this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
324 points (97.6% liked)

Technology

59707 readers
5432 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Reddit cites r/WallStreetBets as a risk factor in its IPO filing::As Reddit finally files to go public, the company wrote in its S-1 filing that "meme stock" schemes on r/WallStreetBets could pose a risk to investors.

all 43 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Ghostalmedia 107 points 9 months ago

A bigger risk than a terrible leadership team?

[–] [email protected] 84 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Reddit has never been profitable so I’d say that’s the biggest risk.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Wall Street doesn't care about profitability, they only care about growth.

They should be worried about how much of their 'growth' is bots.

[–] DrCake 21 points 9 months ago

They care now that interest rates have increased. That’s kinda what the whole “enshitification” and layoffs are all about. Tech companies desperately scrambling to make a profit.

[–] dragontamer 18 points 9 months ago

Profitability is beginning to matter more. 5.25% Federal Funds rate, and a Prime-Rate of like 8.5%, means that it costs 8.5% for businesses to borrow money now.

So that means that if a business borrows at 8.5%, they must grow by 8.5% to just stay even with interest rates and the cost of borrowing money. Because a lot of these "growth" strategies involve losing money for years-and-years, you have to factor in the costs of those losses as well.


When Federal Funds Rate was 0.25%, no one cared about the cost of money or the cost of loans. Today, Wall Street cares, and you can see it in all the stock movements. The less-profitable companies have been getting hammered.

[–] Bye 6 points 9 months ago

Nope that was true when interest rates were low.

Now they care about the bottom line.

It can change again.

[–] silverbax 24 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's only not profitable because the CEO and CFO are taking such massive salaries, $193M and $93M, respectively.

They took $286M and the company lost $90M. They could take $90M less - still taking almost $200M - and Reddit would be profitable. That alone should tell investors that this is a bad investment.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

That's not exactly correct. The CEO & CFO are paid a salary way less, like I think around the $300k range. The $285M is in stock options, which only has a value based on the price of the stock. They could hand them back to the company but they would be of no value to the company until the IPO.

[–] Th3D3k0y 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I'm confused how they could be paid in stock options when they aren't traded. Do they just use made up numbers until this point and get "paid" in exposurebucks?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

Even if a stock isn't publicly traded it still has value. It's just that retail investors can't buy or sell it. Basically, it's owning a part of the company. So they now technically own whatever percentage (number of shares/total number shares available). Unfortunately, it doesn't equate to a monetary value to the company itself just show's the company who owns what percentage of it.

So well the company is "valued" at what it is now, they are only saying that if they were to sell all those shares in the open market that would be what it's worth. Now in the business world the CEO & CFO will be able to go get loans based on that value (putting that stock as colaterial) but it's basically all that they'd be able to get right now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Basically, yes. It's like paper money the company can print more of and dilute the value of.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Plus $800k in performance based bonuses.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Right, but that's nowhere near the money to be able to make the company break even.

[–] jeffw 6 points 9 months ago

In risk management terms, lack of profit isn’t a risk. That’s more so an outcome.

[–] [email protected] 75 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Let the censorship and banning waves intensify, watch as the porn is purged. Ogle as the platform slides slowly into irrelevance.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Taking a digg at reddits strategies, are we?

[–] CobblerScholar 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Bout to take a Tumblr for sure

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Hopefully not into my space here.

[–] Nfamwap 10 points 9 months ago

Lemmy see how this all plays out

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

All the ingredients are there. All we need is a bit of competition from other platforms and Reddit can join the club with all the other dead platforms like myspace, digg and tumblr.

As mastodon is beginning to seriously compete with Xitter, maybe Lemmy can also contribute to the downfall of Reddit.

[–] gedaliyah 35 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Here's a serious question: should we be bracing for a massive influx of stock bros after reddit inevitably find some pretext to shut down wallstreetbets?

[–] gedaliyah 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It looks like there is already a (somewhat) active community at !wallstreetbets

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Doesn't seem like loss porn central yet

[–] eskimofry 6 points 9 months ago

We should be embracing them. A lot of financial experts is good to have against the fight against ghoulish institutions in Wall St.

[–] IAmTheZeke 2 points 9 months ago

Surprised it hasn't happened yet

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (3 children)

great, now they're going to ban WSB and they're going to take over lemmy...
#chickentendies

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago

No they’re going to short their own IPO into the ground and blame wsb

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

I for one welcome all regarded users

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

No.

Wsb is their golden goose. They gave them NFT s for a reason

[–] BombOmOm 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

They have been purging subreddits for years that are not advertiser friendly, usually after they get media attention. Really no reason to expect them to stop the purges. There is a reason I am here and not there, and that is just one of them.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

lmao imagine the shitstorm if they ban WSB

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm still angry at what happened to WatchPeopleDie.

Is there a similar community here on the fediverse?

[–] BombOmOm 3 points 9 months ago

These aren’t 100% the same thing. But the first has lots of Russian invaders being killed, and the second is an adjacent community.

[email protected] [email protected]

[–] Jackcooper 15 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Does people trying to short you make your stock less valuable? Maybe because potential investors can see the sentiment?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago

Shorting a stock in effect means selling a stock you don’t own. The stock market derives price based on supply and demand. When more people are selling than people are buying, the stock price goes down. There are many more dynamics at play than this though. Often there are investment firms which will identify a price mismatch and attempt to price out the short sellers by buying and pushing the price up. This can trigger a short squeeze which makes the price suddenly pop.

IPOs are exciting times to be a trader, but individuals are largely in for the ride. They can’t move the market. If they identify one of these larger plays they can join the fun. Game Stop was one of the first examples of a consumer-driven play, and it scared the shit out of institutions because it upended their risk models.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Not really no. It's not often that a stock is short sold really hard when there isn't an underlying reason Otherwise large investors could regognise this and just take a long position. The short seller is then screwed if the price doesn't drop far enough and fast enough before their options expire

[–] jeffw 13 points 9 months ago

I mean, it’s true. WSB has been under scrutiny and introduces the risk of litigation or legal action towards Reddit. That could hurt stock prices. It’s all pretty routine to disclose potential risks in IPO documents or regular annual shareholder documents.

[–] vegeta 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)
[–] TurtleJoe 3 points 9 months ago

Lol, WSB hates the apes. They like to actually make money, instead of incinerating it on companies going through obvious death spirals.

[–] capnminus -3 points 9 months ago

What a load of bs.