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Comment by thrill | Hacker News Reader

Hindenburg Research is a well known short seller.

And they're short selling this position because they have good reason to believe the stock price is severely overinflated due to fraud. If what they're saying is true (and they provide lots of evidence) then this company is basically worthless.

Short sellers take positions because they believe stocks are overvalued, at least in the short term, and at least can be made to look that way with sufficient negative marketing. When they share their market research with lots of adjectives, but oddly do not share any of the positives that a company may possess (and why would they?), then any investor acting on that one sided information has possibly done himself a significant financial disservice.

>oddly do not share any of the positives that a company may possess

Oddly? It's not the job of the investors to champion for the company. The short seller presented a report with research and evidences. Another party is welcome to produce their own report that 'share any of the positives that a company may possess.' For example, Nikola.

Let the company presents its side of the story, then it's up to the market/public to decide whether the reports stand on their own merit.

Sure, and what are the positives specific to Nikola?

I hold no position in Nikola. Positives include them working in an area with potential large upsides, specifically trying to develop the use of Hydrogen where it's a good fit today, in long haul trucking. Future great places for it include shipping, sporadic power generation storage (wind and solar), etc. Batteries improve steadily, but so far nothing proven scalable and affordable doesn't involve significant amounts of limited lithium, meaning alternatives to battery systems are worth pursuing.

That’s only a positive if they have something real in the works.

Those are all great pluses for what Nikola ostensibly is trying to do, but doesn't really speak to what they're able to do.

There are plenty of legitimate short sellers, and there are scumbags as well. Why _wouldn't_ they share the resesarch? Of course they're biased, they hold a position. Everyone knows that. It doesn't make them wrong.

To be fair : they explicity state their position ( they are indeed short ) at the end of the article.

It’s before a zillion background addendums, so not quite at the end think but it would be fairer to do so a lot earlier.

Reason? I think most readers would stop reading this (IMO) badly written and badly formatted avalanche of statements (which may or may not be true, but the form in which it is presented doesn’t give me confidence that it is) before hitting that info.

You should see some of Citron Research's stuff. Absolutely amazing.

They also disclose immediately after the summary at the start (bullet points).

Initial Disclosure: After extensive research, we have taken a short position in shares of Nikola Corp. This report represents our opinion, and we encourage every reader to do their own due diligence. Please see our full disclaimer at the bottom of the report.

This is within 5 minutes of reading so I don't know where you got the 'end of the article' from.

(I read the report this morning so they didn't added it after ward.)

> don't know where you got the 'end of the article' from

They didn't say only at the end. Near the top, the article itself even says to look at the end: "Please see our full disclaimer at the bottom of the report."

Articles like this are exactly what short-selling is supposed to be for: encouraging people to do deep research and find overvalued stocks.

That’s an awfully tasteless choice of a name then. They are looking for companies that are going to catch on fire, crash and burn?

As is sometimes noted, the Hindenburg is known as a gigantic disaster, but only a little over a third of the people on it died, which is probably better than you usually get from an airplane that explodes in a fireball at 600 feet.

So maybe they are looking for companies that are going to have extreme PR disasters, regardless of actual consequences.

The Hindenburg wasn't even the deadliest airship disaster. 36 died in the Hindenberg fire while 52 died on the Dixmude, 48 on R101, and 73 on the USS Akron (three survivors.)

I think the Hindenburg is the best known because it was captured on film and broadcast radio, and was also the last.

Huh. I actually didn't catch that until I read your comment. I think it's a great name.

In any case, I think the "too soon?" window has closed for the Hindenburg Disaster.

They're looking for companies that are fatally flawed but present otherwise. Kind of like the Hindenburg.

Hedge funds are not usually terribly concerned with marketing image. See, for example, Cerberus Capital Management, the former owner of Chrysler, which saw fit to name itself after a three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hell.

Yes, and it's a good thing. For once lately, this is the market doing what markets should be doing -- fair price discovery

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