Facebook and Thiel Should Be Sold
The stock of Facebook should not be bought and Thiel’s reputation is a dunk shot short sale.
Cramer goes in on Thiel again, nailing it here big time.
71 Responses to Facebook and Thiel Should Be Sold
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I believe facebook is a decent buy at $10. Still speculative at that level, because honestly it may be at its apex now rather than on a trajectory for continued growth.
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Let me add i think their best monetization strategy would be to add a basic web search engine into their interface. There are enough stupid people amongst their billion users that they would immediately capture some decent percentage of search share.
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Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. For a company that’s on the ropes, expanding horizontally into ancillary products probably isn’t a good idea. It dilutes any attempt to regain footing in whatever vertical they already have a competitive advantage in.
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and they can add a tab for one’s favorite links so they have them at their fingertips … then they can rename themselves “AOL.”
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My point exactly 
Just watched the video…it is f’ing unbelievable. POOF 50 billion dollars gone….someone lost that money, but who? Why isn’t there absolute crazy outrage?
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But Thiel is just doing his job as board member and cheerleader of the company, right?
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the head of the national venture capitalist ass’n was on bloomberg 6 weeks ago and flat out called the IPO market the “exit market” – anyone else see that?
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He was just doing “his job”
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Brawndo w. Electrolytes — you are correct, the IPO market is the exit market for the big VC’s.
You guys do understand that they HAVE to return capital to their investors within 7-10 years at the LATEST, right?
How long do you think it takes to develop these companies?
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Brawndo the thirst mutilator! I use it on my plants.
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It’s funny — people hate Facebook so much that they’re willing to applaud anything that hurts its shareholders.
The people supporting Thiel here are either 1) just getting their schadenfreude on, or 2) hopelessly defending the crony capitalism taking place here because they perceive the negative reaction to it as an indictment of capitalism as a whole.
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Explain why it is “Crony capitalism” immediately.
Do you even know what the term means? It describes when a government official cuts his friends in on a deal that is only available through the auspices of government.
Like Solyndra. Facebook, whether you like it or not, was a private deal and a private market IPO. People chose to invest in it at stratospheric prices because they thought it would go even higher.
To excuse that kind of behavior by blaming a guy who got in earlier is just pass the buck irresponsibility.
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Mozillo, Fuld, Theil, Romeny, JakeGint etc etc … who cares, let’s go after Lance Armstrong, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds et all .. now those are real criminals worthy of prosecution, financial penalties & public disdain
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It would seem that the legal system does indeed have its priorities fucked up; but lumping JakeGint in is ridiculous.
JakeGint is an honest apologist for capitalism. Nothing wrong with that. I too long for the days when “banker” was a lionized profession. I just think that, if you’re trying to win hearts and minds for the cause of capitalism, coming to the defense of guys like Thiel is the wrong way to do it.
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I am not coming to Thiel’s defense.
I am trying to get the Fly, and others who are allegedly professionals to own up to their own responsibilities in these deals.
Guess what? If no one bids the stock up, it doesn’t get bought by a bunch of suckers who don’t know any better.
The good news? The suckers will think twice next time.
What do you know? Stocks don’t just go up!
I agree that Thiel should NOT be on the board now, as he has no FIDUCIARY interest (although I just read he still has 5.6 mm shares of his own).
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Tell me when the “next time” will bring the largest IPO in history and then lose a staggering $50 billion in market cap inside of 3 months? Is this an ordinary occurrence? Also, why do you insist on calling people suckers who bought Facebook? Hindsight is 20/20 and it’s obnoxious for you to claim some sagely wisdom with regards to investment acumen.
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I am using “suckers” ironically, because THAT is how you are treating people who:
1) Saw the original price of the deal as publicized WEEKS before the actual IPO pricing
2) Continued to bid the price up DESPITE the original stretch valuation
3) Thought they were going to get out at even higher prices somewhere in the near future.
No, I don’t think these people are suckers, even though you, sir, are patronizing them as such. I think they are greedy bastards who thought they were going to get something for nothing, and are now bitching about how they got screwed.
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They bid it up?
Excuse me but Morgan increased number of shares by 25% right before pricing.
Don’t give me this free market shit scenario. This was Facebook. Money was going to get allocated one way or another. Public demand was huge and institutions sold on the opening tick.
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It’s not like Joe Scmo from Fidelity was investing his own money. This was a big deal for Wall Street and the hype was massive.
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Right, so Joe Schmo from Fidelity doesn’t care about making a return? He’s just out to bilk the small investor?
Sounds good.
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As for Passive Aggressive Bruce, above, when he says one thing about his butt buddy Jon Corzine — corrupt Dem machine man — going to the Big House, then I’ll take it’ll be the FIRST time I take one thing he writes here seriously.
Brucie if you want Friend of the Dems Mozillo in the Big House, you gotta be ready to put bail up for your boy Corzine too.
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Otherwise, he continues to reside in our “Flake” department, as usual.
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Jake-Gint, Straw-man. You can do better. Lame.
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People will do a lot of things for a Billion Dollars, or even less.
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For the industry folks like JakeGint:
I am not going to change your mind on Thiel. You are hard wired to believe in certain ideals, those that I do not agree with.
At a minimum, I think we can agree that Thiel should no longer be on the Facebook board.
You cannot have this fucker on the board after throwing gasoline onto the fire.
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I agree, since he’s sold all his fund’s shares.
But would it shock you to find out he still owns 5.6 mm shares in his own account?
Is he still a bad man, Fly, since he got his investors out of a halved in value investment, even though he kept his own piece of it?
Just wondering, because I’m pretty sure your clients don’t hold it against you when you sell a winner that’s halved in value, especially if you still maintain a gain.
THAT FRIGGIN VULTURE! YOU TELL HIM, JIM CRAMER, MORAL PARAGON!
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When he is off the board I will be happy. Zuck should man up and oust him. It’s disgraceful how Facebook has handled going public and it’s almost EQUALLY disgraceful how you blow it off like some sort of ordinary day at the investment bank.
How do you sleep at night with such lack of moral compass?
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You are smoking crack, and my moral compass is as true as it’s ever been.
Where is the morality in allowing “something for nothing?”
Are you saying that Thiel wasn’t taking a risk investing his half million bucks when Facebook was just a crazy idea?
Are you saying that the people who invested in Facebook at 100x earnings are some kind of moral innocents? They perhaps deserve a “return” on their money for taking a speculative gamble at a stratospheric price?
What keeps me awake at night is statist arbiters who decide for themselves, and all of us, that the markets aren’t working in an instance like this, when a bunch of overambitious greedy suckers got a lesson in tulip buying.
You’ve said it yourself… if this shit was easy, everyone would be rich.
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He didn’t need to sell everything now. We both agree he should be off the board and that was my main point.
Then you got into some shit throwing match because you are always campaigning, on the look out for communists everywhere.
I don’t like they way he did this. I know for a fact the investors, like Thiel, has plenty to do with the valuation of Facebook.
Facebook wasn’t strong armed by Morgan to price an ipo at an absurd price. More than that, the business is souring and I happen to believe Theil knew it.
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You have no evidence of that, and that’s a pretty heady accusation. You are choosing what you want to believe, rather than seeing the deal for what it was — a very high demand offering where people thought they could get benefit of the updraft after the IPO. That’s a stupid risk to take at those valuations.
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Someone worked real hard at brainwashing the “suckers” to buy those tulips …
We kept hearing comparisons to Linked-In and how that soared from it’s opening to 100. The media got in line with all the interviews and helped to pump expectations for it’s IPO day as much or more than any other stock I remember, including MSFT.
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I don’t think Thiel can be on any board after this. But he can take his money and run. That’s the cost. Who will cut him in and trust him after this?
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I don’t know if $FB is heading to zero, but I bet it’s heading to $MSFT (i.e. a decade of mediocrity supported only by its ubiquity in past tech cycles).
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I wonder how $FB would have faired if they went with a subscription-based model, as opposed to a ad-based revenue model…
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Thiel will get the very last laugh when you find out he closed a huge short position from $28 or so.
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Thanks Fly for posting these videos as I haven’t seen them. Many criticize Cramer & yes there is a lot behind the scenes but no one has created a market awareness like he has and I challenge anyone to be in the spotlight like him and not receive the criticism.
Onto FB. Really I believe FB to be a hobby that has become too big and I personally don’t see it as a business. I think Cramer hit it when he said “who is Zuckerberg”. In my opinion he is the modern day Pinocchio. I think he does what he is told to do and has no leadership capabilities. Maybe a great tech guy and what-not but when it comes to leadership and ethics…he sucks.
I state this as a trader that traded FB once w/put sales that resulted in full gain so I have no pissed off equity ties, just stating from observation.
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Laying this at Zucks doorstep is misplaced aggression He had an idea, vision whatever. The cocksucking vampire squids are to hate.
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Yeah. He’s only the CEO.
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Agree and disagree. I believe he got over his head and has no clue from a business & VC standpoint so has learning to do of the dirty side.
As the CEO he needs to take control and overall be in the spotlight more raising confidence and what the hell his company is about. IMO he is still just a puppet.
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Oh and we’re going the fuck lower ( no Fly) get your tvix on.
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I find all this funny coming from Cramer. I mean seriously? The amount of money he has lost for the individual investor … Whether is be bear or pumping fb before the IPO, he pumps and dumps to the retail investor all day long at CNBC. He wants accountability? Why don’t we start with his head first?
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EGGS-FUGGIN-ACTLY.
Cramer calling holier than thou, what a brass balled weasel.
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WTF? I tried to respond above but was blocked.
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I’ll release. You must have triggered a banned keyword.
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http://ibankcoin.com/flyblog/2012/08/21/space-alien-magician-sam-trading/#comment-314198
Just saying ….
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Yes, Tea, if you got my comment earlier, there certainly was retail activity that buoyed the demand and the stratospheric pricing.
But this deal does not get priced anywhere over the initial range ($24-28) without the tacit approval of the big institutions that buy the bulk of the initial issue.
If they said “no bid” at anything north of $26 (midpoint of the range), it’s likely we’d be sitting there right now, because there’d have been plenty of after market support from Joe Retail.
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I can agree with that but they were using the retail customer to judge how much he was willing to ante up based on my experience on Etrade.
If they IBanks were distributing to the retail guy they must have been getting feedback from the EBrokers to help set the price … No?
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I agree with jakegint on principal, the free maker should be protected even though at times it can be hard to swallow. I am a retail investor, average joe, small times investor all that that they say got had on this deal. I have only been investing less than a year. And almost bought Facebook I never liked the valuation but figured there was so Mich hype that it had to shoot up initially. Then I read an article showining how this company that makes nothing was valuing itself as worth more than Google or apple, on a price to earnings ratio (I don’t remember the details but somthing along those lines). I was like wow these companies make things and lots of money, apple has enough cash on hand to buy Facebook that is an insain price so after that me and all my friends sat this one out. I’m just saying if you took a second to think about it even retail investors should have used cation and thought twice. Still sucks for them but when you are throwing your life savings into one basket you should at least think twice and if you don’t you bear some of the blame too
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Lmfao!!!
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Anyone got some popcorn?
It’s a rare to see two of the TItans of IBC go at each other like this.
It’s a good thing this happened after the IBC dinner because both of them would have been throwing knives and $20 glasses of Cabernet’s at one another by now(wearing white gloves and a top hat of course).
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some bought fb to dump quickly. guess it all worked out, but they fucked themselves. the numbers were clear. (earnings). as for thiel, lol he may have doomed fb.
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Like!
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Theil got out NOT for a billion, but because The Facebook is totally gay!!!
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