The problem is the stock market is more divorced from reality than we have ever seen. For instance, why does Tesla stock still sit where it is? How could it possibly not be going down at this point? So many undelivered promises, major setbacks in sales, massive decreases to their sales forecasts… literally nothing has gone well for them in years and yet the price is still outrageous. It really feels like I’m just out of the loop on something.
Jack Barker’s rather blunt monologue in SV about how the stock is the product is more true than ever. It felt very heavy handed at the time but it’s only proven to be more the case than I thought.
This probably illustrates my disconnect from reality, but I’ve never understood why a company would care about share price once they’ve left the door. I get that the co still owns its own shares and can conjure new ones for sale, but why would those very infrequent events interfere with the day-to-day operations. In my (wrong) eyes, it’s like pro-baseball players trying to increase the value of their trading cards via their participation in the game. The team doesn’t matter any more, it’s al about what the card owner wants.
Company itself really shouldn't. Everyone involved in management from board to executives do. Board operates behest of stock owners, executives operate behest of board. Such to keep their job they have to do what stock owners want. And stock owners either want dividends or growth in some term.
> Board operates behest of stock owners, executives operate behest of board
These are often both weak signals, though. They'll govern very high level decisions, but all the day to day is inside the company. Just as I want a return on the money in my bank account (as I was promised) investors want a return on their money too, and as you say, the executives and board should care about making sure the people who put money into the company are getting a decent deal out of the arrangement.
People have always way overstated the power and scope of “fiduciary duty.” It doesn’t mean you have to redline your company at all times to maximize every single penny in the short term at the expense of all other considerations. That’s just a cultural thing we do in the US by choice
Selling more stock is usually a lever a company can pull when they want. So even if a normal company in normal times doesn't have a reason to do so often, they can if circumstances change. Tesla and some other meme stocks have been extremely aggressive about selling more shares into crazy valuations, and have raised immense amounts of money doing so.
Plus as others have said, usually all of the decision makers have a bunch of stock exposure and will prioritize their own financial gains over pretty much anything else.
I used it. It doesn’t work as FSD. A driver has to pay attention and intervene. Can’t sleep. Can’t read a book. Can’t look at the scenery going by. It’s still super neat and I like it. But it’s not FSD, and I suspect why fewer than 10% of tesla owners pay $100/month or bought it.
No, the parent was saying the other rule change is arbitrary.
The tiny float and just a few days before the index funds buy means they have to buy without any more revenue / earnings info than was already published pre-IPO. 90 days is a quarter, so there WILL be more price discovery before a 0 day index fund seasoning period.
Moving the goalposts of an index fund for one or 3 IPOs puts the reputation of S&P and Nasdaq in question. The comments in this thread make that clear.
> Moving the goalposts of an index fund for one or 3 IPOs puts the reputation of S&P and Nasdaq in question. The comments in this thread make that clear
These indices have lots of competition. NASDAQ 100 lost basically zero money when they made these changes. If S&P makes them, I'm doubtful anyone will react either.
When S&P was still taking public comment, I put the link on HN. It got like two upvotes. This isn't something materially care about as much as like to get angry about on the internet.
Why do you consider HN upvotes to be more indicative of "materially caring" than HN comments?
Perhaps you got unlucky with the timing of your post, or title didn't grab attention in the /new feed compared to this post's. For all we know, whether or not they saw your HN submission, every critical commenter here may have also submitted a public comment to S&P.
Police are only useful so long as they are effective as policing. It’s insanely difficult to put a price on a cost center which doesn’t add value, but only has a chance to reduce the loss of value if they do their job well.
The problem with the fire department analogy is that there’s a lens through which the fire department IS the arsonist here, or is at least pouring accelerant at the future site of the arson. If you don’t know why I would call the bankers at S&P, Nasdaq the arsonists in this case, you aren’t equipped with the background info about SpaceX’s fast track + goalpost moving to index funds.
I guess we should be thankful there aren’t more Luigi jokes in the comments.
This seems to be the problem. Thieves get a free pass but the very few guardrails that said thieves haven't dismantled yet suffer the blunt of the criticism, to the point people argue they don't need guardrails at all.
Don't you feel you are unwittingly aiding thieves to go unpunished?
Got it, thanks. The CIA's cocaine was still ending up on the streets of America during Iran-Contra, though, so I (in my very uninformed opinion!) don't feel like the CIA cared that much.
It’s likely the cocaine originating from Colombia was going to end up in the US with or without the CIA’s help.
Also, it’s worth reading about the journalist who broke the story about Contra-sourced cocaine making it to LA. That journalist is very often misquoted and when he was still alive he tried to fix the missing several times.
The company hires people who match the company’s desired culture.
If the people in the CIA who do hiring want the talent who are excellent at lying and compartmentalizing their ethics, then that’s what the organization becomes over a generation.
> is the only gvt org that self funds itself & can run entirely without gvt money
Citation needed.
The CIA receives lots of opaque funding from the US government (at least opaque to citizens trying to FOIA), but just because it’s not easily accounted for doesn’t mean the org funds itself.
that's the point. you can't prove it. I can't prove it.
however - with a little common sense you can link everything together.
CIA has mandate to operate abroad. they can own mines, journalism houses, drug operations - abroad & in the U.S. technically the CIA is not allowed by law to operate in the US (but bcoz they're too powerful - they now have a free pass in that area)
remember they can also self-classify material. which means what they own will always remain opaque till they choose to declassify it usually after 70 or so years.
>> now back to the gold. remember they're restrictions around gold citizens can hold etc. & suddenly a private citizen has massive gold bars ? how so ? unless they were holding the gold for a powerful entity (but discovered by some gvt agency & now they need a fall guy) ?
Similarly Space-X’s IPO valuation is about “data centers in space” vaporware hopium and “timeshare all the GPU time that Grok isn’t using”.
There’s a trend with Musk’s companies.
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