{"id":185892,"date":"2014-07-22T17:56:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T22:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/07\/22\/this-makes-me-chuckle\/"},"modified":"2014-07-22T17:56:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T22:56:00","slug":"this-makes-me-chuckle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/07\/22\/this-makes-me-chuckle\/","title":{"rendered":"This Makes Me Chuckle"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Hedge fund puke decides that a MLM company is a fraud.&nbsp; (<i>I actually agree with him about MLM companies, but I digress<\/i>)<\/li>\n<li>Hedge fund puke shorts MLM company to the tune of billions.<\/li>\n<li>Hedge fund puke lobbies regulators to bust MLM company.<\/li>\n<li>Fails, so he rolls out the big guns, and<a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/nathanvardi\/2014\/07\/22\/bill-ackmans-big-herbalife-reveal-bombs-with-investors\/\"> Bill Ackman unloads on Herbalife with a much touted series of revalations that are really just a multi-hour rant<\/a>: <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Hedge fund billionaire William Ackman promised to deliver a deathblow to Herbalife from a Manhattan stage, but his long presentation on Tuesday bombed with investors and left the diet shake seller unscathed.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Herbalife CEO \u201cMichael Johnson is a predator,\u201d Ackman said fighting back tears as he wrapped up the second hour of the presentation while referring to his family\u2019s American story, which started when Ackman\u2019s great-grandfather immigrated to the U.S. from Russia. \u201cThis is a criminal enterprise.\u201d Ackman called Herbalife a $24 billion \u201cscam.\u201d \u201cThe fraud is affecting more and more people,\u201d said Ackman. \u201cIt is time to shut the company down.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Shares of Herbalife rose steadily in the morning after Ackman started giving his talk on Herbalife\u2019s nutritional clubs, increasing by 8% to $58.40 in the first hour of the presentation. Two hours into the talk the stock had risen by 11% to $60. That\u2019s a little higher than the shares were changing hands for on Monday before Ackman drove down the stock by 11%, saying he would be delivering \u201cthe most important presentation that I have made in my career.\u201d Ackman had promised in a CNBC interview on Monday that \u201cwe won\u2019t disappoint.\u201d Ackman\u2019s presentation was still going on at 1:07 p.m., with the stock up by 15% to $62.22. During the presentation, Ackman suggested that Herbalife had been repurchasing shares in a material way on Tuesday. Shares of Herbalife continued to rise after the three-hour presentation ended, closing at $67.77, up 25% for the day.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The company, which has vigorously denied Ackman\u2019s accusations, said on Tuesday that Ackman was trying to drive down Herbalife\u2019s shares over a relatively short period because a \u201csubstantial portion of the bet expires on January 17, 2015,\u201d referring to put options Ackman purchased when he restructured his short position in the company\u2019s shares. Circumstantial evidence suggests Ackman\u2019s put options are currently not in the money.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">During the presentation, Ackman invoked Enron, Bernard Madoff, totalitarian regimes and even the Nazis. \u201cThe big lie is used by totalitarian regimes, and by the Nazis and by lots of people and people generally believe big lies because they are so bold that how can they possibly be false,\u201d Ackman said. He criticized former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for supporting Herbalife and claimed that Albright had successfully used her connections to make sure the company could continue to operate in the key China market after Ackman had attacked Herbalife\u2019s China operations earlier this year.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh, yeah, and then there is those <a href=\"http:\/\/beforeitsnews.com\/financial-markets\/2014\/07\/herbalife-surges-as-ackman-alleges-nutrition-clubs-lose-12000year-2744550.html\">accusations of free babysitting<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cThey are not selling weight loss in these clubs, they are selling business opportunities,\u201d Ackman said at the presentation to investors in New York, adding the clubs provided free babysitting and had people working making nutrition drinks without pay.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cThis is all free labor, totally illegal,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Herbalife jumped, and his short bet dropped in value as a result.<\/p>\n<p>I joke about schadenfreude all the time, but this really does make me feel good.<\/p>\n<p>Does that make me a bad person?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hedge fund puke decides that a MLM company is a fraud.&nbsp; (I actually agree with him about MLM companies, but I digress) Hedge fund puke shorts MLM company to the tune of billions. Hedge fund puke lobbies regulators to bust MLM company. Fails, so he rolls out the big guns, and Bill Ackman unloads on &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1005,1004,1019,982,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-finance","category-schadenfreude","category-stupid","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185892"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}