My favorite scandals are always corporate frauds like Theranos or Nikola.
Stumbled upon a new one.
Basically, there is a solid-state battery start-up called QuantumScape which went public via an SPAC last year (SPACs are a slightly shady way of going public; it involves a blank-check company....some people think there will be a reckoning in the market soon with a recent deluge of possibly sh*tty companies entering the markets this way). My understanding (gleaned from the article) is if they were able to achieve solid-state batteries it would basically be a huge leap forward in battery technology with extended charges, fast charging. (Please feel free to correct me, I'm not an engineer). An article from June describes the technology and its potential and mentions the company hit a valuation greater than Ford in December 2020. It has since plummeted.
A hedgefund called Scorpion released a presentation basically accusing the company of being a pump and dump scheme. They say the CEO kept going on CNBC to pump his stock so that it wouldn't fall before the lock-up period ended (ie, he isn't allowed to sell his shares right after they first go public, so he needs the stock price to stay high until he can cash out).
The presentation: https://scorpioncapital.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/reports/QS1.pdf
It's a bit dry but there are some hilarious quotes from former employees at the beginning.
Meme stock r-slurs who have seen the stock go from a peak of around $131 to $21 today are absolutely livid about the report: https://old.reddit.com/r/QuantumScape/comments/mrhtxc/scorpion_capital_is_fake_news/
There is also this subreddit as well: https://old.reddit.com/r/QUANTUMSCAPE_Stock/ featuring cope such as this: https://old.reddit.com/r/QUANTUMSCAPE_Stock/comments/pawsg8/patience_will_let_us_win_this_game_and_get_huge/
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Really funny I'm seeing this here.
I'm currently down ~$10k on long puts on this piece of shit. They expire in January but I'm likely going to cut losses soon.
For those of you who don't do stocks, I have an open short position because I expected this company to absolutely tank following the previous ER. They ended up reporting...nothing of value, and the price shot up ~20% in 2 days anyway. The shitco market has been r-slurred since the lockdowns started, and even more r-slurred since the GME debacle, but I r-slurredly tried shorting this anyway.
It's a blatantly obvious scam, the tech is completely infeasible and they make dubious claims without any evidence backing it up; unfortunately for me people are still placing bids on it and won't just let it die. My only remaining hope is they raise funds through another share dilution soon, but I'm probably fricked.
tl;dr It doesn't matter how obvious the scam is, taking short positions is mentally r-slurred these days. Learn from my mistakes, $QS will probably be $100 next month.
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That's great and all, but I asked for my burger without cheese.
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rofl
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credit to WSB, about a year ago i saw people break when they realized that stocks just only fricking go up. a lot of the effortposters that actually knew what the acronyms meant just basically fricked off. people kinda rallied for gamestonk, but then the big boys got annoyed and fricking destroyed everything involved. there's an effortpost on that entire fiasco i might write someday i guess, interest in nerd drama seems to be at a low lately. trains are hard job but sheesh there are other subjects.
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value investing is no longer a thing. we live in an age where dead, indebted companies with poor fundamentals and obvious scams outperform the rest of the market by several figures. the only way to beat the game is by playing it.
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That's what you get when you short a market drugged by free money. Nikola is worth 3.9 billion dollars in this very moment and they were pushing trucks down cliffs to demonstrate their revolutionary hydrogen technology.
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