[HN Gopher] The Whimsical Investor
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The Whimsical Investor
        
       Author : fi-le
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2025-04-14 07:43 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (fi-le.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (fi-le.net)
        
       | ryandamm wrote:
       | Curious if anyone else reading this knows about the equivalent of
       | US "pink sheets," publicly traded companies that have either
       | never been listed or have been delisted due to low share price /
       | market capitalization.
       | 
       | Here in the US, you can buy publicly traded companies in the US
       | for a song; in fact, that was the source for the "acquiring"
       | company in a lot of those reverse-acquisitions of the late 2000s
       | / early 2010s: publicly traded companies that had a ticker, but
       | were basically defunct. A company that wanted to go public
       | without the scrutiny of an IPO process could "buy themselves"
       | with the tiny, publicly traded company, thereby getting a ticker
       | and access to retail investors. (This was not a good phenomenon,
       | fwiw, though it definitely anticipated the SPAC craze... which
       | was also not good, for similar reasons.)
        
         | blobbers wrote:
         | Why not good? Gives an investor a chance to invest.
         | 
         | Investment has the risk of loss. You should do your homework
         | before risking the loss!
        
           | mikestew wrote:
           | _Gives an investor a chance to invest._
           | 
           | It gives the unwitting a chance to lose their money. "Do your
           | homework" against professionals whose job it is to make your
           | homework as difficult as possible, including the very tactic
           | you seem to be arguing for.
           | 
           | Meanwhile, if things such as SPACs are such solid
           | investments, why are they pulling such weasely stunts to
           | begin with? (A rhetorical question, at least it is to me.)
        
       | kjellsbells wrote:
       | Companies like these are hard to find in the US because of the
       | twin curses (or joys, depending on your views) of "maximizing
       | shareholder value" and "SEC regulation".
       | 
       | If you list on a big exchange, your investors will expect revenue
       | and profit to go brrr quarter after quarter forever. It's a
       | treadmill you can never get off. Amazon is uniquely special in
       | that Bezos persuaded investors to keep faith for the best part of
       | a decade. Or perhaps "lucky": one wonders what their stock price
       | would have done without the incredible luck of the former side
       | hustle of AWS becoming the engine of their business. (Not to
       | denigrate the incredible feat that it is, or the work that went
       | into it.)
       | 
       | Regulation provides some practical limits on how small you can
       | be, too. All those 10-Ks and audits and SOX compliance don't come
       | cheap. You need to be big enough to employ specialists to do it
       | or rich enough to partner up with Deloitte.
       | 
       | The alternative is to list on a pink sheet exchange, but then you
       | are keeping company with a long long tail of companoes that give
       | off sketchy vibes. A one man Nevada corporation selling healing
       | oils, or an interest in a hitherto-undiscovered source of
       | limitless energy. I cant think of any company that graduated from
       | this part of the market into full DJI/Nasdaq respectability.
       | Maybe someone knows of one?
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-04-14 23:00 UTC)