Hacker News Reader

Comment by jstx1 | Hacker News Reader

I really doubt this. Why do you think they knew a sell off was imminent?

Because they have financial analysts working for them.

If hedge funds can't reliably predict a market crash, why do you think a team of accountants at an Amazon office can? And if they could, why don't they exit their core business and get into trading stocks?

The difference is between a reliable prediction and a precise and timely prediction.

The accountants at Amazon have material non-public information that they can't act on for obvious reasons, but if they know beforehand - for instance - that sales aren't growing as fast as they used to, or that luxury purchases are trending downward, they can forecast that their own price might slump in the next few months.

They can still buy and sell their own company, but they have to respect the black out dates.

> They can still buy and sell their own company, but they have to respect the black out dates.

Trading on specific non-public information is insider trading and is illegal at all times - even during official trading windows.

I’d be more impressed if they could predict market conditions 3+ years from now, when the bulk of the Amazon employees’ shares are actually vesting.

Maybe they can, but I think that’s a very generous assumption.

It's all about timing.

> hedge funds can't reliably predict a market crash

Hedges can predict a recession is coming, just not the timing. They have been saying it for the last 12 months.

> a team of accountants at an Amazon

Amazon hires ex-bankers to work for them. They aren't a team of accountants. It's a cushy corproate job that many bankers take. It's good to do when you don't want to hustle long hours anymore.

> And if they could, why don't they exit their core business and get into trading stocks?

What?!

At the $1T+ scale, their CFOs are constantly road-tripping to find new institutional buyers. It stands to reason they’d perhaps know which way the wind was blowing based on those interactions.

Honest question: what does a public company have to gain by convincing institutional buyers to buy its stock? I can't imagine that to have any lasting effect on the stock price.

Why would they need to go woo institutional buyers? At 1T they're already probably part of S&P 500 and other standard investment indexes. All the mutual funds, ETFs, pension plans are bought into them.

for me personally it was rate-hike rumors/announcement by the Fed

in high-rate environment high-risk high-growth stocks are unattractive, so investors pull the money out and invest it into “safer” assets

don’t forget that many investors are leveraged too and a sale of one big investor might trigger a selloff chain reaction

it's easy to predict the past

did you short?

i don’t short, but i buy more at lower price

it’s well-known economic fact that after a crisis there’s always recovery

How’d that work out for Enron?

Or Lehman or ...

Insider trading is illegal for a reason.

Just they went public

Reply on news.ycombinator.com