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Critically, the price didn’t even shift that much given his takeover offer… which is just nuts. If someone offers to buy all the stock and it doesn’t shift up t

Critically, the price didn’t even shift that much given his takeover offer… which is just nuts. If someone offers to buy all the stock and it doesn’t shift up to at least close to the offering price, then something is wrong with either public perception of the company or the entire stock market. It eventually drifted up, but you see other companies where a hostile takeover offer is cause to halt trading due to how fast the price spikes…. Which did not happen for Twitter. Twitter is not a “blue chip” stock which people expect stability from, perhaps even a gasp dividend… but nope, it’s a tech stock with none of that… yet is weirdly stable. That’s screams “complacency” to me and complacency is fertile ground for business, either by outside forces via hostile takeover and new management or a new disruption from a new market entrance. Given the network effect pressure it’s obvious that hostile takeover looks, at least from a “running the business” perspective, to be an obvious move. Like many business decisions it just looks to me like “who will gamble on a bet this big”… and these days it’s individual billionaires who can afford to make bets like this. It’s a second golden age of capitalism, and I’m looking forward to the next Great Depression and the much needed cultural rest wth respect to assholes with too much money.

gscott 5y ago
They might not want to end up like Yahoo where there was an offer not accepted then the stock just went down and down from there. With the near certain recession coming the board would be on the hot seat hoping that the stock price would eventually go back up while Elon would be nagging them from the sidelines the entire time.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> If someone offers to buy all the stock and it doesn’t shift up to at least close to the offering price, then something is wrong with either public perception of the company or the entire stock market There were doubts about the bid. Musk had no financing. Now he has financing. The market has moved. If he’d come back last week with a “tee hee jk” tweet about buying Twitter, everyone would have taken it in stride and then mocked those who bought the rumour to get run over by the news.
tyrfing 5y ago
> If someone offers to buy all the stock and it doesn’t shift up to at least close to the offering price, then something is wrong with either public perception of the company or the entire stock market. No, it's a reflection of uncertainty over whether it will happen. Present value is not the offer price, since it's not guaranteed, and also accounts for the time for the deal to close - $54 in a year isn't worth $54 today. Regulatory risk isn't a big deal here, but is elsewhere, like ATVI trading at a significant discount to MSFT's offer. TWTR is up significantly today since there's a binding deal now.

gscott 5y ago

They might not want to end up like Yahoo where there was an offer not accepted then the stock just went down and down from there. With the near certain recession coming the board would be on the hot seat hoping that the stock price would eventually go back up while Elon would be nagging them from the sidelines the entire time.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> If someone offers to buy all the stock and it doesn’t shift up to at least close to the offering price, then something is wrong with either public perception of the company or the entire stock market There were doubts about the bid. Musk had no financing. Now he has financing. The market has moved. If he’d come back last week with a “tee hee jk” tweet about buying Twitter, everyone would have taken it in stride and then mocked those who bought the rumour to get run over by the news.

tyrfing 5y ago

> If someone offers to buy all the stock and it doesn’t shift up to at least close to the offering price, then something is wrong with either public perception of the company or the entire stock market. No, it's a reflection of uncertainty over whether it will happen. Present value is not the offer price, since it's not guaranteed, and also accounts for the time for the deal to close - $54 in a year isn't worth $54 today. Regulatory risk isn't a big deal here, but is elsewhere, like ATVI trading at a significant discount to MSFT's offer. TWTR is up significantly today since there's a binding deal now.