[Revised] Hard Fork’s somewhat soft comments on the IPO, from some who listened

a riff on https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/09/poker-patsy/

Say it ain’t so. Did Hard Fork (I’ll be honest, I don’t listen) really encourage retail investors to buy into these IPOs?

@GaryMarcus i need to get out of my echo chamber on this one. the idea spacex isn't going to be ratfucked by musk the way he already has and continues to ratfuck it (by buying twitter and xai, two money furnaces) once it's public is unfathomable

worst possible gamble of the century

I just listened to it.

In fairness, they never said anything along the lines of encouraging anyone to buy the IPOs. They also discuss how SpaceX is kind of a mess in terms of all the different companies under its roof.

However, they absolutely are not critical or questioning enough of these companies’ IPOs/valuations, to such a salient degree that they still come off as shills.

@GaryMarcus at the stage of the Gilded Age II grift cycle when you find out why exchanges put rules in place to protect unsophisticated investors from losing the little money they have on shit stock. yet I hear tech journos like "Hard Fork" idiots cheering these IPOs on as a good thing. 😒🤦‍♂️

@GaryMarcus Matt Damon, Rounders:

@GaryMarcus This will go down as a single largest fucking of retail investors in the history of the world

@GaryMarcus They said frontier lab IPOs would be a first step in democratizing Silicon Valley wealth, so probably a good thing as the only chance for peons to buy in. Apparently, nobody has explained to them what the phrase "exit liquidity" means.

@tjmats1 it’s older than that, but yes i was alluding to it (or the Warren Buffett version etc):

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/09/poker-patsy/

@bluffsharkBill @GaryMarcus If they stay in too long after IPO opening, yes, the hype will cool down eventually and the dust will settle. Day one opening will be awesome. Maybe day two. Whoever is still sitting in after that will be in danger.

@GaryMarcus Only the underwriters and early insiders truly win in an IPO

The rest are just providing liquidity at a markup determined by the banks

@tjmats1 indeed i was tipping my hat to that whole series of old quotes

@GaryMarcus spacex ipo: retail has no edge.

banks lock allocation and pick their exit price before open. institutions follow. by the time retail can buy, the sellers are already decided.

you're funding someone else's exit.

@GaryMarcus You guys really need to get over yourselves lol. Is the IPO overvalued…ya sure probably by 500-600B. Its an option to not purchase the stock instead of crying about it nonstop.

When you look at Comcast’s Free cash flow of 15B and apply that to the world you can maybe see.

@GaryMarcus We prefer to call them "Rocket Fuel"

@GaryMarcus Is there a shadow (and growing) allocation to US gov (taxpayers)? Or are the banks just repping/taking that?

@GaryMarcus The underwriters always win on the spread, that's table stakes. The market is pricing something else: 76% of Q1 capex went to AI infrastructure, with Anthropic and Google as paying tenants. Whether that justifies a $1.77 trillion valuation is the actual question.

Hard disagree. The market's been frothy, but the smart money isn't just in the banks. It's in the *picks and shovels* of the new space race. Think advanced materials, propulsion tech, and satellite componentry. That's where the next wave of outsized returns will be found, long a…

@GaryMarcus Feels like a clear in group out group dynamic

Always interesting how these moments reveal the real hierarchy in finance and who benefits from perception alone