Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Steps Down as Chairman in Battle With Short Seller (cnn.com) 54
Nikola founder Trevor Milton has stepped down as executive chairman after a short seller accused Milton and the hydrogen and electric truck startup of misleading investors and overstating the value of a business deal. From a report: Milton has also resigned from the company's board, Nikola said in a statement on Sunday. The company has previously denied the allegations and threatened legal action against the research company that made them. Stephen Girsky, a former vice chairman of General Motors (GM) and current board member at Nikola, will take over as chairman, effective immediately. "The focus should be on the company and its world-changing mission, not me. I intend to defend myself against false accusations leveled against me by outside detractors," Milton said in a statement posted on Twitter. As part of the transition agreement that Nikola filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, Milton agreed to revise any references to the positions he held at Nikola on his social media profiles so it's clear he no longer holds them. He also agreed to check with lawyers for Nikola before posting anything about the company. By late Monday morning, Milton had made his Twitter account private, but his LinkedIn account remained public and active.
You Got Caught Rolling It Down Hill In Nuetral (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You Got Caught Rolling It Down Hill In Nuetral (Score:5, Insightful)
Musk showed a non-working prototype solar roof.
Oh? As I understand it, the prototype he showed was working but wasn't fit for production. As with many prototypes, it was still too expensive, too hot, and too inefficient, but that's what we expect from prototypes. We also expect companies to have a reasonable plan for working through those sorts of issues to bring a product to market.
Sure enough, Tesla addressed those issues and began fulfilling orders to customers. You can find plenty of reviews posted by actual customers who have had Solar Roofs installed, and they seem to be working fine for them. As with most Musk projects it took longer than expected, but they've eventually delivered on nearly all of the promises they made about the roof, and they're still working to bring the last few features to market.
In contrast, the Nikola CEO used camera tricks and gravity in an attempt to convince the world that their show model—not a prototype—was a functional prototype. We expect some hand-waving and promises when it comes to prototypes, but dressing up an entirely non-functional model as something much further along in its development is a recipe for landing in hot water.
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Oh? As I understand it, the prototype he showed was working but wasn't fit for production.
You understand it wrong. It was a completely non-functional prop.
You can wave it in the air, but everybody will laugh at you.
You understand that photovoltaic technology is not new? And that the solar roof product had already been installed in some homes when the prototype in question was shown? That's quite a bit different that Nikola, where they rolled a fake car that had never been sold to anybody in neutral down a hill. You think that seems the same as a low-efficiency, non-durable early version of a product that is now working? Durrrrrrr
Re: You Got Caught Rolling It Down Hill In Nuetral (Score:1)
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Musk held up different styles of roof tiles with solar cells that weren’t actually functional
I'd say that as far as being able to be held up, they were perfectly functional. Or did he demonstrate them by connecting them to an appliance with faking the electricity (from another source, like a battery, for example)? Like Nikola did with fake driving?
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Re: You Got Caught Rolling It Down Hill In Nuetral (Score:1)
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As with most Musk projects it took longer than expected, but they've eventually delivered
When he bought it they had over-promised, and nobody realized they had a fake install schedule. After Musk bought it, they stopped adding new install appointments until it was ready for install.
People would be calling it a "scam" if he hadn't bought it and finished the work. He saved that company, that's hardly late.
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Would that be the version 1, 2, or 3 Solar Roof—of which I’ve seen several reviews for version 2 and a few others that are dated late enough to likely be version 3—that was bought from this unnamed company in China? Mind you, no one was capable of making this stuff a few years ago because of the aforementioned heat, cost, and inefficiency issues, so I’m not sure what company in China you think had the tech.
Re: You Got Caught Rolling It Down Hill In Nuetral (Score:1)
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Shorting and slamming Tesla didn't work ... (Score:2)
... So now somebody's trying it on another electric vehicle company.
Maybe this time they've got a point and HAVE found an overpriced fraud.
Re:Shorting and slamming Tesla didn't work ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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The logic is that companies announce positive news and then issue more shares, so a short is just doing the opposite.
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There is no "manipulation" in talking about the market.
It is fine, because it isn't insider information, it is just that he figured something out. That's not "manipulation" at all, that is a correction towards honesty. If he traded on his information that is the market working. And you perceive it is naughty, for some reason.
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Not if you disclose that you are shorting them.
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Whether you short or not has no bearing on market manipulation. Since the company engaged in fraud it's hard to accuse the person who discovered the fraud of manipulation.
I think what you're trying to talk about is insider trading, and the problem there is to do insider trading you need to actually be an insider. Discovering something and betting against it is not insider trading.
Works very well (Score:4, Interesting)
Tesla and Nikola are a little different in that Tesla has actual working products, which is sells to actual customers. From the looks of it, Nikola is mostly just a bunch of fraud. That's not going to end well.
That said, shorting Tesla works very, very well, as long as you don't get ridiculously greedy. That's because Tesla stock is both a) very volatile for a number of reasons and b) grotesquely over-valued by any objective measure*. A short is essentially offering to sell a slightly lower price than everyone else, in the belief that you can buy it back later at a lower price because you think the price will drop. So if the price drops, you make money.
Just this month alone, Tesla has fallen from $500 to $330. A huge drop and shorts can easily double their money in just a couple of weeks, basically by offering to sell at $499 when everyone else was demanding $500. Has there EVER been ANY month in which Tesla's stock didn't have a 10% drop? Every time it reaches a new high, it's a safe bet that a drop is coming within a week or so.
Personally, I've shorted Tesla only once. It only took about 27 hours for the price to drop to my target and I collected my profit.
* Please understand "the stock is over-valued" (or under values) has nothing to do with whether one thinks Elon Musk is a cool guy or not. You can think he's just thw coolest guy ever and still see that $500/share is ridiculous. Seeing that the stock is over-valued also does NOT mean you don't also think Tesla will be successful. The current prices are appropriate for a company that ALREADY IS the largest auto manufacturer in the entire world. The stock price is that of Volkswagen or Toyota, which already sell millions of cars and millions of trucks all over the world, and have been doing so for many decades. If you think there is a 90% chance that Tesla will get there 30 years from now, that would mean the stock is way over-valued. Because you'd be paying $500 today for something you think will probably be actually worth $500 in 30 years, with a chance that it will be worth nothing. That would be foolish. If you think Tesla will be the world's largest car company in 30 years (and therefore worth $500 in 30 years), you should pay may $150 fornit today.
Variability not that dependable (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope no one takes this post seriously (it's hard to tell if @raymorris is jesting or not).
Consider the hypothetical investor, call them Pat, who tried this, shorting $10,000 when the stock first hit $70 (in todays split-adjsuted terms). That was Nov 12, 2019.
In the next days following, the stock never traded below $65, so our hypothetical investor held on. Then the stock went on one of its monstrous rips. Assuming Pat held the position until now, and that the short rebate interest rate was negligible since TSLA may be "hard to borrow", Pat now owes $60,000, and has disturbingly little prospect of closing the position at any significantly better level.
I'm a big believer in shorting, especially when fundamental information emerges as with Nikola. But it makes sense only as part of a disciplined investment approach, preferably one that applies some kind of Black-Litterman or similar portfolio theory on multiple positions. Please do not rely on a strategy like this one that relies on market volatility causing the price to revisit any given level!
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GP here. First, the main point:
I wholeheartedly agree agree no-one should short ANY company without thoroughly understanding how it works, and NEVER with money you can't afford to lose. Ever.
Most people should never short - they should put away 15% in a couple low-expense index funds, every pay check. That's how over 80% of millionaires became millionaires - slow and steady wins the race. That's how I'm building wealth - not by shorting over-hyped companies.
With that out of the way, I was specifically re
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I said:
money. It's when the stock price is acting like a meth head, swinging wildly up and down, up and down that you can look for the short opportunity.
I should have added that applies to companies that are also grossly over valued by the standard metrics. If the stock price (market cap) is 200X the revenue and the profits are negative and it has all the volatility of a crack head, one might look at how to time a short. (Market cap ia typically 5-10 times revenue, not 200X).
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GP here. First, the main point:
I wholeheartedly agree agree no-one should short ANY company without thoroughly understanding how it works, and NEVER with money you can't afford to lose. Ever.
While this statement sounds reasonable on the surface, the unlimited losses possible with a short position make it impossible to guarantee that anyone can limit losses to ones they can afford. (The guarantee can be achieved with put option purchases, of course).
Most people should never short - they should put away 15% in a couple low-expense index funds, every pay check. That's how over 80% of millionaires became millionaires - slow and steady wins the race. That's how I'm building wealth - not by shorting over-hyped companies.
Right on!
With that out of the way, I was specifically responding to "shorting Tesla didn't work". In fact, Tesla is the most-shorted company in all of history for a reason. The reason is because the price is so high and so volatile it's just begging for shorts.
Here I disagree once more. The best shorts are overpriced of course, but of low volatility. High volatility increases the likelihood of giant losses (and margin calls) even if one is eventually proved correct.
Each the next three months had times that made it attractive to shorts, and sure enough the shorts made money. It's when the stock price is acting like a meth head, swinging wildly up and up and down that you can look for the short opportunity. When a meth head is super high, you can bet they'll be headed down soon enough, then probably back up again.
No, no, no! Swinging wildly
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> While this statement sounds reasonable on the surface, the unlimited losses possible with a short position make it impossible to guarantee that anyone can limit losses to ones they can afford. (The guarantee can be achieved with put option purchases, of course).
Put options is one way to guarantee; you're certainly familiar with limit orders, which is another way to essentially guarantee without even getting into options. So we can summarize that as "you can certainly limit your loss, and due to human
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Has there EVER been ANY month in which Tesla's stock didn't have a 10% drop?
Sure. But what happens when you time it wrong and it drops 10% after rising 20%. You're still out a lot of money.
Is the stock overvalued? Probably. But that didn't stop it from doubling in value recently. And only gamblers claim to know which direction any stock is ever headed.
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Absolutely things can go south, so you should never short with money you can't afford to lose. You should put most of your money in an index fund.
> only gamblers claim to know which direction any stock is ever headed.
Companies like General Mills and and Kimberley-Clark that have been making steady money for a hundred years tend to keep making steady money, like they always have. People keep buying food and toilet paper. Even if onw pf their brands crashes, it's not that big of a deal because they have
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Meanwhile 3M, the exact definition of that type of safe harbour is down 33% over the last 2 years.
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And even your cherry-picked stock isn't down over one year or five years or six months. Come on man, you're smarter than that.
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You can think he's just thw coolest guy ever and still see that $500/share is ridiculous.
When a stock is ridiculously priced that means that people are willing to pay that. Just because you come along and short it does not mean that they will suddenly come to their senses. Vaulation is never a catalyst.
What a crook (Score:2)
What mission? (Score:1)
What mission? Getting vehicles to coast downhill? Somehow I think that's been a thing for a little while now. But I digress...
This kind of "I'm stepping down not because I'm a fraud but because I've become a media distraction" has become far too commonplace for scum like Milton. You're not fooling anyone bub. Everyone knows why you're stepping down and it's not to "spend more time with family", "pursue other opportunities" or
Paradox (Score:2)
On the one hand, they say you can't beat the market by picking stocks and so passive investments such as ETFs will beat managed portfolios. On the hand, Nikola has always seemed like a red-hot mess, so I have real trouble believing that returns on investment could not be improved by avoiding investments such in Nikola on that basis.
Every time I've had a visceral reaction to conspicuous CEO bullshit, like from Carly Fiorina, Elizabeth Holmes, or Trever Milton, then, sure enough, it turns out their companies
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Aren’t most ETF index focused? Even Tesla isn’t on the S&P index yet. So a passive investment like an index fund or index ETF would have avoided those companies. What it didn’t avoid is the more institutionalized fraud: Enron, WireCard, and WorldCom. Those are the three first examples I can think off. WireCard was on the DAX 30 and the German regulators were defending them until recently.
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ETFs generally don't include bullshit CEOs. Even Tesla which could be used as the poster boy for questionable CEOs hyping isn't listed on the S&P and therefore isn't really in a major ETF like SPY.
Battling with a short seller or with the truth? (Score:5, Interesting)
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But if you ask me, nikola seems to only have shells and in a few months to a couple of years will either "pivot" or just be sold for parts.
GM was *paid* a billion by Nikola (Score:2)
GM was given a pile of money to develop things they were already working on.
In return, GM gets to build a truck for Nikola, using GM drivetrain, batteries, and fuel cell technologies.
It's been said that this deal was win-win for GM; if Nikola folds GM still gets to keep the money. If Nikola survives then GM keeps the R&D money and gets to make more of a profit by selling trucks to Nikola.
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This isn't even the first time the CEO has done some
Will we see legal action following (Score:1)
Some of the wording around Trevor Milton's exit from the company he founded indicates this story isn't over yet, I think we may see some legal action coming out of this.
Be suspicious of claims by short-sellers. (Score:2)
When I heard this reported elsewhere, no mention was made of the fact that the person making the claim had a financial interest in the outcome. There's nothing inherently wrong with short-selling, it's a necessary part of the market, but we can't let people profit by destroying with deceit what others have worked so
Shocker (Score:1)