5 ms·

The Martin Shkreli $750 pill story is a setup to short sell biotech stocks

27 points by Mahn 11y ago

pavornyoh 11y ago
Either he is a genius or a real... if you know what I mean. He must be laughing all the way to the back if this little ploy works.
- rezashirazian 11y ago
  I doubt it, the risk and rewards don't add up. An elaborate multimillion dollar scheme, just to short stocks is risky and requires a lot of things to lines up. Most of which are outside of his control (A tweet by a viable presidential candidate) . I think he is just a douche that thinks he is way more clever than he actually is.
  - pavornyoh 11y ago
    @Rezashirazian, I agree on the D* part. If it isn't a ploy then he is a real egomaniac. As for the tweet from a presidential candidate, I wonder if that would have been tweeted if it was not campaign time you know . I applaud the political strategist for pouncing on the opportunity though.. Well played.
- Aqueous 11y ago
  At least according to some past journalism about him he's a genius. An evil genius, but a genius nonetheless. This isn't about shorting stocks. It's about aggressive price discovery. He went up to an unreasonable price of $750 per tablet so that he can then bring the price down to the point where the public outcry stops. What's certain is that at the end, the price will be far above where it started, and he'll be extremely rich. He's essentially negotiating with all of us to set a price that the market will bear and which makes us hate him and his company less. The goal is to find the absolute highest possible price for this drug. It's not like the world stopped needing this drug when he did this - while he adjusts the price the drug is still sold far above where it used to be. Lesson: It's easy to make a billion dollars if you don't give a shit about what the world thinks of you. That said, I'm sure a lot of people could make a lot of money from this by buying shares of the company Retrophin, which he founded, and whose value dropped 10% just today. But if you're like me you can't in good conscience profit from his sociopathy. What I worry about is other companies seeing that they can get away with this and upping their prices as well.
  - pavornyoh 11y ago
    @Aqueous, I agree with your post. There will be copycats even if he is exposed with this absurd behavior. His tweets are protected now so his PR machine must have stepped in to stop the outrage.

27 points by Mahn 11y ago

Either he is a genius or a real... if you know what I mean. He must be laughing all the way to the back if this little ploy works.

rezashirazian 11y ago
I doubt it, the risk and rewards don't add up. An elaborate multimillion dollar scheme, just to short stocks is risky and requires a lot of things to lines up. Most of which are outside of his control (A tweet by a viable presidential candidate) . I think he is just a douche that thinks he is way more clever than he actually is.
- pavornyoh 11y ago
  @Rezashirazian, I agree on the D* part. If it isn't a ploy then he is a real egomaniac. As for the tweet from a presidential candidate, I wonder if that would have been tweeted if it was not campaign time you know . I applaud the political strategist for pouncing on the opportunity though.. Well played.
Aqueous 11y ago
At least according to some past journalism about him he's a genius. An evil genius, but a genius nonetheless. This isn't about shorting stocks. It's about aggressive price discovery. He went up to an unreasonable price of $750 per tablet so that he can then bring the price down to the point where the public outcry stops. What's certain is that at the end, the price will be far above where it started, and he'll be extremely rich. He's essentially negotiating with all of us to set a price that the market will bear and which makes us hate him and his company less. The goal is to find the absolute highest possible price for this drug. It's not like the world stopped needing this drug when he did this - while he adjusts the price the drug is still sold far above where it used to be. Lesson: It's easy to make a billion dollars if you don't give a shit about what the world thinks of you. That said, I'm sure a lot of people could make a lot of money from this by buying shares of the company Retrophin, which he founded, and whose value dropped 10% just today. But if you're like me you can't in good conscience profit from his sociopathy. What I worry about is other companies seeing that they can get away with this and upping their prices as well.
- pavornyoh 11y ago
  @Aqueous, I agree with your post. There will be copycats even if he is exposed with this absurd behavior. His tweets are protected now so his PR machine must have stepped in to stop the outrage.