Long-Dead Tweeter Soars; Some Seek Twitter? | Hacker News Reader

Long-Dead Tweeter Soars; Some Seek Twitter?

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21 points7Figures2Commas7 comments

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ZeroHedge has better graphs: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-04/idiocy-markets-one-...

They run a nice line in lulzy financial charting generally:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-12/gold-iphone

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-16/wtf-chart-day

EDIT: this is also pretty hilarious/terrifying: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-01/bart-chilton-commod...

Nice charts, but terrible editorializing.

The relevant Tweeter/Twitter post is titled "The Sheer Idiocy Of The Markets In One Chart" as if the idiocy was on the part of the market rather than on the part of the participants.

I'm confused about your distinction.. the market is the sum of the participants.

The market price of the wrong stock increased dramatically, that's 'the market' being idiotic. Obviously the participants drove the price up, but in this specific case, the market has failed.

I think the suggestion is that the buyers are algorithmic trading systems.

An alternative explanation: could Twitter buy Tweeter and use it to list a lot more easily than the formal IPO process?

If the government shutdown goes on for so long that Twitter runs out of cash, or if the SEC goes 10 rounds with Twitter's S-1, it might be easier/cheaper for Twitter just to buy TWTRQ. For a stock with a market-cap of <$1 million, that might be worth a punt.

Or, more darkly, if someone held stock of TWTRQ, they'd probably be promoting that view. (I don't, for the record!)

They'd likely need the SEC to perform it, but what you're describing is called a "Reverse Merger".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_takeover

Lately, they've been the mechanism for numerous chinese pump-and-dump frauds like those exposed by John Hempton and Muddy Waters.

http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2012/12/fushi-copperweld-c...

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/chinese-reverse-merge...

But they do have a legitimate function for honest companies.

Although this is off-topic from the original post, the reverse merger hijinks are an interesting read. Here is a 2011 list of the American companies this involved:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/complete-list-all-chinese-r...

Too bad it isn't on a real exchange and easy to borrow...you could short the heck out of it or even buy options to make a fortune when it goes down.

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