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Charon
Hey, I was browsing through threats 2 due to my inquiries in the black lodge thread.

I ended up reading through the Art Dankwalther file. I love that threat because I'm studying management and have just started my concentration in finance. You can see where I could find that threat a hoot.

Except when you read, the narrator tells how a think thank of financial maverick managed to augment Art's fortune.

"Though losses were accrued, I would estimate that in less than six-month's time we were able to increase our total investments into trillions." p.114 Threats 2

The initial investment is 20 billions.

Let's be generous and assume it was exactly six month and one trillion instead of trillions.

If you consider compound interest capitalized monthly : that's a 92% increase a month, for an effective annual growth of 249 900%. This assumes that every month, these maverick are able to find a few hundreds fresh investment occasion that will yield on average 92% in order to maintain the growth.

If we want it to be less than six month and trillions, like 5 months and 2 trillions for example, as hinted in the text, that would be 151% growth a month and 6 309 573% effective annual growth.

This is Shadowrun, and nothing is impossible. But this is impossible. by such a large margin that it boggles the mind. On occasion, small investment can yield a fortune (such as a mine suddenly reporting large new deposits of gold), but you can never find a trillion worth of such investment.

Oh well, players don't have to see the numbers.

PS : If some of you are familiar with financial term and think I've screwed them up, it's because I'm studying in french and haven't got all the translation down pat yet.
Lindt
This is the age of the nano second buy out, some times people get really cleaver.
Sandoval Smith
And some people have a great dragon helping them out to do stuff like that.

That's just one of the problems with Art. I was amused at the resolution to that part of Dunklezahn's will, but then we ended up on the whole, "Art destroys Novatech' bit, and that just got really lame.
HMHVV Hunter
I personally loved the Dankwalther story. I always wondered who this guy was that got such a specific amount from Dunk, and this was a fairly scary story about what one man with unlimited resources can do.

I realized that the numbers were a bit fudged (using simple multiplication), but to me, the numbers matter less than a good story. And this was a good one.
mfb
i've never understood why people think that. i mean, the whole balance of power in SR is based around the idea of corporate war--if a corp war ever breaks out, this is what they'll be doing. the shooting, the bombing, all that is just icing on the cake; the real war will take place in the boardrooms. the threat of corporate war isn't the physical mayhem it will engender, it's the destabilization of the world economy that such a war will bring about--Black Monday (or Friday or Thursday or whatever) in every nation in the world. the rate at which art built his fortune into a megafortune is improbably fast, sure. personally, i see this as a combination of two things.

first, he's playing so many odds that he can't lose. he's got enough money that he can afford to drop 5-10k on every long-odds stock he can find. when some of those pay off big, as they certainly will, he recoups his losses ten times over. this is a dangerous tactic if used in the long term, but art isn't thinking long term.

second, he's using every dirty trick in the book. if the odds are long, he makes them short. if everybody's buying up a certain stock, he kills whoever he has to in order to make that stock look bad so he can buy it--and then resell it as soon as the bad press goes away. other corprorations do this too, but they restrain themselves because, again, they have to look at the long term--don't crap in your own backyard. art, on the other hand, craps in everybody's backyard because he's not looking for a better backyard. he's looking to burn down the neighborhood.
BitBasher
Destroying the plausibility of an event is never worth the story. This is SR, not Toon or Tales from the Floating Vagabond.

The whole Art thing was IMHO one of the worst storylines ever, and least plausible. It smacks of "look how cool a character I made" twinkiedom. No offense to whoever wrote it... frown.gif
Charon
QUOTE (Lindt @ Feb 26 2005, 01:52 PM)
This is the age of the nano second buy out, some times people get really cleaver.

Oh, that's lame. It's like saying "God moves in mysterious ways".

you can get clever on one or two investment every once in a while and it increases your average. But you can't beat the market consistently by more than a few point if you are investing a lot of money. Empiric studies have shown this.

You don't invest into thin air (unless you live on Mars, then investing in air is smart). You essentially invest in companies by buying their debt or their equity. And companies won't start yielding 92% a month just because you purchased their stock on a cyberdeck instead of on the floor of an old fashioned market. It might be e-money but it's tied to real assets.

Real big bucks on the market usually involves insider information, which can account for one big deal but can't be done discreetly (as Art is supposed to have done) and repeatedly.

Also remember, everyone has access to the Matrix. How the hell wouldn't Shiawese be doing the same kind of money by playing the market thanks to MIFD? What about the banks and insurance companies? I'll tell you why not : it can't be done. If it could, Art Dankwalther and a few mavericks wouldn't be the first to pull it off.
mfb
see my reasoning above. making money the way art is doing it would wreck the world economy if everybody else did it.
Charon
QUOTE (mfb @ Feb 26 2005, 02:26 PM)
see my reasoning above. making money the way art is doing it would wreck the world economy if everybody else did it.

My, post are coming fast.

Look, I get that Art is ruthless. And I undertstand diversification. He can't bet the house on one hand or else he's broke whenever he loses once. Beside, a non-diversified portfolio makes you support additional risk for which you are not rewarded. It's basics.

But even being ruthless and brillant can't account for more than a few points over the market if you have a diversified portfolio. If the market is pulling 15% a year, Art with his 20 billion could be doing 25%. Hell, he could be doing 30 or 35% if you want to make him a mad genius.

He can't be doing over 6 000 000%. He just can't. If there were such opportunities on the market, other ruthless and brillant players would have snagged it up. That story makes no sense. No one turns 20 billion into a few trillions in less than 6 month, discreetly or not. It's the financial equivalent of turning a geek into the uncontested Heavy Weight boxing champ into 5 month. hum, not quite. The geek has a better shot at becoming boxing champ, IMO.

The idea that Art could be so far behind the scene while owning trillions is also ludicrous. Rhonabwy leaves more trace than that and he didn't have to explode the market to get his fortune.

---

You know, with 20 billions in liquidity you can already be a major pain in the ass. I don't get why the author felt the need to do that trillions bit of non sense. It just means Art has to be a lot more careful and discreet and think long term instead of atomic war to nuke his target.

---

You know that old joke about a finance teacher and his student : A student notice a 20$ bill on the floor and bend to pick it up. The teacher stop him ; don't bother. If there really was a 20$ bill on the floor, someone would have already picked it up.

The moral ; Art's can't have found that kind of investment opportunity. If they existed, there are dozens of other sharks in the pond who would have pounced on it and fought over it until the amazing opportunity becomes merely another good investment.
Cynic project
Here is the biggest problem. You can have one really good trick and you maybe able to do it a few times. But the catch is when you do it over and over. No one is living in a vacuum, and trillions of nuyen would raise flags around the world.

When Knight did his NSB, the whole world was laid out on their asses. I do not think that he could pull the same trick twice. I mean, if he could why hasn't he done the same thing to say Cross,or any of the other AAA,or some of the AA's even? Because people learn, and things changed, so what was a good trick, is not old hat.

Art is basically doing crazy shit and doing things that are threats to all the megas. But hey, only Nova tech is getting hit now..So the others wait.

Oh by the way Art is so smart that he can out smart all of novatech. He has so much resources that he can out spend one the largest megas on earth. It happens to be the smallest AAA, but that is like saying Masure is the weakest great dragon.
mfb
i'll bow to your superior money-fu on the details. the rest... i don't see what's so implausible. i mean, richard villiers destroyed fuchi pretty much all by himself--the events leading up to that set the stage and helped shape his course, but the actual destruction of the corp itself was completely villiers' doing. he bought a third of the corporation with his own money and then ripped that third out when the time was right; none of miles lanier's corp-hopping did anything to help him with that move.

art can't outsmart or outspend novatech. if novatech dedicated all its resources to destroying art, he'd be dead inside a week--but novatech would probably collapse. art's advantage is that he's focusing all his financial energy on a single goal.
hahnsoo
Well, there is a difference between having Billions in cash and Trillions in assets. I'm sure they are buying out companies, taking them apart for spare parts, and liquidating them, or keeping certain corporations to use as "ammunition" in Art's little grudge. Also, speculative investment can be a lot different, I'd imagine, if you were no longer speculating... if you had enough money to manipulate the events and people that control object of investment, it would be like rigging a sports event or the whole frozen orange juice thing in "Trading Places". I'm not saying that 20 Billion -> 1 Trillion is feasible in 6 months. Maybe Art has made a deal with a devil (other than Dunkelzahn, that is) and is now working with another Mega. There are elements of Renraku and Shiawase that would like to see Novatech dead (i.e. the former Fuchi elements).

I like the Art Dankwalther threat, because it's a totally mundane Threat. My main beef with most of the Threats is that they involve some sort of bizarre magical conspiracy. It's useful if you want to throw a bit of Illuminati into the mix, but there's only so much you can throw into your campaign before it loses cohesion or everyone starts playing a mage.
Snow_Fox
Charon, just wait to you get a securities licence or two, the corp finance stuff really gets into the fiction part of sci-fi, but i do enjoy that particular threat. A man with billions to burn and a serious grudge, if a little psycho.
Nath
(nothing)
DarusGrey
Its possible, just not probable.

Maybe art has a really large karma pool and is an adept with financial centering and can toss 40 dice at investment odds from spending 20 power points in "increased business sense!"

I don't find the story that unbelieveable when you consider some people just get lucky.

Art is obviously a lucky person(the original will allotment), and skilled, luck and skill can go along way...*shrug*.
mfb
it comes down to what you know, i guess. there are some people who are completely okay with the Matrix rules. there are others who think it's a great idea to allow any firearms to come in cased and caseless versions. *shrug*
Cynic project
QUOTE (mfb)
i'll bow to your superior money-fu on the details. the rest... i don't see what's so implausible. i mean, richard villiers destroyed fuchi pretty much all by himself--the events leading up to that set the stage and helped shape his course, but the actual destruction of the corp itself was completely villiers' doing. he bought a third of the corporation with his own money and then ripped that third out when the time was right; none of miles lanier's corp-hopping did anything to help him with that move.

art can't outsmart or outspend novatech. if novatech dedicated all its resources to destroying art, he'd be dead inside a week--but novatech would probably collapse. art's advantage is that he's focusing all his financial energy on a single goal.

He had years of planing and years of investment from his life as a corporate raider. He was damned rich before buying the third of Fuchi and he brought a lot to the table. He then spent years buying out parts of fuchi and other corps for his own. By the time he went to build nova tech he had trillions in assets. He also had many years of living threw one the biggest corporate power struggles in shadowrun. The only other two corps to have even close to this scale of a power struggle being Ares,and SK.
Charon
QUOTE (Nath @ Feb 26 2005, 02:49 PM)
QUOTE (Charon @ Feb 26 2005, 08:36 PM)
He can't be doing over 6 000 000%.

And he didn't. Charon, you're still making one mistake, a quite natural one for a Frenchman: in the US, 1 billion = 1,000 million, 1 trillion = 1,000 billion ; in several other countries, including France, 1 milliard = 1'000 million, 1 billion = 1'000 milliard, 1 billiard = 1'000 billion, 1 trillion = 1'000 billiard, and so on.

To be clearer, Art Dankwalther turned u$ 20,000,000,000 into u$ 1,000,000,000,000, or a 5,000 % gain, fifty times the initial investment (assuming a single trillion of dollar). This is still a lot.

I know. You can do the math Nath.

I used excel and used -20 as present value and 1000 or 2000 as future value for my calculation.

If you take -20 (billlion) as present, use 5 (month) as the period and 2000 as the Future value, you do get 151% per month which is 6 309 473% a year.

Or 91% a month for 1000 billion in 6 month. What you calculated was the gain, not the growth. And it is over 6 month, not a yearly rate. Use Excel and the finance functions, you'll see.

It's would say it is almost impossible to find one investment opportunity that yields 151% a month for 5 month straight. Considering that Art needed hundreds of such investment... What's the result of (Almost no chance in hell)^200?

---

Guys, I'm not saying Art is not a fun threat. I'm just saying I won't try to have my players swallow he is now a trillionaire. Isn't a man worth 20 billions hellbent on revenge scary enough?
Charon
Here's a simplification showing Art's fortune over 6 month if we assume he went from 20 billion to 1000 billion in 6 month (which is more conservative than what the author wrote)

92% increase a month

Debut : 20
1 month : 38
2 month : 74
3 month : 142
4 month : 271
5 month : 522
6 month : 1002

It has to almost double every month. By years end he would have 5 trillions at this rate. Things are much uglier with the 5 month, 2 trillions figure. 151% a month do yield 2 trillion in 5 month... and 1 261 914.69 trillions in a year. That would be enough to buy the planet, I'd say.

Do you understand why I say it is completely absurd?
Nath
I stood corrected. This being said, the calculation over a full year might not be relevant because any growth achieved over a six months period might not be sustained over the rest of the year. Opportunities would dry up with volume increase and money got sucked away from the other players.

As a side note, you can achieve something like a 100'000% gain in... drug trafficking, That's more or less the difference between of price between opium bought to warlords in Southeast Asia or Afghanistan, and the price of heroin and crack in US and European streets. I don't know what the ratio would be with cocain. But you could only do that for a few millions of dollar at best in six months, the market volume is not much larger. Of course by 2060, you'd better sell BTL, and considering the difference in price between blank chips and BTL, you could rack some money in.
Charon
QUOTE (Nath @ Feb 26 2005, 03:12 PM)
I stood corrected. This being said, the calculation over a full year might not be relevant because any growth achieved over a six months period might not be sustained over the rest of the year.


Frankly, my point is that it can't even be sustained over 6 month. Heck, it can't even be achieved over a month if we are talking about a 20 billions investment. It's easy to double one thousand bucks but virtually impossible to double 20 billions in a month. Ever heard of it being done? There is the occasional small outfit that hit it big and double in size in a month, but nothing worth 20 billions doubles overnight. furthermore it is impossible to identify, track down and invest one million in 20 000 companies that will each double in value over the coming month.

QUOTE (Nath)
As a side note, you can achieve something like a 100'000% gain in... drug trafficking, That's more or less the difference between of price between opium bought to warlords in Southeast Asia or Afghanistan, and the price of heroin and crack in US and European streets. I don't know what the ratio would be with cocain. But you could only do that for a few millions of dollar at best in six months, the market volume is not much larger. Of course by 2060, you'd better sell BTL, and considering the difference in price between blank chips and BTL, you could rack some money in.


Many intermediaries taking their cut in that process and costs lowering profit. Once all is said and done, that still leave us with Drug lords and traffickers who have fortunes in the hundreds of millions over a decade, but not in the trillions after 5 month of exploitation...

EDIT : The only opportunity to double a very large sum of money in a short time that I know of (just thought of it) would be monetary market. If you caorrectly anticipate that a currency will crumble or sharply rise, you can make a fortune and the market could theoretically absorb, hum, billions? Depends on the size of the economy of the country. Some fortunes were made with the rubble crisis a few year back for example. But first of all, everyone who made it big in these crisis are well known in the cambists (translation?) circles and that kind of opportunity comes around every few years, not every month.

Hum, my Art Dankwalther will never be a trillionaire but I see the potential for a nice run mixing high financial stakes, monetary crisis and a small country in turmoil somewhere exotic. I'll think about it.
Mr. Woodchuck
What one also must remember is that Art had help and in an era of nanosecond buyouts stock can be traded at a much faster rate. Although his growth rate is unprecedented to say the least it has the potential for plausibility. By using teams of analysists on a round the clock multiple exchange trading, updated to each matrix initiative pass you could theoretically make a ridiculous number of trades in a 6 month period. Since we all know that the more often we check up on an manipulate our portfolio the greater control and flexibility we have i our investments. If one were to posses plenty of capital , l33t decking and financial skills, and a nasty combination of divination and info sortilege an investor might just actually be able to ground floor every good investment in a single 6 month period. However since this is a solid idea and every single megacorp has access to each of these ingredients you might ask why they wouldn't notice and stop the perpetrator. The answer is that their resources are distributed to fight the financial corp war against the threats they know of not some bizarre dark horse no one has ever heard of. This facet of all human thinking is why the nanosecond buy out worked once and only once and this trick can only work if the parameters are set in such a way as not to attract attention untill after the compleetion of the objective. It was only a 6 month run after all and what kind of megacorp really thinks that small.
Charon
QUOTE (Mr. Woodchuck @ Feb 26 2005, 04:31 PM)
By using teams of analysists on a round the clock multiple exchange trading, updated to each matrix initiative pass you could theoretically make a ridiculous number of trades in a 6 month period.

Woodchuck, it's not about how many transactions you can make, it's about making the right ones.

The value of the stock you bought isn't gonna rise faster or higher because it took you a nano-second to buy the stock. You're only gaining some value by beeing able to buy and sell closer to the low and high of a title, but it still takes months for most title to increase significantly in value.

Finnally, everybody does it. Even topay, everybody does it. How long do you think it takes to make a transaction today? How many analyst you think banks, insurance companies and pension fund have? How many agressive investment companies? And yet do you see uber-shark in the market turning billions into trillions overnight? Heck no.

The famous Nano-Second buyout wasn't Damien Knight making billions in mere moments. It was Damien Knight acquiring billions worth of Ares stock in mere moment. So fast that Aurelius couldn't mount a defense. It was lighnting fast Hostile Takeover, not a drastic increase in value sustained during 6 months. But he already had the money. A deal with Dunkelzhann as we now know.

If anything, Damien Knight might have lost a bit of value in the very short term during the buy out. Prices tend to raise above their 'real' value during a takeover. Obviously, in the case of the nano-second buyout, price surely didn't have time to rise much which would be another of the main advantages of the lightning fast approach used by Knight. But still, the nano-second buyout didn't create value, it reduced the cost of, well, the buy-out.
Kanada Ten
Could Art have taken loans using the 20 billion as collateral - taken them without (or preventing) informing other banks that he's done so? And thus borrow 20 billion five or six times and use that to buy controlling stock in asset heavy corps? Gut those corps and do it all over again? And thus have trillions of dollars in available assets, but not actually own it (just control).
tisoz
His simplest way to get huge returns was investing in enchanting shops and making gold radicals. He would wind up with more than a few trillions in 5 months.

Ok, so you say that would flood the market. He could also buy and sell (create) stock options, fund shadowruns to cause a sensation and cause a movement in the market. Think of that little chemical leak disaster in India in 1984. It caused Union Carbide's stock to plummet. Some options worth a few pennies could have increased in worth to tens of dollars, basically in a days time. That could be a 100,000% return in a day.

So in between engineering these huge payoffs he sticks it in the low yield enchanting shops. wink.gif

Possible, yes. Probable, not really.
Charon
QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
Could Art have taken loans using the 20 billion as collateral - taken them without (or preventing) informing other banks that he's done so? And thus borrow 20 billion five or six times and use that to buy controlling stock in asset heavy corps? Gut those corps and do it all over again? And thus have trillions of dollars in available assets, but not actually own it (just control).


We wouldn't get into the trillions, but what you suggest is more sensible.

Yes, if you have 20 billlions in cash you can also use it as collateral to borrow even more. As a rule of thumb, I'm not a banker, but I'd be worried about lending to an individual more money than he has collateral unless he can demonstrate a steady cashflow. Bankers are all about being reimbursed. But it's a safe bet he could count on 40 billion, with i.e. 15 million immobilized to provide cashflows and 25 to exact vengeance.

---

As far as gutting company : With assets of 20 billions and the possibility to borrow more, he take out an A corporation anytime. He buys it, in fact.

As far as hurting Novatech, hell yes. If he really had trillions and the desire to crush Novatech, it wouldn't even be fair, actually. With no obligation to turn a profit, Art would crush them easily.

With 'only' 20 billions he has to be crafty. Invest a bit in Novatech and subsidiaries, infiltrate his agents on various boards of shareholder, get spies inside the various R&D department. And whenever Novatech is vulnerable, strike. Sabotage promising project. Tip the IRS on anything that even looks suspicious. Leak info to the competition. That sort of things.

Novatech is worth much more than 20 billions but it is heavily leveraged and has various financial obligations. If cashflows drop by as little as 10% the spectre of Bankrupcy would surely loom high, lenders would increase the interest rate and the competition would do the rest by picking off what they can.

Trillions in budget is overkill. You could finance WWII for a few years. litterally. I mean, how much does it cost the US to be in iraq? 600 billion a year?
Kanada Ten
He took out a chunk of Gunderson, which was AA, IIRC.

It's also possible that there are other finical backers that are pouring into the coffers (say perhaps Ares, the PCC, and Hestaby), each with a claim to stake in Novatech. I've suggested this before, obvious motivations in most cases: Ares gets the assets, Pueblo gets the Court Seat, and Hestaby gets the Matrix. Of course, there are other possible backers (oh, like a couple of ex Fuchi employees... and the New Revolution).

I agree that trillions isn't really needed though.
FlakJacket
Don't forget the Delta clinic that they've got squirreled away in PCC lands either. That alone would be a good target. Although Celedyr might be a better backer in return for the matrix stuff, he could even fold it into Transys.
toturi
Remember Novatech is not only vulnerable but they are so vulnerable that they had only 1 company producing epoxy for their SOTA decks and it got blown up (p145 SOTA 2064) and they are in deep financial doodoo (p160 SOTA2064). Novatech was given the seat only due to a technicality.
Charon
QUOTE (Kanada Ten @ Feb 26 2005, 06:24 PM)
He took out a chunk of Gunderson, which was AA, IIRC. 

He didn't so much take a chunk of Gunderson as he gutted it.

The narrator himself states that no value was gained in these operations. The nuking of Gunderson must have cost Dunkwalther a fortune.

If gutting a healthy corporation to sell the pieces was a good way to make money, everybody who could do it would do it. As things stand, you only make money on that kind of operation when the target is already dying.

Compare it to buying a car and then taking it apart for sale ; pieces, metal, radio, recycling the tire, everything.

If this makes you money, it's because the car is already a ruin and you bought it for a penny. If this was a new car, you'd lose a bundle doing that.
Thomas
Perhaps those of you who say that this is impossible are forgetting that Hillary Clinton made futures investments and reaped a return of nearly 10,000%?
IMHO, Clinton got advice from an insider, invested with a dirty broker, and came away smelling like a Rose. (pun intended)
I'm not looking for a flame war, just giving an example of a present day event that I feel is on par with the nanosecond buyout. An example of power plus rulebreaking equals power intrests served.
Thomas
Cynic project
QUOTE (Thomas)
Perhaps those of you who say that this is impossible are forgetting that Hillary Clinton made futures investments and reaped a return of nearly 10,000%?
IMHO, Clinton got advice from an insider, invested with a dirty broker, and came away smelling like a Rose. (pun intended)
I'm not looking for a flame war, just giving an example of a present day event that I feel is on par with the nanosecond buyout. An example of power plus rulebreaking equals power intrests served.
Thomas

Is he worth tens of billions? The larger the numbers you play with the more percentages matter. 1% of 20 billion is still 200 million. 1000% of 200 million is only 2 billion.
Charon
QUOTE (Thomas @ Feb 26 2005, 08:51 PM)
Perhaps those of you who say that this is impossible are forgetting that Hillary Clinton made futures investments and reaped a return of nearly 10,000%?

Hum, a quick search told me the value of the 10 cattle futures contract was 12,000$. She only had 1,000$ to her name at the time which raises the question of why someone decided to sign with her nonetheless.

100 000$ out of something worth 12 000$ in 10 months is 22.3%. It's hard to guess Hillary's % without knowing the exact terms of the deal that let her acquire these contracts.

But anyway... Very. Impressive.

Still far from the cartoony results of Art DankWalther. I will repeat that it's easier to get insane growth out of a small investment than out of a big one.

It is strictly impossible to invest, discreetly or not, 20 billion into a cattle futures scam, for example. For one thing, I doubt the whole cattle futures market (great items and lame duck alike) is worth half that!

So Art not only need to do better than Hillary, he needs to do it thousands of time in the span of 5 month.
ef31415
Going from 20B to 1,000B: we've seen growth like that in real life. Remember Amazon.com? Went from $5 to $220 in about six months. I worked at a company that went from $70 to $0.25 frown.gif Short selling that would have gotten somebody a low of money.

It would be very difficult getting growth like that with a proper, sane, diversified strategy. A series of high-rolling, highly leveraged deals could get there. Then again, one wrong step and he's flat broke.

This would make a fairly cool idea for runs: finding out Art's next move, maybe messing things up, and the chaos of a trillion- nuyen.gif fortune disapearing overnight.

==Ed
ef31415
QUOTE (Charon)
QUOTE (Kanada Ten @ Feb 26 2005, 06:24 PM)
He took out a chunk of Gunderson, which was AA, IIRC. 

He didn't so much take a chunk of Gunderson as he gutted it.

The narrator himself states that no value was gained in these operations. The nuking of Gunderson must have cost Dunkwalther a fortune.

If gutting a healthy corporation to sell the pieces was a good way to make money, everybody who could do it would do it. As things stand, you only make money on that kind of operation when the target is already dying.

Compare it to buying a car and then taking it apart for sale ; pieces, metal, radio, recycling the tire, everything.

If this makes you money, it's because the car is already a ruin and you bought it for a penny. If this was a new car, you'd lose a bundle doing that.

Where were you in the 80's? smile.gif

People made a lot of money doing just that. What happened was that companies learned how to make defensive arraingements like poison pills and the like.
Weredigo
QUOTE
PS : If some of you are familiar with financial term and think I've screwed them up, it's because I'm studying in french and haven't got all the translation down pat yet.


Nah, I'm just a dirt herder and weekend mechanic and the numbers still look wacked to me. I just have a simple explanation on how that can occur. Are you familiar at all with how Piracy works?
Charon
QUOTE
Where were you in the 80's? 


It was worse in the 80s, but you still couldn't gut a healthy corporation for a profit.

Look, in order to gut a corp, you need to take it over. If you can buy a corporation 20 millions and then sell its components for 30 millions after the money lender get their dues, it's obvious that something was very wrong with the corporation in the first place.
Thomas
Charon

http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRose...tt/?id=65000476

A respected journalist with The Wall Street Journal
Thomas
Charon
QUOTE (Weredigo)
Are you familiar at all with how Piracy works?

Well, from a business POV... Just like any other business.

If you are talking about copying without license any products, you are essentially facing the same consideration as any other business. It's just that your solution for cutting R&D costs in order to reduce prices isn't exactly kosher... wink.gif

Charon
QUOTE (Thomas @ Feb 26 2005, 09:32 PM)
Charon

http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRose...tt/?id=65000476

A respected journalist with The Wall Street Journal
Thomas

Thanks. Interesting.

But if Hillary had other people dump money on her account in, it undermine the thought that such high return on investment are possible in the first place.

This goes against the likelyhood of Art making Trillions. (How many Trillionaire are there on the planet anyway? Zero?).

I'm surprised no one made a bigger deal of that scandal, though. Never heard about it on my side of the frontier.

Reading between the line, I'm guessing someone backed Hillary when she started trading. As I said, the first 10 contract she bought were worth 12 grand (This article) and she only had 1 grand to her name. I doubt she put her house as collateral. That backer dealt with her either to do some insider trading or to hide profit. It's probably that broker, Robert Bone, she was dealing with in the first place. He was in good position not to raise a fuss about his client's lack of solvability.

That passage is particularly telling :

QUOTE (Article by Claudia Rosett)
The late 1970s brought a roaring and volatile cattle market, and Refco was one of the most fast-and-loose brokerage firms in the business. In the normal course of trading, futures dealers are supposed to specify which trades are done for which customers. But this former Refco clerk says business at that stage was so brisk that Refco deals were done mainly in big blocks--far bigger than Hillary's individual recorded orders. Only later would the brokers code transactions by customer and decide which trade--meaning what profit or loss--to parcel out to whom. "When Hillary came forward and said she was doing her own trades, I knew immediately that she wasn't telling the truth," says this former clerk.


I'm guessing Bone was scamming to attribute a few juicy sales to Hillary account each week and splitting profit afterwards. Do it on a small scale to sweeten up the monthly pay, you know? Perhaps he even had other 'mules' to channel out some profit for himself, who knows.

Hum. I would like to mention to any lawyer reading this that I'm not talking about the real Hillary Clinton. I'm talking about the Hillary Clinton from the alternate SR universe. Yeah. wink.gif
Weredigo
QUOTE
Well, from a business POV... Just like any other business.

If you are talking about copying without license any products, you are essentially facing the same consideration as any other business. It's just that your solution for cutting R&D costs in order to reduce prices isn't exactly kosher...


Nah, that's plaigerizing. I'm talking about Sacking, and raiding, and looting.
Charon
Ah. Got one of my players who has a degree in History and who loves pirates. Yeah, I know. Why do you ask? You figure Art went Viking on a Gunderson's ass? wink.gif
toturi
Don't you mean Occupying, Enslaving and Massacring?

Oh, sorry, too much Rome Total War.
Thomas
QUOTE (Charon)
Hum.  I would like to mention to any lawyer reading this that I'm not talking about the real Hillary Clinton.  I'm talking about the Hillary Clinton form the alternate SR universe.  Yeah.  wink.gif


Yeah, me too. wink.gif
DarusGrey
So in summary, everyone agrees its "possible" but not "probable"

Anything thats possible..will eventually happen.

Just so happens that it was Art Dankwalther in our fictional world.

I don't see whats so unbelieveable about this ;>

Besides..Im sticking with my original assertion!

Check SOTA 2065 for the finanscial adept(hah..)
toturi
Financial Adept - The Path of Money
Charon
QUOTE (DarusGrey @ Feb 26 2005, 11:25 PM)
So in summary, everyone agrees its "possible" but not "probable"

No, I pretty much stand by "Impossible".

And I also stand by "20 billions is enough to hurt Novatech very hard anyway so I don't need baloney stories about insane yet secret financial maneuvering that resulted in a guy amassing more money in half a year than the US federal government does in a year and yet who never popped up on anyone's radar before nuking a megacorp."

EDIT : Yeah, I'm proud of that new comparison I thought of. The US budget is roughly two trillions. 1 874 billions in 2004 with a deficit of 445 billions to be accurate. The GNP of the US is about 11 trillions. Obviously UCAS is going have smaller figures.

If Dankwalther made "Trillions" in less than 6 month, consider what it means. Can you realize the sheer absurdity this represents? Especially if you insist he did this in secret!?

Luckily the situation can be corrected just by cutting a few zeros. I mean, this whole rant of a thread can be corrected by changing the paragraph I quoted to "we increased our investment substantially". Eh.

EDIT 2 : Hey, somewhere in all this ranting I became a moving target. Which makes sense, all things considered.
Sandoval Smith
I also say impossible. The numbers are just too ludicrous, especially with the tactics Art is using, which is to hurt Novatech above all else.
tisoz
Art buys 20 billion worth of seemingly worthless put options selling for .005 nuyen each. The puts are virtually worthless because the stock is selling at 100 and it means the buyer can make the seller buy it (put it to them) for 95 (which would be a 5 nuyen profit for the seller) and the puts expire next week at which time they will have no value (why they can be bought for next to nothing.)

Art finances a shadowrun that garners a lot of publicity and causes the stock to fall to 90 in a day. Art can easily sell or exercise his puts and make 5.000 nuyen a piece. That is multiplying his investment by 1000 in say a weeks time. Not farfetched at all. Because stock prices are driven by investor emotion as much as underlying value, next week the market recovers from the bad publicity, realizing the stock is still a good value at 100 a share and recovers to 99 or 100 a share.

By then, Art can hit them again. Or another company or subsidiary. Or several runs against several running concurrently to spread the capital around.

A corp I previousely worked for had stock that was usually around $30 a share. Unfortunately, there wasn't an option market for the stock. The corp typicaly bought 2 rival companies a year, usually involving co. stock as part of purchase price to the companybeing bought's largest owners. The corp I worked for would buy up their own outstanding shares (to exchange for the acquired co.), and this in turn drove up the price of the shares. It typically topped out around $60 a share. they then paid the bought company's owners with shares valued at $60, getting the company at a 50% discount. When the acquired company's previous owners sold the stock off there was more supply than demand and the price could fall to $15 a share. Like I said, it would level out at about $30.

Anyone who saw this happen year in and year out for at least 10 years could buy in at $15 or $20 a share and sell at $55 or $60 a share. It happened about twice a year. So someone could have their $15 be worth $735. Close to a 5000% yearly return.

Hold on you say, shouldn't that be $240? Yes, if all they did was buy it on the way up, but they could also make money on its decline by shorting the stock.

Yes, I made a nice little profit of it as soon as I learned about it. I always played it around $20 and $50 or $55 just to be safe. Unfortunately, the corp got acquired by someone else and I haven't kept up to see if they played the same game.
Fortune
QUOTE (toturi)
Financial Adept - The Path of Money

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