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Isn’t this the company where some hedge fund published report on and they have a short position? Until there is no 3rd party testing and independent publication

Isn’t this the company where some hedge fund published report on and they have a short position? Until there is no 3rd party testing and independent publications verifying their claims I am not buying anything. I know I sound skeptical but I’ve lost enough money on SPACs.

sanxiyn 4y ago
Yes it is. It is on the front page of Scorpion Capital, "activist short selling focused on publicly traded frauds and promotes". You can download 188 pages report here. Decide for yourself. https://scorpioncapital.com/ https://scorpioncapital.com/
- ttul 4y ago
  Reads like an episode of Billions
- gaze 4y ago
  I’m in no position to review the legitimacy of their report on this company, but their review of IonQ’s technology, a field I have a recent PhD in, is pretty bad. They might be right about the SPAC nonsense and the business aspects— I don’t know. However, it’s clear they’re talking out their asses about the technology.
  - sanxiyn 4y ago
    Can you share some criticisms? Because I found IonQ report pretty convincing too.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    I know the first author on their uptime report pretty well. He is an honest person. Most of the stuff in this report seems like reasonable concerns (the CEO, Bacon, Preskill, buying from Honeywell) but comparing to Rigetti seems out of place. Quoting from IBM and Google people (some of whom I probably know) seemed a bit much too.
    - selimthegrim 4y ago
      By "their report" here I mean the IonQ one Scorpion cites with 53% uptime.
- gonesilent 4y ago
  Audi and VW have been independently testing them.
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    FWIW last year's activist short presentation[0] dedicated a number of pages to VW, and it seemed that VW mostly wanted the publicity of them doing something sustainable under pressure from German stakeholders (although officially VW declined to comment, and all that info is said to come from employees). [0] https://scorpioncapital.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/reports/QS1.pdf https://scorpioncapital.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/reports/Q...
    - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
      The mainline autos have been praying for a tech jump to close the gap with Tesla. Since BMW canned their CEO over EV strategy five years ago, all execs at mainline auto have been on notice and been actively pressured as to EV strategy by major investors. A go-to strategy was to declare plans, but all the economic scaling of those vehicles seemed to come down to 1) solid state becoming viable and 2) OEM battery building supply. Toyota has blown the solid state deadline a half dozen times already, even when they were pushing Hydrogen (another canary in the coal mine piece of bullshit from a clueless CEO). So yes, I agree that solid state investment has just been "investor relations" and "CEO job maintenance" tasks, and nothing that really carries water. I do think the Tesla battery advantage is in trouble now that the Chinese are ramping key LFP/Sodium Ion production with practical densities that will truly power the mainstream EV that will be far under the drivetrain cost of ICE.
- xyst 4y ago
  Their track record is pretty terrible. https://scorpioncapital.com/track-record https://scorpioncapital.com/track-record Entire port is negative. Not a single short position is turning profit.
  - alecco 4y ago
    The "Big Short" was negative until the market caught up.
  - ckastner 4y ago
    I found it odd that they'd publish such a poor track record, so I checked the worst performing position ALLK (-97%). The stock was at 100-ish in December 2019 (their reference), and today it is at 3.22. Consequently, it seems that the performance that they are reporting is that of the stock, not of their short. Edit: fixed the reference date.
  - icambron 4y ago
    I didn’t follow that at all. That page shows the change in stock price for the companies, not the unrealized gain/loss from short positions. That doesn’t tell us how their portfolio has performed, but it suggests they have a good track record of calling losers. What am I missing?
  - thablackbull 4y ago
    It's highlighting just the opposite - that their short calls are prescient. You're seeing it's all negative because they are betting that those stocks will drop.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    Those aren't negative results on 'short positions', they're the underlying, i.e. taking the short position was a good call. '[Every] single short position is turning a profit'. I'd agree that's confusing/ambiguous if it weren't for the S&P comparison. ('If we'd taken an equally valued long position in the S&P 500 instead' would be a weird thing to state.)
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    That's exactly how you profit from a short position.
- bawolff 4y ago
  If they have a short position doesn't that mean they are financially motivated to see them fail? Doesn't sound like a neutral source.
  - sanxiyn 4y ago
    Yes, they are talking their book. That's why you should decide for yourself.
  - lagadu 4y ago
    I see it as a bit of a chicken and egg situation: you see a company you believe is overvalued, therefore you short it. The problem is that once you do that you become financially motivated to see them fail, even if that wasn't true when you originally shorted them.
    - Pyramus 4y ago
      I agree with the bias, still there isn't a chicken and egg problem in most cases: You do the research before you take the short position, you only publish the research afterwards. If you are a credible investor, the short position follows from the research, not the other way around.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    Alternatively, 'their money is where their mouth is'.
  - rocqua 4y ago
    They are a serial short seller. That means they need to retain credibility with their reports to keep their business going. That, combined with general skepticism and a fully-disclosed short position, I think should make it quite easy to fairly evaluate their short-report.
    - awestroke 4y ago
      Why would they need to retain credibility?
xiphias2 4y ago
Why did you buy the SPACs? Was it because of the charisma of Chamath? As for me, when Richard Brandson, a brave and crazy man had the idea of making money from space tourism for example, the whole thing just didn’t make sense: if I go to space, I want the spaceship done by an engineer who doesn’t risk his life, but prefers to automate everything first (SpaceX). I like the idea of perfecting rockets using cargo as a business and only _then_ using them for tourism. With that SPAC I got sceptical of all of them.
panick21_ 4y ago
Yes. But that was one that was not well done. A few people involved in the industry called out a lot of things they said in that report. The stock price was insane, but most of the criticism they made of the tech doesn't hold much water. You can find a good video about the report on youtube. See TheLimitingFactor detailed video on the report.

sanxiyn 4y ago

Yes it is. It is on the front page of Scorpion Capital, "activist short selling focused on publicly traded frauds and promotes". You can download 188 pages report here. Decide for yourself. https://scorpioncapital.com/ https://scorpioncapital.com/

ttul 4y ago
Reads like an episode of Billions
gaze 4y ago
I’m in no position to review the legitimacy of their report on this company, but their review of IonQ’s technology, a field I have a recent PhD in, is pretty bad. They might be right about the SPAC nonsense and the business aspects— I don’t know. However, it’s clear they’re talking out their asses about the technology.
- sanxiyn 4y ago
  Can you share some criticisms? Because I found IonQ report pretty convincing too.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  I know the first author on their uptime report pretty well. He is an honest person. Most of the stuff in this report seems like reasonable concerns (the CEO, Bacon, Preskill, buying from Honeywell) but comparing to Rigetti seems out of place. Quoting from IBM and Google people (some of whom I probably know) seemed a bit much too.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    By "their report" here I mean the IonQ one Scorpion cites with 53% uptime.
gonesilent 4y ago
Audi and VW have been independently testing them.
- throwaway290 4y ago
  FWIW last year's activist short presentation[0] dedicated a number of pages to VW, and it seemed that VW mostly wanted the publicity of them doing something sustainable under pressure from German stakeholders (although officially VW declined to comment, and all that info is said to come from employees). [0] https://scorpioncapital.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/reports/QS1.pdf https://scorpioncapital.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/reports/Q...
  - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
    The mainline autos have been praying for a tech jump to close the gap with Tesla. Since BMW canned their CEO over EV strategy five years ago, all execs at mainline auto have been on notice and been actively pressured as to EV strategy by major investors. A go-to strategy was to declare plans, but all the economic scaling of those vehicles seemed to come down to 1) solid state becoming viable and 2) OEM battery building supply. Toyota has blown the solid state deadline a half dozen times already, even when they were pushing Hydrogen (another canary in the coal mine piece of bullshit from a clueless CEO). So yes, I agree that solid state investment has just been "investor relations" and "CEO job maintenance" tasks, and nothing that really carries water. I do think the Tesla battery advantage is in trouble now that the Chinese are ramping key LFP/Sodium Ion production with practical densities that will truly power the mainstream EV that will be far under the drivetrain cost of ICE.
xyst 4y ago
Their track record is pretty terrible. https://scorpioncapital.com/track-record https://scorpioncapital.com/track-record Entire port is negative. Not a single short position is turning profit.
- alecco 4y ago
  The "Big Short" was negative until the market caught up.
- ckastner 4y ago
  I found it odd that they'd publish such a poor track record, so I checked the worst performing position ALLK (-97%). The stock was at 100-ish in December 2019 (their reference), and today it is at 3.22. Consequently, it seems that the performance that they are reporting is that of the stock, not of their short. Edit: fixed the reference date.
- icambron 4y ago
  I didn’t follow that at all. That page shows the change in stock price for the companies, not the unrealized gain/loss from short positions. That doesn’t tell us how their portfolio has performed, but it suggests they have a good track record of calling losers. What am I missing?
- thablackbull 4y ago
  It's highlighting just the opposite - that their short calls are prescient. You're seeing it's all negative because they are betting that those stocks will drop.
- OJFord 4y ago
  Those aren't negative results on 'short positions', they're the underlying, i.e. taking the short position was a good call. '[Every] single short position is turning a profit'. I'd agree that's confusing/ambiguous if it weren't for the S&P comparison. ('If we'd taken an equally valued long position in the S&P 500 instead' would be a weird thing to state.)
- jacquesm 4y ago
  That's exactly how you profit from a short position.
bawolff 4y ago
If they have a short position doesn't that mean they are financially motivated to see them fail? Doesn't sound like a neutral source.
- sanxiyn 4y ago
  Yes, they are talking their book. That's why you should decide for yourself.
- lagadu 4y ago
  I see it as a bit of a chicken and egg situation: you see a company you believe is overvalued, therefore you short it. The problem is that once you do that you become financially motivated to see them fail, even if that wasn't true when you originally shorted them.
  - Pyramus 4y ago
    I agree with the bias, still there isn't a chicken and egg problem in most cases: You do the research before you take the short position, you only publish the research afterwards. If you are a credible investor, the short position follows from the research, not the other way around.
- OJFord 4y ago
  Alternatively, 'their money is where their mouth is'.
- rocqua 4y ago
  They are a serial short seller. That means they need to retain credibility with their reports to keep their business going. That, combined with general skepticism and a fully-disclosed short position, I think should make it quite easy to fairly evaluate their short-report.
  - awestroke 4y ago
    Why would they need to retain credibility?

xiphias2 4y ago

Why did you buy the SPACs? Was it because of the charisma of Chamath? As for me, when Richard Brandson, a brave and crazy man had the idea of making money from space tourism for example, the whole thing just didn’t make sense: if I go to space, I want the spaceship done by an engineer who doesn’t risk his life, but prefers to automate everything first (SpaceX). I like the idea of perfecting rockets using cargo as a business and only _then_ using them for tourism. With that SPAC I got sceptical of all of them.

panick21_ 4y ago

Yes. But that was one that was not well done. A few people involved in the industry called out a lot of things they said in that report. The stock price was insane, but most of the criticism they made of the tech doesn't hold much water. You can find a good video about the report on youtube. See TheLimitingFactor detailed video on the report.