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Comment by headgasket | Hacker News Reader

Linkedin is down 38%. Tesla is down quite a bit. My guess is that some VCs were leveraged and had to liquidate positions. Free money from leverage does not look as good when equities go down... I think we are heading for a most violent year on the markets. Pharma and biothechs will most likely be the only bright spots, especially anti-anxiety drugs... :-)

Keep plugging at building great software that actually helps make this a better place. Charge for it so you can survive this downturn. It's a cycle, this will weed out the nonsense.

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This is probably wrong. IMHO what looks like has happened is there are a handful of HN-relevant companies had weak earning announcements yesterday[1] after market close, and that is coupled with a weaker US jobs report [2], [3] today. The overall market is off and there are a handful of major drops for the companies mentioned but this is not some public tech market panic event (yet).

That's not to say we're not due a correction.

[1]: http://biz.yahoo.com/research/earncal/20160204.html

[2]: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/06/business/economy/jobs-repo...

[3]: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets-idUSKCN0VE0...

Jobs report was good so usd shot up because the case for looser monetary policy harder to make.

> that is coupled with a weaker US jobs report

Jim Cramer, et al are saying that it's the strength of the jobs report that is hurting. Because as long as unemployment is ~5% the Federal reserve might raise rates, opposed to if unemployment worsens, the fed might not.

You're saying that VCs (i.e. funds that do not invest in public companies) figured out they're too leveraged and had to sell the (public!) share of LinkedIn exactly as LinkedIn announced horrible results/outlook?

A few things in the above explanaiton aren't completely consistent...

VCs end up holding public shares when their portfolio companies IPO.

And cannot choose to just liquidate these shares whenever they want. There are rules, and these things require multiple months advance warning and lock in.

> Linkedin is down 38%. Tesla is down quite a bit. My guess is that some VCs were leveraged and had to liquidate positions.

You're not a VC if your money is in publicly-traded firms.

VCs do not liquidate immediately at the IPO or even upon lock-up expiration. But I would agree that this downward pressure is not VC-driven.

Or maybe, this is a crazy idea, some VCs have diversified portfolios that include public stocks.

Personally I'm sure, but that's not how VC funds work. You raise a fund with the understanding it will be invested in new ventures.

Did you think that as soon as a company goes public, VCs get to sell all their stocks?

Tesla and LinkedIn had their IPOs 5-6 years ago, they aren't being held by VC funds. Tableau's major holders also don't include any VC funds:

http://investors.morningstar.com/ownership/shareholders-majo...

Typically VCs have to sell their shares 6-ish months after there's a liquidity event and return the proceeds to their LPs.

TSLA is getting hammered(incorrectly) by gas prices being at all-time lows. Sounds like a great time to buy some more stock to me :).

TSLA is getting hammered because analysts don't believe they'll sell as many cars as they say. Some of it due to lower gas prices.

I don't think gas prices impact the Model S/X, the price point is just too high to be a bracket where that's a major factor. I think that for the Model 3 they're going to be production constrained to a point where we'll see gas prices come back to normal.

Also a big factor in the TCO is the lack of maintenance and overall simplicity in a electric drivetrain and that's completely independent of gas prices.

Agreed! It's the Model 3 that is aimed towards the economy segment which is dependent on higher gas prices.

And the driving experience which is just plain awesome!!

> My guess is that some VCs were leveraged and had to liquidate positions.

VCs cannot just sell public stock on a whim, these things are scheduled far in advance and can only happen during trading windows.

A lot of biotech has been taking a beating so far this year. It's been brutal for the short-term.

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