[codeboost]

Bill Ackman was wrong about Herbalife. According to wikipedia, he lost between $400 million to $500 million by shorting Herbalife last year. What that means is that other investors disagree with his (and this article's) analysis of Herbalife.

[mrschwabe]

No. Bill Ackman was right. Herbalife is a terrible business. For reasons outlined in the OP link, it has seen growth - but is ultimately doomed. Specifically: when there are no new markets to enter; when every dupe has been duped.

Though, unfortunately, before it crashes entirely - those handful at the top will have their next big sham ready to seed & perpetuate into the world; and a significant number of the dupes who were duped before will be duped again.

And hence, the endless, relentless cycle of MLM. Despicable.

[codeboost]

You sound like a person who doesn't really know what he is talking about.

The data in this article shows some trend in two countries 10 years ago and then draws some grand conclusions on the business model, which is absurd.

If you look at the business fundamentals, the picture is a bit different.

Herbalife sells high quality products, used happily by millions of permanent customers worldwide.

They are leaders of one of the hottest industries - wellness. Looking at the amount of unhealthy food sold in supermarkets today (almost all of it), it's no wonder there are entire industries trying to fix people's health after consuming the food sold to them. The other industry is Health Care.

Now the MLM thing.

All the 'those on top earn everything and new people earn very little' is both true and fair. The fact is, no one has appointed anyone on 'top', everybody starts out as a simple distributor and builds his/her business from the ground up. It's a tough business and only the best (most motivated) move up and others move on with their life. Just like any other business.

I have been there when my sister started in Herbalife 20 years ago. She started from zero, as a simple distributor. Now she earns about $100k/month plus bonuses, drives a Porsche and lives in an incredible house on top of a mountain.

What's more, she made dozens of other people rich. I know them all personally, they started from owning one set of clothes to driving expensive cars and travelling all around the world.

And thousands upon thousands of customers who changed their lives after loosing a significant amount of weight. These are the customers that don't go away easily, not after they have been reborn. Anyone who has lost 20+ kilograms (like myself) knows what I'm talking about.

Bill Ackman is full of shit and a hypocrite when he states that he wants to help millions of low income people from loosing money with Herbalife.

It's a personal and emotional war he's engaged in and so far he has been loosing it, because his premises are wrong.

[maxprogram]

Unrealized losses over a short time period have nothing to do with being "right" or "wrong" about a stock investment.

Fluctuations of investor expectations (i.e. stock price movements) have especially nothing to do with this article's analysis. It presents data and comes to a pretty reasonable conclusion from it. Whether you wan't to call it a "pyramid scheme" or not is semantics, the conclusion speaks for itself.

Short-term investors can make money betting in the opposite direction of long-term investors who will also eventually make money. Herbalife can be a pyramid scheme and short-term investors can make money as the stock price rises -- the 2 aren't mutually exclusive.

[tokenadult]

Ackman seems to think his investment strategy will work out just fine, based on more recent reporting:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101606593

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/herbalife-ackman-respond-night...

(I am a Wikipedian, and in general I don't trust Wikipedia for current news AT ALL, and especially not for current news that touches on health-related businesses.)

[hswoo2]

Actually it probably wasn't this large since Ackman didn't fully covered his short, those are most likely mostly paper losses. I believed he covered a proportion and bought puts instead.

[gfodor]

Herbalife just killed their dividend. This story is still being written. Ackman is a douche but he might end up getting the last laugh.