I really don't like this guy, seriously he's a shark (he's probably right, but what a jerk): "If you know somebody has to liquidate, the best thing you have to do, unfortunately, sadly, Darwinian is to go sell all the positions you have in common, then start shorting everything they have. It accelerates the downfall as quickly as you can." of course then he says 'It's nothing I would ever do...'
If there's any purpose in hedge funds as a structure it's that they provide liquidity for the market. So it's in everyone's best interest to let them do price discovery against each other.
It's not just liquidity. Price discovery helps everyone. The earlier the correct price is discovered, the less we're all screwed when the bubble pops. I think they're rewarded too well for the function they serve but whaddya gonna do.
Using leverage has risks that you're supposed to understand before you do it.
It's not a free lunch, unless you're putting the sharks' interest ahead of yours. Or clueless, which was the case here, as L.A. is not a trader and has no business running a fund.
Too bad for the people that were overleveraged? I don’t see why, they assumed too much risk and lost. This isn’t a WSB guy blowing up, it’s a collection of capital from sophisticated investors that understand the risks.
Martin was convicted on three counts of securities fraud. The TL;DR is he was shilling a successful fund while sitting on massive losses. A Madoff kinda thing.
This has nothing to do with what people actually hate him for, and for which he was not convicted, because extracting money from a captive clientele is exactly what the US healthcare system is designed to do.
Why do you think that just sharing a link to an earlier HN post means 'promoting' someone? I referenced the HN post because I found that it's less about Martin Shkreli himself and more about a quality conversation with good analysis about the inner workings of 'Hedge fund' world and market dynamics.
If you've a better source, share it; I'll have a look and might use that one in the future. Otherwise, if you can't contribute in a constructive manner, stop making baseless comments about others intention without understanding them first.
He's an absolute ghoul, and to see sibling comments praising him breaks my heart. Yeah, he "did his time", but he also took advantage of sick people for immense profit. You don't get a pass for that.
He's a person that has told the whole world who he is, and some people, especially temporarily embarrassed billionaires on this platform, love him for his unmasked self.