expected reward vs risk level. Liquidity is only an issue for people who want to get in on the action, but can't because no shares are available. But if they think the expected rewards are better than the risk, they need to make an offer sufficiently good to convince the current owners to sell.

    It's also clear that even the SEC has severe concerns about the ability of short-selling to destabilise the market, as there have been attempts to limit short-selling activities in the past. There are still many people who believe that short-selling is ultimately harmful to the market, and I am one. Just because you think it's all fine and dandy, doesn't automatically invalidate my opinions. It just means we hold different opinions.

    Here is some research material for you, albeit i have not seen these myself (yet):

    Great, thanks for your valuable research.

    Maybe @ralf you can show something in support of your claims that short selling is absolutely evil and should be banned?

    How about actually reading my last two posts instead of just a knee-jerk reaction to "hurr durr, I know I usually disagree with this guy, so I'm going to assume everything he said was wrong"?

    Tho when it comes to banning, what else would we ban then too? Private stock ownership / retail investing as well? People loose money all the time going long too. Perhaps gasoline cars, nuclear power plants, coal power plants as well? Maybe private ownership of properties too as that hinders the govts ability to build stuff?

    I don't care about what you think we should ban.

    My mistake that's so riled you up is that I shouldn't have said ban. I should have said massively restrict by regulation. Because there is clear evidence that short-selling is massively detrimental to the victim companies on the whole, and can massively increase volatility, which is just noise for long-term investors and companies at large, mostly serving to allow day-traders to make big profits, but also carries the risk of suddenly destabilising the entire market.

    Anyway, I'm not going to respond further on this thread, as it's clear that a self-appointed investing genius like yourself cares far more about this matter than me.

    Thanked by 1TimboJones
  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    @ralf said: My point was specifically about companies that are just about managing to chug along, operating their business, but who are pushed into bankruptcy by somebody who has zero interest in the business itself, but just see it as an easy prey. Much as a lion doesn't attack the strongest animal in the pack, it attacks the weakest one in the herd.

    Certainly it was. You cursed all short sellers, period.

    Also if short selling can make such a company bankrupt as you describe, they might've deserved it if their stock price can affect their business that much -- It means they were up their ears in debt collateralized with their stock.

    @ralf said: So sorry, I'm not going to be trolled again by you.

    Again trolled? Now you lost me completely.

    You do realize that people could just read the threads, without commenting as well?

    @ralf said: Obviously, because I have a different opinion to you, I must understand nothing about how the market works, riiiiight.

    That is not what was said. You clearly stated that all short selling is bad and should be banned, period.

    You obviously are missing their contribution in a healthy and productive manner.

    @ralf said: And again, both my posts were entirely about the actions of these evil and scummy ones. But instead of seeing the point I was arguing, you decided that I must be wrong.

    I guess my error was by over-generalising my personal opinion:

    No it was clearly not about just evil short selling, you were adamant that practice should be banned completely.

    @ralf said: While I understand the benefits of short-selling too, and the history behind hedging in general, I still believe that those benefits are only to serve greedy traders, and are not working in the interests of companies.

    So you have done some further research into the subject and/or are trying to make yourself better by trying to change your statement after the fact. A way too common way to try to weasel out of bad position for people who care more about how they look rather than the facts.

    Also, you are wrong. Hedge funds exists for a reason and not just for traders. Or are all retail investors traders too? Are you trying to argument investing in general is bad? Because it sounds like so.

    Hedge funds are used by some wealthy people to preserve their wealth against inflation for example.

    @ralf said: Think back to the history of how trading began - it's a way for companies to raise capital to fund expansion, with the potential for much later earnings if the company is successful. This is entirely a positive effect - a company needs money for some endeavour, people who agree that the company's business plan is promising put in capital, the company does whatever it was they planned, and all the new shareholders share in the profits with the existing ones.

    For many sure, raising capital for expansion. For others it's a join venture so they need to split their ownership. To allow liquidity for original investors, business founders. Sometimes to give compensation for their employees or ownership stakes. There are many reasons for companies to be publicly traded.

    First publicly traded company in record was east indian company i think.
    The history is murky of how and for what reasons it began, but yes, it could've been to raise capital.

    But that's besides the point how it began. Are you trying to argument now that public trading should be banned? Only selling shares once in a IPO should be allowed?

    You do realize the multitude of functions a company and/or investors of said company can do is how the market has become so efficient and big reason why we've seen the biggest boom in everything over the past 200 years or so?

    Raising capital is only one function.

    @ralf said: The ultimate result of short-selling is to make it harder for a company to raise capital when they need it. This effectively puts the breaks on a company's business ability to conduct normal operations.

    As said, raising capital is only one function via publicly offering shares. There are other means to raise capital as well, than just making a public offer of new shares.

    Further, it is merely one function of shares of a company.

    Therefore, short selling has other functions too.

    Let's take a ACME LLC (imaginary), it trades at 100$ with Price To Book value of 1.0, and works in Finance (so P/B is what mostly matters). It all of sudden skyrockets to 200$ giving P/B of 2.0, people are going in a frenzy and hyping it magnificently, people are buying like crazy, akin to tulip mania.
    Short seller comes and keeps the price a little bit less volatile and from raising so rapidly. Those who's brains just short circuited could have bought at 300, 400, 500 instead of ~200$ on average.
    The stock price plummets back to ~100$, and everyone who bought into the hype just lost 100$, instead of 200$, 300$ or 400$. Short seller did gain a profit, but also those who erroneously went long did not loose as much, but also those going short did not earn as much.

    That stabilized the market, much smaller boom-bust cycle, now everyone can learn from the experience to avoid making same mistake as before -- where as short sellers earned quite a bit (both those who lent shares, or sold their own!) making gains to invest into something else.

    You see that whenever you sell a stock, you are essentially short selling? This means that by your logic every person who ever sold a stock they own is nasty greedy scum. OR that selling at all should be completely banned, and you should only be allowed to buy stocks.

    It's quite common to say "i went short on $XYZ" when they sold. Did not loan the shares, they sold what they previously purchased.

    @ralf said: The basis of capitalism is about leveraging ability to obtain debt to produce profits.

    Nope. The basis of capitalism is free market. You know where you are free to own, buy or sell things?

    Imagine if short selling (all stock selling) would be banned, there would not be much of a stock market since the only way to gain earnings would be through dividends. It would be wildly inefficient market.

    @ralf said: So in these cases too, even short-selling can negatively affect massive cash-rich companies too, because it makes the cost of their debt more expensive, so they are inclines to use more of their cash directly, which makes their own internal proposition more risky because more of their assets are invested on a single project.

    Cash rich companies do not have debt of any meaningful amount. By definition a "rich" company (assuming cash means cash in bank, cash equivalents, bonds and other very liquid assets) doesn't need any debt.

    They still use a little bit of debt here and there, but cash to debt ratio tends to be extremely low. Look at Apple, MSFT, Tesla, check their finances. How much debt do they hold?

    They are all net positive liquidity.

    MSFT is just buying Activision in cash if i recall right. They also are now investing 10B $ in OpenAI. They did not need debt for any of that, they have plenty of cash.

    @ralf said: It's also clear that even the SEC has severe concerns about the ability of short-selling to destabilise the market, as there have been attempts to limit short-selling activities in the past.

    References please.

    There btw is regulation on short selling, and naked short selling (as seen on $GME) is actually illegal. for a very good friggin' reason. Naked short selling is where you sell shares you do not have. Big boys have access to this, they can just claim they have these and sell them, and they only really need to locate the shares when someone asks for them (makes a call for them). That is very much illegal, but also very common practice.
    Technical limitations of the old days, i think i heard they are planning to move to a blockchain to stop that practice once and for all.

    @ralf said: I understand the effects of short-selling on improving liquidity, but again, I don't consider these as that important because ultimately it still works against a company's interests. If a stock is illiquid, it just means that the people who own the shares are happy with the expected reward vs risk level. Liquidity is only an issue for people who want to get in on the action, but can't because no shares are available. But if they think the expected rewards are better than the risk, they need to make an offer sufficiently good to convince the current owners to sell.

    I don't think you understand how the market works.
    Have you ever owned a single share of anything at all??

    You are saying that 100% of a company XYZ stock would be sold out, making the price infinite.
    That practically never happens, at least i've not seen that happen.

    Maybe some microcap companies for sure, but to say the market goes out of stocks? Yeah ....

    What typically is meant with illiquid is where you cannot sell your stock for reason or another. Rarely it happens on buying side, but it DOES happen on large enough scale, but never so that "there just is not enough stock to buy".

    @ralf said: How about actually reading my last two posts instead of just a knee-jerk reaction to "hurr durr, I know I usually disagree with this guy, so I'm going to assume everything he said was wrong"?

    Ok, now you are just trying to manipulate. I did read them, and i never claimed that, nor thought of that.

    However, now i am starting to think something towards those lines but more akin to just completely ignoring as not worth my while to educate .

    @ralf said: My mistake that's so riled you up is that I shouldn't have said ban. I should have said massively restrict by regulation. Because there is clear evidence that short-selling is massively detrimental to the victim companies on the whole, and can massively increase volatility, which is just noise for long-term investors and companies at large, mostly serving to allow day-traders to make big profits, but also carries the risk of suddenly destabilising the entire market.

    Wow. Short selling does exactly the opposite typically -> It stabilizes.
    You know selling shares stops the price from skyrocketing as fast? You do realize that's exactly how the stock market is supposed to function?

    You do realize there are rules and regulations for selling too?

    Everyone buying with 1:10 margin all the [name any currency, stock, future] on the market will have exactly the same effect, just on opposite direction?

    Markets are inherently volatile, ability to buy and sell, loan out or take a loan are all things which makes markets more stable and efficient.

    You said ban, and go on constantly bashing all shorting (aka selling) is bad.

    So if you believe that, i recommend you do this when you finally buy your stock: NEVER EVER sell it. At maximum take a loan against it.

    (actually that's more effective investment plan than one would think, if you pick right, like S&P 500)

  • ralfralf Member
    edited January 2023

    @PulsedMedia said:

    @ralf said: How about actually reading my last two posts instead of just a knee-jerk reaction to "hurr durr, I know I usually disagree with this guy, so I'm going to assume everything he said was wrong"?

    Ok, now you are just trying to manipulate. I did read them, and i never claimed that, nor thought of that.

    So what exactly were you trying to imply by what you said by this:

    @PulsedMedia said:
    I might be wrong, but i somehow recall you commenting elsewhere here on LET similarly shortsighted ideas and opinions, with adamant absolute confidence you are absolutely correct. I am suspicious of potential Dunning-Kruger effect going on here.

    But anyway, you clearly think I have no experience in the market, and yet repeatedly show your own ignorance.

    I don't think you understand how the market works.
    Have you ever owned a single share of anything at all??

    Yes, I have a fairly healthy portfoilio, thanks.

    Cash rich companies do not have debt of any meaningful amount. By definition a "rich" company (assuming cash means cash in bank, cash equivalents, bonds and other very liquid assets) doesn't need any debt.

    Have you ever looked at big company financials?

    You see that whenever you sell a stock, you are essentially short selling? This means that by your logic every person who ever sold a stock they own is nasty greedy scum. OR that selling at all should be completely banned, and you should only be allowed to buy stocks.

    No, whenever you sell a stock, it's an indication that you think the potential reward isn't worth the risk, but the person buying the stock thinks that it is. Selling stock is not short-selling, it's just selling.

    Also, you are wrong. Hedge funds exists for a reason and not just for traders. Or are all retail investors traders too? Are you trying to argument investing in general is bad? Because it sounds like so.

    No. Retail investors are investors. The clue is in the name. They invest. Traders in general don't invest, they trade. No, I am not arguing that investing in general is bad. I also don't understand how you even come to that conclusion.

    No it was clearly not about just evil short selling, you were adamant that practice should be banned completely.

    Hardly adamant. I explained the damage that short-selling can do to companies, and how the ultimate goal of short-sellers is to drive a company to bankruptcy, because then they never have to repay anything at all - for them it is far more preferable goal to just lowering the price. I then expressed a personal opinion that this type of short-selling should be banned. Also, I said that ONCE among two long posts explaining how damaging short-selling is to companies.

    First publicly traded company in record was east indian company i think.
    The history is murky of how and for what reasons it began, but yes, it could've been to raise capital.

    FFS, it sounds like you actually know nothing about the history of the stock market. The SOLE purpose of selling shares was to raise capital.

    They still use a little bit of debt here and there, but cash to debt ratio tends to be extremely low. Look at Apple, MSFT, Tesla, check their finances. How much debt do they hold?

    A lot. I've worked for 3 companies where the cash reserves were in the billions, and all of them had substantial debts, but it's simply not profitable to pay off that debt when you can invest your surplus cash in other things that bring better returns than the cost of servicing that debt.

    They are all net positive liquidity.

    Sure. That's what I said too. But the ability to access cheap debt is fundamental to how these companies operate.

    So if you believe that, i recommend you do this when you finally buy your stock: NEVER EVER sell it. At maximum take a loan against it.

    It sounds like you really are an expert at this. You do you. But, I won't be taking your advice. Also, I don't "believe" the multiple faulty reasonings that lead you to this stupid advice.

    But for anyone who's not sure: don't do what he suggested here. At all times, work out if you think the expected returns for the company are worth more than the current company valuation, forward adjusted for inflation. If it's worth more, and you can afford it, and if you like the company's values and ethos, buy the stock. Otherwise, sell it to someone who thinks it is worth it. There's nothing much else to it.

    @ralf said:
    Anyway, I'm not going to respond further on this thread, as it's clear that a self-appointed investing genius like yourself cares far more about this matter than me.

    Oops. I mean it this time though.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    @ralf said: Have you ever looked at big company financials?

    Have you?

    @ralf said: Anyway, I'm not going to respond further on this thread, as it's clear that a self-appointed investing genius like yourself cares far more about this matter than me.

    oh i missed this ad hominem attack.

    My portfolio is +435% in 5years, 3 year gains are +79,64%.
    Admittedly this was much higher as last year was "a bit harsh" and i shifted my positions for long term play on some undervalued stocks which gets getting beaten due to market woes for no rational reason what-so-ever.

    This is not even some penny stock level, but not big neither. My portfolio in recent volatility has been jumping by quite a lot, and just came out of the current bottom. On a volatile day i've seen fluctuations of more than Average Joe annual net income in Finland. Hell, i pay that in just exchange fees annually -.- Nope, not a day trader, but i do take advantage of swings and constantly re-balance.

    I hold a varied portfolio of growth and dividend holdings across multiple industries globally, albeit dividend plays being a minority. Small amount of indexes and funds as well. Still the net dividends average more than what i used to earn as living 2 decades ago, pays for above midrange place mortgage and on-going costs with some left over.

    My portfolio is publicly viewable by local market as well // other customers of that same brokerage, including i believe they can see all trades i have done. I have opted in for that, and it does not display portfolio value // absolute numbers.

    Yes, i am a private banking customer and have people at brokerage i can ask anything about what i need to do, and in fact have influenced some of their application development too (it's a bigger scandinavic brokerage).
    Yes, i would qualify as professional trader per European standards.

    I think i'm doing OK. I still do mistakes like every investor, can't win on all of the trades.
    For long term, pretty sure i will grow up as an investor and have to get satisfied with just market average returns of ~10% -- we shall see what year that is. That is +61% over 5 years. Currently my CAGR is ~+40% despite shaky '22 (as expected, my portfolio is more volatile than say S&P500 or the overall market)

    also, i did not make my wealth with Pulsed Media, but investing. But Pulsed Media is what allows me to do investing knowing i have stable revenue stream constantly and i do not suffer easily from fear induced brain damage; Therefore it is easier to play the long game. Anything below 1year horizon is short term imho, and long game is a decade. INFACT, Pulsed Media is essentially a investment business at it's core.
    13 years ago when i started Pulsed Media my networth was ~0€, i just had managed to climb from debt to 0€ less than year prior for first time in my life. I come from ghetto and was technically homeless for many years in my teenage years. I finally moved out of ghetto ~7 years back. LMK if you know what it is to starve in 1st world country.

    Currently making plans for Pulsed Media are on the 3 decades horizon.
    Might make a blog post about that at some point.

    Yes, i have accepted my fate that i'll be in the hosting industry until my retirement. I'm under 40. I have already been in the hosting industry for well over 2 decades.

    So you were saying? How are you doing? What's your CAGR or 5year gains?

    -Aleksi

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