HN Gopher Feed (2017-07-10) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
Snap falls to IPO price
138 points by prostoalex
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/06/15/snap-...___________________________________________________________________
mmmpop - 1 hours ago
Invest in the things you love and use most! What could go wrong?!
gigatexal - 1 hours ago
maybe twitter should buy them
[deleted]
[deleted]
dfrey - 1 hours ago
snapchat baffles me. It's just another instant messaging platform
except that they came up with the idea of messages that delete
themselves after a time period. The problem is that this killer
feature is easily subverted by taking a picture of your screen. So
basically, they have provided an instant messaging platform with
one extra useless feature.
ithought - 27 minutes ago
If you're messaging someone to be fun or flirty, or just as
causal friends, do you really want to see the random dumb things
you said 6 months ago or 3 years ago on Facebook Messenger?Every
messaging app is essentially like one long email thread, whereas
Snapchat provides real freedom to be spurious and in the moment
without future embarrassment.And anyone can secretly record
anyone at any time in any interaction. That doesn't stop people
from communicating freely.
nickrivadeneira - 23 minutes ago
I use it regularly with a lot of my friends and it's one of my
favorite apps. Here's my take: The ease of sending and ephemeral
nature significantly lower the barrier for what you'd consider
shareable. Imagine you were walking down the street with a friend
and saw something that gave you a casual chuckle. Something
mildly interesting. If you were in person you might point that
out to your friend, promptly forget about it, and carry on with
your day. If you are by yourself, it probably isn't interesting
enough to save a picture to your phone and send it via text
message where the default is the image is immortalized in your
photo library and text history until you delete it. Snapchat
makes it so quick and easy that those little moments are now
almost as easy to share as pointing to your friend if you had
been walking together.I agree that the innovations are not major,
but each little nuanced feature in combination makes it so that
people share the little moments in life and you suddenly have a
small window into the daily lives of your close circle.EDIT: I
should mention that I have no opinions on its viability as a
business. Just commenting why I enjoy using it.
drewmol - 1 hours ago
I think it's just a consequence of a popular idea at the right
time. And 2 killer features, self deleting shares(no percieved
history) and it being super easy to select who you do/don't want
to share with. Sort of an anti Facebook/public
history/complicated privacy settings backlash spurred by a
younger generation who grew up with Facebook always
existing.Quicken Loans came out with a service called "Rocket
Mortgage" several years ago and I thought, "who wants to enter
the likely largest financial commitment of their lives at the
click of a button?" Turns out, lots of people... simplicity
sells.Anyways I think eventially once one of these big data
hording companies goes under to the point of simply selling all
their user data to the public in form of a paid search engine,
and public/private key encryption is super simple and mainstream,
things will change. I'd bet it might just be when Snapchat goes
under;-)
[deleted]
beager - 1 hours ago
More to the point, this "killer feature" is easily cloned by a
competitor and shows that the product creates no competitive
barriers. Coupled with the fact that the cloner has a much better
idea of their users and can target ads much more successfully,
this creates a long road for $SNAP.
thaumasiotes - 1 hours ago
> More to the point, this "killer feature" is easily cloned by
a competitorThis doesn't really agree with> The problem is that
this killer feature is easily subvertedLet's let one company
implement the feature before we decide it will be easy for
competitors to implement it too.
DrScump - 58 minutes ago
More to the point, this "killer feature" is easily cloned by
a competitor ... which is why I was skeptical of Groupon's
value from the outset.
stevenj - 2 hours ago
I think Snap's stock price will continue to fall (to under $10) and
then at some point it'll be acquired, possibly by an asian company
or investment group.
JumpCrisscross - 2 hours ago
Lock-up expires 29 August [1]. On the other hand, they have $3.2bn
of cash and short-term investments (as of 31 March) while burning
about $600MM of cash from their operations (FYE 31 December 2016) a
year. That's 5 years to get it right.EDIT: insider lock-up at T+150
comes in at the end of July.[1]
http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/company/snap-inc-899497-8...
chollida1 - 2 hours ago
> Lock-up expires 29 August [1].Its actually the end of July for
the first and most important IPO lockup expiry.> The first key
lock-up date for Snap will occur roughly 150 days following the
IPO. At that point, pre-IPO investors, such as company insiders,
will be allowed to sell their shares. The second major lock-up
date applies to 25% of the shares that were offered in the IPO
itself. Of the 200 million total IPO shares, 50 million of the
shares will be restricted for one year.
jonbarker - 1 hours ago
Founding team cashed out pre-IPO for hundreds of millions each.
chollida1 - 2 hours ago
Not sure this is really news worthy.They've been heavily shorted
for a while now and their puts are expensive. But really 1 Billion
new shares could flood the market in just a few more weeks.To put
it in perspective I believe Twitter, the other poster child for
giving away options, had about half that amount.Even the IPO
underwriters are starting to crack. Credit Suisse used the stock
drop to keep an "outperform" rating on the stock while lowering its
target from $30 to $25.IMHO Snap will do just fine for hte next
year. They are big enough that companies will carve out a piece of
their marketing budgets for Snap. It won't be until a year later
when they have enough data on how well their Snap advertising is
working that they'll decide if its worth it or not.
mmanfrin - 2 hours ago
Pardon my language but: no fucking shit. $20bil was unbelievably
overpriced.This is the one major tech stock that I simply do not
get. ~$125 a user is insane.
acchow - 1 hours ago
Facebook is >$200 per user.
valarauca1 - 31 minutes ago
Facebook has so completely monopolized social media it is
successfully driving SNAP out of business. Hence its share
price is accurate.
toomuchtodo - 1 hours ago
For Facebook, it's not unreasonable. For SNAP, it is.
draw_down - 27 minutes ago
Facebook it ain't.
__jal - 1 hours ago
Facebook is a panopticon with a massive dataset on each user,
and has a pretty substantial moat by way of users 'punishing'
each other for leaving, among other competitive
advantages.Snapchat is a trendy app that could easily become
uncool, and when it does, I don't see how users feel much of a
penalty for leaving in the same way FB users do.
skinnymuch - 8 minutes ago
FB has four massive "empires": FB, Messenger, Whatsapp,
Instagram. They haven't monetized Whatsapp or Messenger much -
maybe they never can, but for now that's potential opportunity.
They have a strong grasp on their massive market share. They
still have more monetizing to do on Instagram, which is already
doing well financially. IG alone is worth more than Snapchat.
FB has a lot of cash and keeps piling it on too. They were
always profitable and raised a ton more than Snap, including
the money they didn't lose by pricing the IPO at just the right
price. Only hurt them for a short time.FB has more immediate
ways to expand too, most likely. We already saw them transition
from relying on getting a cut of things like plugins and games
in FB to that not mattering at all. They could try to go into
payments more, maybe an Adsense alternative -- likely the only
company capable of doing so too. Yahoo failed at doing it a
decade ago and any other company has always been much more
niche with much more worse payouts.
dna_polymerase - 1 hours ago
Facebook grew so much, almost everyone has it and its use cases
are versatile (and therefore the data collected). Snapchat is
really just used by younger folks with almost no financial
power for chatting in the weirdest way.
skinnymuch - 1 minutes ago
Like nick, I'm close to 30 years old too. Snap is big in all
my social circles. Mostly people between mid 20s to early
30s. Less popular the older you get, but still significant.
Regardless, all have enough buying power.Even if Snap never
gets much traction past people in their 30s, that's enough of
a market to expand for quite a while. The 18-34 demographic
is the most coveted. The pre-teen and teen market isn't
something to completely sneeze at either.
nickrivadeneira - 35 minutes ago
Anecdotal: I, and a large chunk of my friends and
acquaintances use snapchat regularly. We're 30 year olds
making good money. In the same way that some messages are
best suited for a text message, some for an email, and some
for a phone call, there are some messages where snapchat is
the best medium.
adventured - 42 minutes ago
Facebook has been profitable each fiscal year they've been
public. Their first full year public they produced $1.5 billion
in net income.Facebook is tracking to a ~31 PE ratio for fiscal
2017, with a growth rate that is still high.$14 billion in net
income (fiscal 2017 speculative), is a lot more important as a
metric than $200 per user. If they push that net income up to
$30 billion over the next four or five years (very plausible),
at 24 times earnings (at that point, speculating on a $720b
market cap), maybe their per user climbs to $300+ - it still
won't matter, the net income is what will matter.Snapchat
doesn't possess any of the positive financial qualities that
Facebook had, to square against the high per user value.
charlesdm - 1 hours ago
Facebook was having decent growth at the time. Snap is
undergoing massive competition from both Instagram, WhatsApp
AND Facebook. Personally don't believe in the stock. Perhaps at
$5 to 7 a share I would buy in, but I'm not really seeing it.
skywhopper - 2 hours ago
As skeptical as I am that Snap will ever be a moneymaker, this data
point is not meaningful in any way. Facebook traded below (often
_well_ below) its IPO price for the first 15 months on the market.
bdcravens - 1 hours ago
I don't think the two are equivalent however.
exelius - 1 hours ago
Agree with you here -- Facebook had a well-formed mobile
strategy, the only question was whether it would work. Once it
started to work, the stock took off like a rocket.Snap is a
much bigger question mark. So far their plan looks to be "Do
what Facebook did, only for AR/VR". Except Facebook and Snap
will be splitting the market; where Facebook had no competition
and absolute dominance before they IPOed. Facebook is obviously
playing to win on Snap's home turf. Even if Snap is successful,
Facebook will make it very expensive for them.
wuliwong - 1 hours ago
I haven't been following SnapChat too closely, I know they
made some glasses not too long ago. It is surprising to me
that they are trading on the ID that they will be more
successful in AR/VR. I can't imagine have invested nearly as
much into AR/VR as Facebook/Oculus. Amount invested doesn't
mean success for sure but I expect Facebook to be at the
forefront of AR/VR at least in the near future.
bdcravens - 57 minutes ago
My understanding is that the glasses were little more than
a gimicky way to get more use of their platform. Felt kinda
CueCat-ish to me.
giobox - 49 minutes ago
AR is unfortunately such a broad label, covering an
enormous variety of implementations from dedicated headsets
to phone cameras.I'd argue Snapchat delivered one of the
first mainstream AR 'hits' - many of my friends can't get
enough of their AR photo filters. To be fair, many of them
are extremely impressive tech demos, fluidly augmenting the
user's face in real time video. Whether that's a meaningful
strategic advantage is another question!
jnisenbom - 13 minutes ago
As of 2015 YouTube reportedly hadn't turned a profit but was
breaking even [1, 2]. If the world's number 2 website's business
model wasn't turning profits after 9 years... we can probably
expect the same for snap. Definitely makes you wonder about the
viability of the ad revenue model.[1]
https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-f...
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-still-doesnt-make-
goo...
likpok - 1 hours ago
Facebook was profitable before it went public, and faced serious
strategic challenges immediately post IPO (specifically, mobile
was exploding and Facebook's mobile story was not good -- it
didn't even have advertising).I guess the meaningfulness of this
data point is that people are dubious that SNAP will succeed long
term. But that's somewhat tautological: if people thought SNAP
would succeed, they'd buy it.
capkutay - 1 hours ago
Facebook's mobile story 'was not good'...but it was clearly
just a missing set of features in a product that was ripe for
infiltrating mobile and they had the cash to buy to eventually
buy instagram.The question is whether Snapchat is fundamentally
flawed or a few features away from becoming a strong company.It
just seems to me that they have too much competition against
Facebook...a behemoth that's still innovating.If some company
came out with a cool twist on search after Google, I'd be
bearish on them as well.
skinnymuch - 37 minutes ago
Fb also bought IG at their IPO time and WhatsApp 2 years later.
Both combined should be worth over $100B today. Compared to the
roughly $20B spent. Obviously FB is still worth over $300B if we
hypothetically chop $100B off. Far above IPO still. Just saying
that FB had multiple things go very well for them to go from
merely profitable at IPO to being the giant it is now -- mainly
mobile exploding, but other things too.This doesn't matter too
much, but it also feels like Snapchat has more competition in a
way too while growing. Besides other social networks and FB
copying them, Snow is gaining ground in Asia right now. FB
primarily had regional competitors limited to one main country
(like VK or Orkut in Brazil). I could be wrong about this though.
dntrkv - 22 minutes ago
Google Plus was a very real competitor when they launched
(right around the time of Facebook's IPO), it was a very
similar situation to that of Snapchat vs Instagram. Huge user
growth very quickly, but most of it due to it being attached to
Gmail. Not saying Instagram won't remain a real competitor to
Snapchat, but it's possible that over time users will go back
to their previous habits.Personally, I never post anything on
Instagram Stories, but I do view them because they are there. I
have my Instagram feed curated for my Instagram audience (which
is very public and intended for things that aren't private),
and Snapchat for my Snapchat audience (which is private and
intended for only friends and family). I know many others do
the same.
azinman2 - moments ago
IG has a much more active and diverse audience than plus ever
did. In fact they are the king within their own world, where
as plus was a me too product.I just think they?re different
worlds, with diff goals. Snap is more about your honest
moment / communication thru pics where as IG is your
idealized life.
beager - 2 hours ago
What does $SNAP need to do to deliver on the hype? Is there
anything that can make $SNAP a good investment for anyone other
than the parties involved in trading the IPO?I tend to be bearish
on $SNAP in general, but I'm interested in the discussion. How do
they right the ship and boost back up to that $25-30 range? What's
their play?
nikkwong - 1 hours ago
+1 this. I've asked multiple people and ideas are mostly mixed on
what Snap's strategy should be going forward. Being a social app
will definitely be a difficult play. IMO they could try to
leverage their AR expertise to do, well, something. But social
definitely seems like it will be tough.Good luck to the team
though. It must be a stressful time there.
jayess - 1 hours ago
The fact that no one is responding with ideas tells you what
you need to know.
draw_down - 31 minutes ago
It seems to me like a lot of their "value" is in how much more
engrossing their ads can be than other display ads. They also
have a whole section of their app that shovels "content" from
magazines and such, and that content is pretty much just more
advertising. I'm sure those outlets pay to be there, or pay for
prominent placing, etc.But those should be easy enough to copy.
And I find the content thing weird, it feels bolted on to an app
you use to talk to friends. I am bearish on them, I think it was
smart to IPO when they did.
skinnymuch - 29 minutes ago
I was thinking Snap might try to buy Musically before their IPO
or around IPO time. It would cost more than IG did to FB, making
the purchase a much larger deal for Snap, but it would be a way
to allow for the user growth and connectedness to the young crowd
to continue. I'm not sure how big Musically is now, just seemed
like it might be a decent gamble for Snap to try and prob provide
the most [media] hype too.
mi100hael - 1 hours ago
It's not really clear to me, anyway. Instagram has been
unabashedly poaching their features and users, and it's working
really well. Snap needs to find new ways to continue to
differentiate themselves with new features and maybe hardware
like Spectacles, but with so much overlap in user-base between
Instagram and Snapchat, I have no idea how they'll be able to
keep Instagram from continuing to challenge their offerings.
skewart - 42 minutes ago
Given the product and strategic path they're on the only thing
they can do to create value is restart user growth. Their
business model depends on them becoming a powerful brand
advertising platform (brand advertising is when companies want to
spread general awareness of their brands and influence the
public's overall impressions of what a company stands for, even
if it is far removed from any actual moment of purchase; TV has
traditionally been the dominant brand advertising platform, but
as cable TV is beginning its decline into irrelevance the top
spot is up for grabs). They're not into collecting super
detailed info on users, so advertising can't be too targeted, and
they're not pushing a shopping angle either.And in order to
become a compelling brand advertising platform they need massive
reach (i.e. at least a billion users).How can they restart user
growth? Well, that's probably going to be pretty hard at this
point. I suspect they'll need to broaden their appeal from their
initial teens/college/just-out-of-college user base to an older
and more diverse crowd (just like Facebook and Instagram did).
That will probably require some UI redesign to make things a bit
more intuitive to navigate, and perhaps other feature changes
that make it a more attractive destination.However, I think it's
basically all but impossible for them to restart the growth
engine at this point. A lot of people have heard of Snapchat,
tried it, and decided they don't like or just don't see the point
when they already use Instagram.Making matters worse is the fact
that their initial market is incredibly hard to hold on to.
Things almost never stay super popular across multiple
"generations" of high school and college kids (except for default
utilities that everyone at every age uses). In other words, it's
unlikely that Snapchat will be popular with high school and
college kids in five years.So, I suspect that as their metrics
stagnate and decline over the next few years they will
increasingly focus on a series of moonshot new product ideas
(like Specs) and hope that something sticks. But there's little
reason to suspect that they'll be any better at building a random
new product than any other start-up or big company out there
(and, in fact, I'd argue there are some good reasons to think
they'll be worse).As is probably pretty obvious, I'm quite
bearish on Snap these days. I was extremely bullish a year and a
half ago, but they've just been so slow to execute when it
mattered. They lost their wave of growth. At this point, I'd
be surprised if they can catch another.
physcab - 1 hours ago
- Positive user growth numbers, not flat or negative- Positive
revenue growth numbers, not flat or negative- New features
launched and positively accepted in the market
skinnymuch - 21 minutes ago
So they need to do almost everything right and have luck on
their side with things like positive acceptance. A betting man
prob doesn't like all those bullet points needed.
cft - 2 hours ago
Financially it does not matter for the founders that much anymore.
Significant wealth has already been transferred and cashed
out:http://www.nasdaq.com/quotes/insiders/spiegel-evan-1016829
adventured - 30 minutes ago
There are only a handful of people on the planet that could
reasonably claim that $1.4 billion doesn't matter that much to
them (and none of them are likely to actually hold that
belief).It's an absurd premise to claim that 80%-90% of someone's
wealth does not matter much to them. Not to mention implying all
sorts of horrible things about their character in the process (to
claim what you are, is identical to claiming that Spiegel is ok
with losing that money as opposed to keeping it and doing
something good with it, that he would feel indifferent to the
contrast of said scenario).
tanderson92 - 7 minutes ago
I believe the point is more about the marginal utility of
wealth and what additional products and services $1.4 billion
can buy relative to the $250+MM net worth they have now.
habosa - 2 hours ago
$17.00 was the IPO price but only for investors with access. Your
average investor with an eTrade account saw a price of $24.00+ when
the market opened that morning, and it hit almost $27.00 that day.
So those folks have seen a 30%+ drop since IPO.Given that Snap paid
out billions in IPO bonuses to executives and other employees, it's
turned out to be a pretty big wealth transfer from retail investors
to Snap employees.
toephu2 - 32 minutes ago
Snap employees can't actually sell any stock until 6 months after
IPO.
acchow - 1 hours ago
Did you try to subscribe to the IPO? It was not hard at all. I'm
an "average" investory with a standard Charles Schwab trading
account and subscribed to it with a few clicks of my mouse. I
imagine anyone else could with their brokerage. It was
oversubscribed tho, so I got half the quantity I wanted and sold
shortly after opening.
toephu2 - 30 minutes ago
You got half you order filled at $17 with Schwab on opening
day? Or it fills before market open?
prostoalex - 1 hours ago
Yep, same here. Fidelity account with pretty low balance but
profiled for "aggressive growth", opted into their IPOs, and I
got an invitation to participate. Blue Apron, too, among
others.
davidw - 1 hours ago
> It was oversubscribed tho, so I got half the quantity I
wanted and sold shortly after opening.This seems like a pretty
good reason to auction the shares in order to maximize the
amount of money the company takes in. That they very rarely do
has always seemed kind of dirty to me.
acchow - 1 hours ago
Google tried to be cheeky and go the auction way. It was
wrought with problems.As far as I can tell, all tech IPOs
following that went back the traditional way.
thanatropism - 34 minutes ago
> problemsHow can I learn more about this?
pfarrell - 16 minutes ago
Search "google dutch auction ipo"
tristanj - 13 minutes ago
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/08/19/es-took-off-but-the-
auction-d...
jacquesm - 1 hours ago
That would stop the issuers from making a bundle on just
about every IPO and we can't have that now, can we?
acchow - 1 hours ago
So this is pretty lazy anti-intellectualism.Can you provide
some evidence that the investment banks are colluding on
IPO pricing?
hobs - 1 hours ago
How is that anti-intellectualism? Not saying they are
right, but criticizing wallstreet/giant tech companies
for price fixing is not that.
acchow - 6 minutes ago
They are claiming the banks are fixing prices without
offering any proof.Well, the "proof" being "we all know
banks are greedy and evil, so they must be doing this"
davidw - moments ago
They are quite literally setting the prices of IPO's
though, by fiat, and not via an auction or some other
market-oriented mechanism.I have no opinion about actual
'collusion' but the mechanism looks pretty bad seen from
afar.
skywhopper - 53 minutes ago
The facts that they are the primary beneficaries of
underpriced IPOs (ie, the biggest reward for the smallest
risk) and that they are the all-powerful gatekeepers of
the process and that most of these IPOs shoot up in price
on day one (meaning that their customers are leaving huge
amounts of money on the table) is a pretty good
indication. If you don't count fully aligned incentives
as evidence, it's at least very clearly a process ripe
for collusion and corruption, and should be handled with
extreme care and skepticism.
chimeracoder - 35 minutes ago
> The facts that they are the primary beneficaries of
underpriced IPOs (ie, the biggest reward for the smallest
risk) and that they are the all-powerful gatekeepers of
the process and that most of these IPOs shoot up in price
on day one (meaning that their customers are leaving huge
amounts of money on the table) is a pretty good
indicationOn the other hand, the entity that they are
taking money from is literally the company that's IPOing
(when the price shoots up, it's called leaving money on
the table, because it's money that the company isn't
raising in their IPO, and is instead going to the
banks).There's a reasonable degree of competition between
banks to underwrite an IPO, and companies have the
ability to choose which bank to work with, so any
conspiracy here would require actual widespread collusion
between underwriters (which would be illegal the same way
horizontal integration generally is in any industry).
While not impossible, that's the sort of claim which
warrants tangible evidence, rather than indirect evidence
just from the existence of shareholder prices increasing
on the opening bell.
nikanj - 28 minutes ago
"Well-established protocols" can result in IPO prices
being systematically set too low. Yes, theoretically a
bank should be able to break the ranks, but all they
would get for their trouble is smaller profits, and a
potential lawsuit from investors. After all, they did
diverse from the "established accounting standards" when
pushing the IPO price up.
chimeracoder - 8 minutes ago
> "Well-established protocols" can result in IPO prices
being systematically set too low. Yes, theoretically a
bank should be able to break the ranks, but all they
would get for their trouble is smaller profits, and a
potential lawsuit from investors. After all, they did
diverse from the "established accounting standards" when
pushing the IPO price up.Assuming a roughly competitive
market with n players that do not engage in direct
collusion, if IPO prices are being set too low from the
perspective of the companies IPOing, there's room for an
additional player (n+1) to set their prices slightly
higher. Assuming their ability to predict the risk on the
opening bell prices is the same as the other n players'
ability to predict risk, that bank will produce IPOs that
are consistently favorable for the companies IPOing, and
companies will choose that bank as their underwriter.
Ceteris paribus, their profits would grow, not
shrink.There are factors that impede this from happening
perfectly in practice - such as barriers to entry for the
underwriters - which is (part of) what explains why this
disparity won't trend to exactly zero. But it's wrong to
say that banks would get punished by either companies or
their investors for responding to this disparity by
raising prices - the exact opposite would happen. And in
itself, that still doesn't point to widespread collusion
between banks, or even any sort of implicit conspiracy.
davidw - 52 minutes ago
I think it's simply stating the obvious: rather than
using a market-based mechanism for price discovery, they
pick a price to sell at. For a bunch of people who are
such big fans of markets, this looks really dubious.
"Markets for thee, but not for me".
kartD - 1 hours ago
Thanks for the info, I think my next bank account is going to
be with Charles Schwab ( I was waffling between Ally and
Charles Schwab, but this is a useful feature for me and a good
step up from Robinhood).
acchow - 1 hours ago
I was referring to the trading account, which is independent
from the bank.Tho Charles Schwab bank accounts are useful
because they refund your ATM fees.
tanderson92 - 1 hours ago
Free checking account helps too; they sent me two boxes of
checks and a checkpad with a $0 initial balance, for no
fees.And they offer you commission-free trades too if you
offer to transfer in enough funds.Great, great, place to
keep your finances.
toomuchtodo - 29 minutes ago
How's their mobile app on iOS?
jnisenbom - 25 minutes ago
Pretty similar to android (IMO)
legolassexyman - 2 minutes ago
Are you a Marx Brother? Sheesh.
kartD - 1 hours ago
I'm aware, but I'd like to keep the as few accounts as
possible. Should simplify transfers and customer service.
[deleted]
[deleted]
eeeeeeeeeeeee - 58 minutes ago
I switched from Wells Fargo to Schwab last year. I've been
very happy and the customer service is great. The web
interface is a bit cluttered, but i've seen worse at banks
:)Refunds on all ATM fees make it worth it for that alone.
8ytecoder - 52 minutes ago
I wasn't aware of it but Robinhood did offer SNAP IPO:
https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115000902306...
kartD - 34 minutes ago
Yes, but it's filled at regular price (I bought SNAP at
$24), it's just that you put in the trade previous day (in
the case of SNAP). It's more of a convenience feature, you
won't get the stock at the pre-IPO value ($17 in SNAP's
case).
ZeroCool2u - 1 hours ago
I've had Charles Schwab since I was 18 and I can't recommend
them enough. I've never experienced any company with better
customer service.
WheelsAtLarge - 1 hours ago
Not everyone was able to buy at the IPO price. My friend was
invited but could not buy any shares. BTW, being invited does
not mean you'll be able to buy. It just means you'll be able to
request shares.
champagnepapi - 1 hours ago
Bothers me that institutional investors and other insiders get
preferred pricing while retail investors get less favorable
pricing.
JumpCrisscross - 1 hours ago
To be fair, institutions are often negotiating with
underwriters on the pricing. That kind of price discovery
doesn't happen with retail investors.
prostoalex - 1 hours ago
> retail investors get less favorable pricinguntil today, that
is
lallysingh - 1 hours ago
They also commit to purchase large amounts before the final
demand is known. Their price is a combination of a bulk
discount and risk discount.
acchow - 1 hours ago
So this isn't true. Any average Joe could open a standard
trading account and subscribe to the IPO.
beamatronic - 1 hours ago
Fidelity has a minimum of $100k or $500k to participate in
IPOs depending on the specific IPO
acchow - 1 hours ago
Then I'd suggest going with etrade or schwab.
prklmn - 1 hours ago
The access to shares still isn't even comparable
will_pseudonym - 1 hours ago
And they can also re-invest in the stock now, at these great sale
prices.?And if they insist on trying to time their participation
in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy
and greedy only when others are fearful? - Warren Buffett
mikestew - 1 hours ago
Since we're pulling out pithy quotes, I have one: "the trend is
your friend", and your friend is telling you to stay the hell
away from this stock.
will_pseudonym - 42 minutes ago
I'll stick with the Oracle of Omaha. :)
semperdark - 12 minutes ago
Do keep in mind that he rather famously avoids investing in
tech companies.
csomar - 33 minutes ago
They sold at 17$ (ipo prices) not higher. So right now, both
sides are equal.
zitterbewegung - 1 hours ago
Following snapchats fluctuations about its stock price is somewhat
interesting . To be honest though I'm getting fatigued on this. I
remember when Facebook IPOed and we were getting similar posts. The
fact that Snap was able to IPO and get money to become more
competitive will have to wait for a few quarters though.
naturalgradient - 1 hours ago
I think the situation is not comparable at all precisely because
Facebook did not have a larger network strangulating their
growth.I wonder if there is any precedent for a social network
(or any large application for that matter) having their growth
stalled to single-digits and then it picking up again.To me, it
looks like there is a very real possibility that facebook already
killed them in the sense that they will never go beyond 250
million or so users, which does not support their valuation. So
share-wise, they might end up a second Twitter, just with a much
faster turnaround this time because user growth has already come
to a grinding halt.
korzun - 1 hours ago
I think it is safe to say that the IPO was a total scam. The
company was never profitable, and numbers never made any sense.I
have a bridge in Brooklyn up for grabs (cheap) if you still think
the valuation was based on ridiculous data points such as active
users, etc.People already lined their pockets up and you will be
reading another P.R piece on how great of a businessman Evan is
within the next couple of months.Spend all of the funding on
aggressive marketing to get the numbers up pre-IPO, file for an IPO
and cash out. Rinse & repeat.
gruez - 20 minutes ago
Is it really a scam if there was no deception and every buyer
knew what they were getting into?
jayess - 1 hours ago
> I think it is safe to say that the IPO was a total
scam.Precisely.
bsaul - 38 minutes ago
i wonder if the community realizes how bad those kind of overhyped
companies makes us look to the general audience, with founders
cashing out shortly after the stock gets public and everybody
realizes valuation were simply absurd.i don't think we'll have to
wait for a long time before we see traditional investment funds and
banks not willing to take part in that game anymore.