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Comment by ChicagoBoy11 | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one who couldn't tell whether this was real or not for a good long while? I legitimately wondered whether the BBC site might have been hacked. I just simply cannot find a way to make sense of just about anything in the news story; I had just assumed it would go under and that's that. Why would someone who has that kind of money to invest put it into this pivot as opposed to a completely fresh, new effort? What's the efficiency I'm not seeing?

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Me too. It had me genuinely wondering if the Brits have their own version of April Fools in the middle of the month.

Forget the AI -- I'm just as shocked to see that shares went from $500+ in 2021 to below $3 this year. That's insane. I had to verify it's actually real.

I thought this was just a normal shoe company that had invented a cool look with some good branding.

> I'm just as shocked to see that shares went from $500+ in 2021 to below $3 this year. That's insane. I had to verify it's actually real.

Well, sort of. They did a 20 for 1 reverse split in 2024, and possibly that wasn’t the only reverse split. That means the stock peaked at $25 (pre reverse split) and dipped below $0.25 (if the reverse split didn’t happen) so they did a reverse split to stay listed on the NYSE, as you need $1/share minimum price or something like that.

Number of shares and share price are completely arbitrary, FWIW.

Don't most stock charting websites backdate splits to show the price as it would be with current stock?

Yes, that's how you get a $500 historic price. It wasn't at 500 at the time, but due to the reverse split the current price is correct relative to a $500 historic price.

TBF the USians elected an April fools president...

But no, we have the same April fools as everyone else. But if it were a special April fools, I could fool you by telling you it isn't....

The market in general has gone completely off the rails

There's no efficiency. Markets are a casino where people with no domain knowledge and automated systems make bets.

If people stop betting on your thing, it behooves you to rebrand it into whatever the magic beans of the moment are.

It's already listed, so they can get retail gamblers to buy in on day one.

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