A lot of Redditors hate the Reddit IPO
www.theverge.com
“Yea I’m not buying. But I will be watching it tank.”

A lot of Redditors hate the Reddit IPO | Reddit warned us that its users were a risk factor, and boy do they sound excited about shorting its stock.::Reddit seems like a likely candidate for a meme stock. But the actual reaction suggests that r/WallStreetBets isn’t going to send the stock to the moon.

  • JakenVeina@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    I hate Huffman as much as the next guy, but the $193 million factoid is misleading clickbait nonsense. His actual salary is apparently $400k, the rest is “stock value” or whatever. Reddit is not giving 25% of its yearly revenue to the CEO.

    • eskimofry@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      This argument is oft repeated but It’s Bullshit. If it wasn’t valuable why is Spez okay with it?

      Stock grants not being direct Income isn’t clickbait nonsense. It’s actually DELIBERATE: Spez doesn’t pay income taxes on a majority of his income. Capital gains tax has a lot of loopholes that can be exploited.

      This just gives spez more money and he can cash out in the IPO.

      • immutable@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        For anyone that’s fallen for the “{wealthy person} doesn’t actually have ${huge number} because it’s stock” thing, here’s how it works.

        1. Wealthy people with lots of stock get access to very, very cheap credit. Not credit cards like the plebs get with a 23% APR, multi million dollar lines of credit from places like Goldman Sachs with hyper low interest rates.
        2. Wealthy people use that credit to live indistinguishably from a person that actually has the vast wealth that they have access to. Spez might “only” make $400k but if he has access to $50M in cheap credit it spends all the same.
        3. Wealthy people enjoying their access to cheap credit which spends the same as income then get to dodge income taxes and instead use the more favorable capital gains tax rates.
        4. As a fun bonus, they also get to go “you morons I don’t have $200M that’s all just on paper, I only pay myself $10 a year because I’m a man of the people. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to get on this private jet”

        You might be wondering, why do they get this cheap credit? Because it’s a very safe bet for the financial institute, they are acting as a sort of time arbitrage mechanism for the person they are extending credit to. Since they perform this function they can be relatively assured that this will allow their client to sell their stocks, not because they have to cover expenses, but because capital gains protections and the market is favorable. It also aids in fostering a positive relationship with someone with a lot of wealth which is something financial institutes have an interest in doing.

        All the actors are doing what’s in their rational self-interest. The end result is that Spez can access a large part of that $200M as liquid cash right now through credit with one hand and with the other wave you off and say “those are stocks I actually only got paid $400k”