GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola
detroitnews.com
detroitnews.com
After a recording of our conversation was posted online, a bunch of women came forward with accusations against Trevor Milton. That and the Hindenburg report are why GM can't do this deal anymore.
They weren't investing anything. They were getting the equity for free essentially, just to let them use the GM hydrogen tech that GM was planning to throw away anyway. So why would GM back out of a deal that was so sweet for them? It was really that bad.
In all party consent states, it is illegal to record a private conversation unless everyone who is being recorded is aware and has consented to being recorded. In one party consent states (which are the majority of states), only one person (presumably the person doing the recording) needs to be aware of and consent to the recording.
That difference can obviously make a huge impact on the legal ramifications of recording. For example, during the Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton affair, the only person actually indicted for a crime (later dropped) was Linda Tripp, who was brought up on wiretapping charges for surreptitiously recording Lewinsky. This only happened because Maryland is an all party consent state.
This is also why customer service calls start with "This call may be recorded for quality purposes..." - it's to inform you that the call is being recorded if you happen to live in an all party consent state.
Why would we on HN, care about whether or not the recording was legal?
Additionally, people might want to copy this person's behavior, and it would be useful to know whether the behavior is legal or not before doing so.
IANAL, but how is that not entrapment? Or even if it wasn't entrapment, how is it different than signing a NDA/non-disparagement contract?
>possession of a controlled substance (weed + mushrooms in his car)
okay that's just dumb.
Because in all your comments you talk about a lot of stuff with little proof...
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/two-women-file-sexual-abuse-...
If anybody wants a very entertaining synopsis of what transpired.
I haven't logged in in years, but this was so well done.
Following Nikola has really made doubt the capabilities of the stock market. It might be dangerous for me, I might begin to think a bit of reading and casual YouTube watching might make me informed enough to take meaningful positions. On the other hand, maybe it is...
The market can only price accurately if all participants are rational or at the very least are on average rational.
As the effective number of participants falls and the need for those participants to make rational economic decisions falls, were likely to see more weworks, theranos, and nikolas.
Wait until we see someone buy multiple city blocks of Manhattan for conversion into a private yard.
Before IPO, I think almost every fraud is unique, even if they have common themes ... but after IPO I think it's more similar to just hype-man using PR and media to keep retail investors avoiding the reality of the balance sheet.
I'm surprised property taxes never caught up with that mansion!?
OTOH you couldn't pay me to spend a night in the same room with that creepy doll !
Traditional 401k is pre-tax going in, taxed coming out (a good deal for most people, who even with savings are likely to be lower tax bracket in retirement than during much of their working career.) Roth 401k is post-tax going in, tax-free coming out (a good deal if you are saving enough to end up in a higher tax bracket in your retirement than most of your working years.)
You just need to do it at the right time, before the market prices in the obvious fraud.
I naked shorted Nikola after the ridiculous spike caused by the initial GM deal. I'm already $100k up on that and I predict I'll make even more as the stock price drops.
I also shorted via short term puts a few days ago, when the price spiked a bit on the hopes of new GM deal. I'm betting that the stock price will drop tomorrow due to expiration of a lock up period which will unleash millions of new shares. I'm already up 100% on that and hoping for at least 500% (although if the stock goes up, I might loose 100%; will know by Friday).
What you call "market has already priced in" is people like me, who acted decisively and took the risk. The information was there, I (and people like me) didn't have any secret info. But unlike those other people, we had the courage of conviction and risk tolerance to take on high risk / high reward bet.
Yes, but it'll get there yet.
Seriously though, GM does make plenty of electric cars. Or are you suggesting they should use the Edison brand?
http://www.american-automobiles.com/images2/1914-General-Ele...
For example, maybe they weren't being sleazy and they thought this was a clever play off Tesla. It isn't clever. It is unprofessional. It also shows a lack of clear vision in that they are fundamentally defining a company based off being an alternative to competitor. This shows a lack of leadership.
Or maybe they are even stupider than we gave them credit for. They saw the company was named Tesla and assumed Nikola Tesla had a direct hand in designing electric cars and were too lazy to look up the rather tangential connection between the man and the company. This shows a lack of knowledge or desire for knowledge.
I couldn't think of any positive reason for the name.
The Nikola founder probably thought Musk had succeeded in unlocking a series of successful tricks, and set out to reproduce them. But when you don't know the reason for the formula, you don't know what steps you can leave in or out, so you just follow it mechanically.
It’s one thing to name your company after an inventor, and another to name it after an infinitely more successful competitor.
Nice try.
Is their company dedicated to watching/causing others to go up in flames?
If you think they'll go under in the next two years, you could make bank on just debit spreads. And if you think they're a shite company but don't know where they're gonna go, do you really know anything?
I think it's a malinvestment unless you are reasonably certain there will be a drop soonish but want to hedge that bet with something long-dated.
Anyway, I was simply responding to your statement that you could make bank on it, which I highly disagree with. So much uncertainty is already priced in that the max upside is only 3x even if the company becomes completely worthless in the next 2 years.
A quick test for the certainty a lot of people are expressing here on the company's worthlessness is how much they're willing to bet on making that real.
And I agree with you, I wouldn't make the trade. But that's all because I can't predict it.
And I'll set aside the fact that $30k in the Bay isn't rich in any form.
So the sandwich isn't worth a million but it isn't worth any sum because 'worth' isn't a concept on its own.
We may be in a new era of equities, where the unfortunately under-informed masses are able to really move the needle on a lot of stocks, throwing all sorts of value-trading strategies out the window.
In this kind of market, all you need is a Donald Trumpish like figure and nothing else to keep the fake-valuation going on forever.
Honestly, if Trump were smart he should literally wrap up his businesses in some kind of non-transparent black box, IPO the meta entity right now and get his zillions of 'backers' to hype up is stock perpetually.
Or due diligence? This is GM's fault really not Nikola (the latter was simply selling snaked oil).
nah, we just need valuations another order of magnitude higher in more companies.
when the market is flooded with money the price of everything goes higher because there is nothing else to buy. that's literally what "inflation linked assets" means. Like most financial terms, it is a euphemism where the financial professional tries to keep a straight face for the longest time.
what were you telling yourself? Trillions of dollars have been added to the market because Congress told the Central bank and Treasury to do that, and other countries did the same thing too.
An unlimited amount of money is being used to buy a fixed number of [eligible] assets, that is inflation.
Literally, if you watch his interview about the DJT ticker, you see him praising everything and blaming others when it went bankrupt.
Just like ~15% of the US population believes Trump when totally fabricates facts about the election, he could take a run at perennially duping investors in 2020 and beyond.
"We're about to sign a huge deal for a Moscow property" ... and then it doesn't really happen. "We signed a huge deal with Macau developers" ... but it's not material to the company etc. etc..
There are a lot of people who command a lot of money that love to interact with, 'do deals with' important people, it elevates their status, much in the same way North Korea staged the US/N. Korean talks, ensuring the photo op had 'equal numbers of N. Korean flags to US flags' etc..
Even after all the loses and folly, people find the appearance of power irresistible - and no matter what happens to his business, DJT will forever be a 'Former President' which has formidable status.
The developing worlds has vast sums of money controlled by unsavoury figures without a whole lot of oversight there are innumerable ways to 'pretend to do business' or to 'do it poorly enough' that he can bleed small time investors for a fortune.
While 'Bloomberg' and every other bit of financial press literally spells out the disaster of the numbers, how none of it makes sense, he can literally tell his 'investors' that 'the media is out to get him and that they are lying' etc. etc..
I think it's significantly higher than 15%.
Or can I get a meeting with GM with an animator and mockups?
Yes, that and a $34b market cap.
I don't think HNers here are grasping how bad it is for a respectable multinational like GM to get taken in a major deal like this, it's bad.
No, investing 2 Billion in a scam essentially ruins the credibility of many people and puts the CEO in jeopardy.
Being stupid has consequences, even if you can back out.
"The big banks, the suppliers, the big corporate entities GM has to deal with don't care "
Of course they care - you think that the suppliers of GM who give GM massive credit want to know that the company is doing something this dumb and could end up in Chapter 11 - again - where they lose their money?
There is no positive spin on this for GM it makes them look like idiots - to the point wherein the CEO should definitely be fired because this is not just 'some deal' it's an existential issue concerning their future.
Doing a $2B deal with a company that turned out to be hot air / fraud is inexcusable, total incompetence - it doesn't matter how well leveraged GM was ostensibly, or how de-risked they were.
If it was a 'side show' M&A project, the CEO could write it off, but it's not - EV's are 'the core' part of the future of automakers and they are scrambling to put a strategy in place.
Everyone involved in this fiasco to go, they need someone in place who can put the EV roadmap in place.
There was ample evidence that NKLA was a mess, and GM bit anyhow.
This deal should be a be 'Tesla Buy' signal, because it validates Musks' view that regular automakers are stupid.
And just gasp at how badly markets are out of whack - a $10B company that has no money, a string of failures, they've produced nothing for the investment, shenanigans with investors bailing out etc..
In reality NKLA is probably worth some large negative value.