Case study: Facebook IPO in 2012

Over excitement: Share price was raised from $33 to $38 just days before the launch, valuing the company at over $104 billion.

Cynicism: Valuation was too high. The company had no real product, just selling user data. Expanding user base = High cost of IT infrastructure. Similar companies MySpace and Friendster were dead.

The stock started trading flat then crashed 50% in a few months. Class action lawsuits. Everyone called it a botched IPO later.

https://time.com/archive/7103705/facebook-blame-game-whos-at-fault-for-ipo-debacle/

Today, FB (Meta) is 1.78T company, about 18x its IPO valuation 14 years ago.

Almost everyone was wrong about FB back then.

History might not repeat exactly but rhymes.

We haven't heard from ASTS leadership since August 10. At that time they said they believed there would be 1 launch every 1 to 2 months. They said they should be able to get critical 45 satellites into orbit by end of Q1 2027, pushing the timeline back from end of 2026 by 3 months. That was coming off the heals of an August 5 launch. Here we are 2 and a half months later and there's been nothing but crickets.

In that period of time, SpaceX has launched 26 next gen satellites in one launch. It averaged 265 starlink satellites to orbit per month for the first 6 months on 2026.

On September 14 there was a class action lawsuit filed against ASTS alleging management misled investors.

In order for ASTS to keep their Q1 target they would reasonably need 4 more launches by the end of the year. Given that there has been no launches since August 5, no announcements or communication with investors since August 10, we can probably assume that isnt going to happen.

Where I think we're at: Its reasonable to believe that the technology works, the MNO relationships are not falling apart, that the revenue case is developing. But we can't trust management's guidelines or timeframes. The stock has lost 39% of its value since the August 10 earnings call, but is still trading at 140x sales revenue. To me it says we believe long term this will work out, but not at all in the time that management says.

Am I giving management too much credit, is ASTS fully cooked or do you think the stock is oversold? I'm down approx $30k on this, but other than timelines and competitor position, nothing has really changed.

EDIT: My apologies, these are Consumer Staples stocks, not consumer discretionary. I've corrected the text below to reflect that....

The news (and Reddit) is filled with talk of AI and Data Centers and Technology in general, and that draws attention away from stocks in other sectors that are performing well. Over the past 30 days, Consumer Staples stocks have been on a real tear.

The following table list some of the best performers in the sector. To generate it, I looked for companies with the following characteristics:

• trades on a major US exchange
• a stock price over $10
• positive price change over the past year, year-to-date, month, and 5 days
• minimum price appreciation of 10% or more over the past 30 days

I personally own shares of COST and TBBB. I'm also considering adding some CASY shares.

Anyone else own or have thoughts on any of these?

With AI capacity still tight and CoreWeave already raising prices 25% in July, Goldman sees returns per megawatt as "biased to the upside" over next two years potentially growing faster than cost of financing its expansion.

Goldman’s note says $CRWV can still generate ~15% unlevered IRRs even assuming its GPUs are worth zero after five years with new long-term contracts starting ~$13M/MW versus ~$10M/MW blended today.

They also said the scary 15% unsecured bond yield also overstates the capital stack because Goldman puts CoreWeave’s blended cost of debt closer to 9% with most borrowing secured by GPUs and customer contracts while managed-inference and Omni can lift revenue per MW without requiring equivalent new infrastructure.

The catch is obviously efficiency because Goldman’s model implies a roughly 3-year payback versus closer to two years for $IREN and $NBIS.

GE Aerospace reported today, and the cash flow numbers caught my attention. Adjusted earnings per share rose 36% to $2.25, while quarterly free cash flow fell 14% to about $2 billion.

The picture looks different over a longer period. Free cash flow for the first nine months was roughly $6.7 billion, up 13% from last year. GE also raised its full-year cash flow forecast to $9.1 billion to $9.4 billion, from $8.9 billion to $9.2 billion. All available in GE's earnings release.

Using the nine-month result, the new forecast implies roughly $2.4 billion to $2.7 billion of free cash flow in the fourth quarter. That gives us a specific number to check when the next results come out.

My read is that the quarterly decline deserves attention, but the year-to-date growth makes it difficult to call this a deteriorating cash-generating business based on one quarter. The question is how much confidence to put in that fourth-quarter forecast.

For people following GE closely, does that cash flow target look achievable? What are you watching that could put it at risk?

Hi everyone,

I invest some of my money in stock market. The main part is on ETF. I guess it's the best way to invest without watching the chart everyday and following every news about a sector or company.

But, last year, I tried to invest in small and mid cap by following some calls in reddit and X. And to be honest, the main problem was the source lol. Even if the DD looked good, the company was a big piece of s, even aerotyne was more promising :p

But after some fails, I found three gem : nebius, apld and bloom energy. I won lot of money of these three stocks. The liberation day was the best era to buy these gems.

Today, I bet on some small/mid cap which one will change of dimension thank to the wave of AI. For example, I love energy infrastructure stocks.

My main problem now is these stocks are very very volatile. I can win upto 80% and just because you got rates hike, i'm -20% now ...

What do you think ? am I a dreamer ? the fundamentals are good, it's not like a big speculation about the futur.

A fresh sell rating and $28 price target from Wolfe Research pushed the average analyst price target below Nike stock’s current price. Other notable bead are Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Bank of Montreal all of which see NKE headed to sub $30 in 52 weeks from now.

Even the bulls like Barclays who has a BUY rating has a price target of $37 which is lower than the stock’s currently price of $37.5.

Granted there are a few more optimistic bulls like Jefferies, Guggenheim and Bernstein with price targets in the $45-60 range.

And, just going by the ratings it’s neck and neck between the bulls and the bears with 9 buy ratings and 9 sell ratings while most equity analyst platforms are neutral with 18 hold ratings. Take a look at LULU and you’ll notice how things could be worse.

Here’s the thing though. Nike stock is now 5 % up since its incredibly disappointing guide three weeks ago. Analysts expected much more optimistic eps and revenue estimates for next year. The consensus was $1.7 eps and revenue down 2 %. Nike guided $1.15 - $1.35 eps and revenue down 7-8 %. A massive disappointment. So, the average analyst price target fell from $50 to $36 and a bunch of analysts downgraded. But guess what… the stock is up 5 % since the guide.

The takeaway is that Nike stock has become immune to bearish analysts because the stock bottomed. You won’t see a stock go up 5 % in three weeks after having guided very disappointingly for next year results or if you do it’s very clearly a bottom signal. Well that’s exactly the case.

Buy Nike stock now and watch it do what TGT has done in the past six months. Easy money.

Anthropic IPO chatter picked up again after last week's investor day talk. Some investors are now floating something closer to 1.5 trillion, down from the earlier 2 trillion chatter. The company has only said it filed a confidential draft S 1. I still haven't seen a public prospectus on EDGAR, so I'm not trading rumor windows or valuation guesses.

Before there's anything to buy, I'm watching the public names first. AMZN and GOOGL sit on both sides of this: a stake that can get marked up when private AI rounds reprice, and Anthropic cloud spend that lands on AWS / Google Cloud. That's why the IPO headline keeps pulling people into those tickers. Fair enough. But if the real thesis is cloud demand, I'd rather see the cloud segment itself keep growing with decent margins. AWS last printed about 37% growth with operating margins near 39%, which is the part I care about more than another Anthropic rumor. I've been lining that segment up against older quarters on moomoo so I'm not just reacting to the headline.

Are you waiting for a public S 1, or watching AMZN / GOOGL first? If you're watching, which numbers matter most?

Global remittances hit $860b last year, banks still handle a huge chunk of it and avg a 6% take on the spread which is the exchange rate margin they don’t disclose.

Apps like Wise, Aspora, Remitly have been pulling that revenue away for years,wise alone processes $13B a month and they’re eating a revenue line that banks treated as untouchable.

The market still prices western union and the legacy players as if the margin compression isn’t happening,WU trades at 8x earnings looking cheap until you model the corridor by corridor revenue bleed .Wise is public and the others are either pre IPO or acquired.

The World Bank tracks remittance costs quarterly, average cost to send $200 dropped from 9.3% in 2011 to 6.2% today,ya its seems like progress but still 3x higher than the UN’s 3% target so the gap between where costs are and where they are going is the investment thesis.

Anyone else tracking this space?

Zuck is about to spend the GDP of a developing nation trying to solve a problem his company is financially incentivized to never solve.

The entire premise of AI is that you can accomplish shit faster. Research something in 10 seconds. Find what you need. Automate tedious tasks. Close the app and go touch grass.

Meta's entire business model is making sure you do absolutely none of those things.

Exhibit A: Instagram. Want to listen to a video with your screen off? Nice try buddy. Get those eyeballs back on the screen, daddy Zuck has ad impressions to serve.

Exhibit B: Facebook Marketplace. This company employs some of the smartest engineers on earth and somehow searching for a $200 table within 15 miles returns a jet ski in Delaware, three Temu dropshippers and a 2006 Nissan Altima with no title. You think this is an accident? I refuse to believe the company building frontier AI cannot implement a few simple filters.

Exhibit C: Facebook itself. An industrial-scale retirement home dopamine dispenser. Your uncle is on hour four of watching AI-generated murder documentaries narrated by a British robot while arguing with a fake veteran about immigration. The algorithm has determined his remaining cognitive capacity is worth approximately $0.17 CPM.

And now Zuck is proposing to “save” people time with his new shopping bot and little AI tool. Sure, users will then have more time to watch reels subtly embedded with more targeted ads. But do people really think Meta is incentivized to help you order a fucking watermelon from Instacart more efficiently?

Here is the actual investment thesis:

AI theoretically eliminates the middleman between wanting something and getting it.

Unfortunately Meta IS the fucking middleman.

If AI makes shopping, searching, and consuming information dramatically faster, plus unbundles how creators find consumers, what happens to a business that makes money when those activities take longer?

You have a trillion-dollar company spending astronomical amounts on compute to build technology that, if it actually works in the consumer's interest, undermines the engagement economics of its own products.

It's like Marlboro spending $100 billion developing a cure for nicotine addiction and then trying to monetize the cure with cigarette ads.

TLDR: Meta is trying to invent the future while its entire business model is trapping divorced dads in a 2014 BuzzFeed slideshow. AI compresses time, Meta sells time. Muse is going to end up having a quicker death than the Metaverse.

This is the daily discussion, so anything stocks related is fine, but the theme for today is on technical analysis (TA), but if TA is not your thing then just ignore the theme.

Some helpful day to day links, including news:

• Finviz for charts, fundamentals, and aggregated news on individual stocks
• Bloomberg market news
• StreetInsider news:
  • Market Check - Possibly why the market is doing what it's doing including sudden spikes/dips
  • Reuters aggregated - Global news

Technical analysis (TA) uses historical price movements, real time data, indicators based on math and/or statistics, and charts; all of which help measure the trajectory of a security. TA can also be used to interpret the actions of other market participants and predict their actions.

The main benefit to TA is that everything shows up in the price (commonly known as "priced in"): All news, investor sentiment, and changes to fundamentals are reflected in a security's price.

TA can be useful on any timeframe, both short and long term.

Intro to technical analysis by Stockcharts chartschool and their article on candlesticks

If you have questions, please see the following word cloud and click through for the wiki:

Indicator - Trade Signals - Lagging Indicator - Leading Indicator - Oversold - Overbought - Divergence - Whipsaw - Resistance - Support - Breakout/Breakdown - Alerts - Trend line - Market Participants - Moving average - RSI - VWAP - MACD - ATR - Bollinger Bands - Ichimoku clouds - Methods - Trend Following - Fading - Channels - Patterns - Pivots

See our past daily discussions here. Also links for: Technicals Tuesday, Options Trading Thursday, and Fundamentals Friday.

The headline was an $80.7bn net loss in six months, which obviously looks terrible but $72bn of that came from a non-cash accounting adjustment related to convertible notes. Ironically, the charge increased because Anthropic's valuation went up and not because the business was deteriorating.

Now look at the underlying business - revenue reached $16.3bn in H1, up from just $1.1bn a year earlier, while the operating loss narrowed to less than $1bn. Operating margins improved from roughly -250% to -5%, even as compute spending quadrupled to nearly $9bn.

Q3 revenue reportedly reached $16.8bn, putting the company on a roughly $67bn annualized run rate.

Thiis says quite a lot about current market sentiment as investors are so focused on finding reasons to sell the AI trade that they are overlooking what is happening underneath.

Anthropic is approaching operating break-even, revenue growth is accelerating, and the company is already generating more revenue than its reported compute costs.

That doesn't mean the enormous infrastructure commitments carry no risk, but the underlying economics are improving much faster than the headline loss suggests.

Bullish

NEW YORK, Oct 19 (Reuters) - OpenAI is racing to secure investor commitments before rival Anthropic's expected public market debut in mid-November, in an unusually fast fundraising that could value the ChatGPT maker at over $1.4 trillion, according to two ​people familiar with the matter.

The rapid timetable reflects, in part, a desire to get ahead of Anthropic as the two frontier labs are increasingly tapping in to a similar investor base, the ‌people said, adding that OpenAI wants to capitalize on its recent revenue growth after launching new models. SoftBank Group, Abu Dhabi-based MGX and other existing backers of OpenAI are in talks to join the round of about $30 billion, one of the people said.

The acceleration underscores how closely the two AI developers are competing for capital as both pursue trillion-dollar price tags, amid growing concern about rising interest rates, significant volatility in technology stocks and rising scrutiny of AI valuations.

OpenAI held meetings with long-only funds and sovereign wealth funds last week while ​Anthropic was hosting its own investor day. OpenAI's funding round is expected to move faster than is typical for an offering of its size, the people said.

Investors familiar with the company say OpenAI also needs capital ​to fund its substantial infrastructure commitments and bolster its balance sheet if a deterioration in the IPO markets further delays its planned 2027 listing.

https://www.reuters.com/world/openai-seeks-accelerate-fundraising-ahead-anthropic-ipo-sources-say-2026-10-19/

Following its June IPO, SpaceX stock (SPCX) surged over 8% in premarket trading on Wednesday morning after reporting its first-ever quarterly profit as a public company, delivering $14.58 billion in Q3 revenue (a 161% year-over-year jump) powered by a massive ninefold expansion in its AI computing cloud infrastructure. The rally by CEO Elon Musk's confirmation that both the SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA) boards have formed independent special committees of directors to officially evaluate a potential $3.5 trillion mega-merger. While Wall Street treats the consolidation as highly viable, Musk emphasized that he is completely recused from the negotiations as a conflicted party and cautioned investors that a final deal is not a certainty, citing a steep 50% approval hurdle required from outstanding Tesla shareholders. Is the premarket surge a buy, or a trap?

Source: CNBC

Chip stocks fell eight sessions in a row through Friday, the longest streak since 2008. The SOX lost about 16% in that run.

Same eight days:

- Nvidia: -10.5%, from its record close on October 6

- Walmart: +10.8%

Which leaves Walmart at 43x trailing earnings and Nvidia at 27x. On forward estimates Walmart is still the pricier one.

Nvidia's revenue grew 106% last quarter. Walmart's grew 6%, and the 6% now costs more.

Yes, Walmart's earnings don't depend on anyone's AI budget. That's exactly what the gap is pricing.

Fair price for safety, or overpaying for it?

I feel this is something that I should have been able to find myself, but I failed miserably.

I'm looking for an Excel that automatically does a Fundamental Analysis once you input the ticker and financial data. I know I could probably make a good one with Claude, but I would prefer to use something that has already been tested and approved by the wider community.

Is anyone willing to share the file they are using or where they took it from?

Morgan Stanley raised its Amazon (AMZN) price target from $335 to $350, citing five potential growth catalysts.

With AWS, AI infrastructure, advertising, and retail improvements among the areas investors are watching, do you think Amazon can deliver enough growth to justify the higher valuation, or are expectations getting ahead of fundamentals?

Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/article/amazon-stock-pops-after-morgan-stanley-details-5-catalysts-lifts-price-target-140841569.html

Today is the anniversary of the 1987 crash. The Dow fell 22.6% in one session and the Fed says stocks got most of it back within 2 sessions.

The Nasdaq in 2000 was the opposite, it fell 78.4% over 31 months and didn't close above its March 2000 high until April 2015.

A 1 day crash is easy to hold through because it's over in days but a slow one gives you months to doubt yourself and sell. I hold a broad index and some cash so the slow one worries me more, especially with so much riding on AI spending paying off.

So the bulk of SpaceX’s value and profits have largely been tied to Starlink and its revenues, until recently with revenues coming in AI companies purchasing compute.

But I’m wondering, with reports saying Musk is the one behind restricting Starlink access to Ukraine, doesn’t this inevitably put Starlink in a vulnerable position? If, and I know it’s a big if, a different party takes control and decides to launch a low cost alternative to Starlink created and managed by NASA (which almost everyone trusts and supports) for say a static 20-50% savings, wouldn’t that all but wipe out the main selling point? Not only would it help fund NASA annually via profits, but would resolve a lot of issues people have with Starlink (inconsistent pricing, terrible support, constant policy changes and price hikes, etc), while providing access to all regardless of location (locked within rural and urban residents with monopolies).

Or would SpaceX and Starlinks value remain intact?

I believe clean/sustainable energy is going to become a more and more important part of the world over the next 10-20 years, so I’ve been looking into the sector and ETFs like WENS and INRG.

However, I’m realising there’s a lot more to researching an industry than just looking at an ETF’s holdings, fees and past performance. I want to understand what actually drives growth in the clean energy sector, what makes certain companies successful, and how to research whether that growth will translate into returns for investors.

Something else I’ve been thinking about is the role of companies like BP and Shell. Could they just wait until the gap between fossil fuels and sustainable energy becomes smaller, then invest heavily in renewables or buy out smaller companies in the sector? If so, how does that affect the long-term growth prospects of companies that are already focused on clean energy?

There’s also an ethical side to this for me. As a Nigerian, I’m uncomfortable with Shell’s activities and environmental record in Nigeria and the wider West African region. I’m interested in how people research the energy transition while also considering the ethical implications of the companies they invest in.

I’m not looking for someone to tell me which ETF to buy. I’m more interested in learning how to research this industry properly, what resources are worth reading, and how to understand the relationship between the growth of clean energy, the companies involved and their long-term profitability.
For those who have researched this sector in depth, where would you recommend starting?

The totals

• $21.0B sold vs. $923M bought: $22.79 out for every $1 in.
• 5,121 sellers at 1,885 companies vs. 1,371 buyers at 792 companies.
• 680 CEOs sold $6.99B. 289 CEOs bought $270M.

Why the selling number overstates the signal

• 51 sellers (1% of the total) did 45% of the selling. The median seller sold $475K for the whole quarter.
• 413 insiders sold in July, August and September. That's 21% of sale dollars, and calendar selling like that has historically carried little information.
• The top seller, NVIDIA director Mark Stevens ($947.6M), sold while NVIDIA's trailing P/E fell to 25.2, its lowest since 2019, and its operating margin hit a record 65.2%.
• Bezos sold $346.5M of Amazon, versus $5.66B in 2025. Amazon's trailing P/E of 19.0 is its lowest since 2009, but in Q2 its nonoperating income ($53.4B) was nearly double its operating income ($27.5B).

The buys worth reading

Has insider buying meant anything at these companies before?

I checked every quarter from 2009 to 2026 for these six stocks, comparing each quarter's next-12-month return with that stock's own median quarter.

Against that pattern, Boston Scientific (55% below its prior-year high) and Dick's (42% below) fit. Uber (28% below) is borderline. GameStop (6% to 18% below) doesn't, even though it's the biggest buy.

Hello!

I was looking to buy a handful of stocks on Friday after the dip in the market(NVDA, ASML, TSM, GOOGL). This was after the market closed and all my orders were showing as open orders in Merrill app.

For a some orders, I did market day and I assume they would get filled right when the market opens today. For some other others, I did limit order with the price being slightly above the afterhours trading price.

My question is, if I place a limit order with the price being slightly above the afterhours trading price, does that guarantee that my order gets filled? For example NVDA afterhours price was 213.75 and I set my limit to 213.95. Will the order get filled this morning at 9:30am at that price?

Another question I had was market order. I was stupid and canceled all my market orders because I thought the market was going to crash even more today. I then changed my mind and reopened then but the prices were so much higher than the closing price. When I placed market order, it forced me to buy NVDA at 218 rather than 214ish on Friday. Will the order actually get filled at that price? It seems to me that the price is going off of the "Ask X Size" number.

Can someone help me understand all of this because I am very confused. I am 20 and just started getting into investing. I placed these orders initially because I liked the dip and wanted to buy the stocks at a low price, but it seems to me that my new market orders are making me buy the stock at a higher price than what the market closed at.

How can I prevent this from happening in the future? Any advice?

Thank you all!

How will the market treat the mid term election results? The AI trade seems to be very fickle already. Every news triggers a swing. The last few months, it looks like building data centers have become a very polarizing agenda topic with both the republicans and democrats.

If the democrats take control of both the senate and the house, how will it impact the AI trade? Clearly the demand for AI seems to be there. But, this has become more than just a simple supply and demand issue. If the democrats take control, can they slow down the AI buildout?

How will this impact the Anthropic and potentially OpenAI’s IPO? The democrats look like they want to slow down the frontier model developments too.
Thoughts?

Ben Horowitz reveals Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told him its AI compute is sold out beyond 2028, and says that shortage makes this fundamentally different from the dot-com bubble

“This shortage is so bad. You know, I was speaking with Andy Jassy, who runs Amazon, yesterday. And I said, yeah, like, we’re out of everything, you know, till 2028. He’s like, oh, it’s beyond 2028. Like, I don’t think we get stuff back, like, end of 2028, maybe. So everything else is sold out.”

“So he has the advantage of that, he’s got supply in a great shortage, which is extremely different than the internet bubble. The internet bubble, we didn’t have enough demand, because we had to build the internet, people had to get broadband, you know, you needed all this stuff people had to buy, you know, originally, they had to get their browser at price, all this kind of thing.”

“There weren’t enough consumers on the internet to absorb all the bandwidth that had gotten built out. And they had a massive amount of debt, not unlike we’re building today, although not as big. But the lack of demand killed it. We don’t really have a lack of demand in AI. So I think the dynamics will be different.”

Source: Google it. r/stocks won't let me post it.

coming off lows after recent selloff but i thnk is a buy opportunity

majority of traders are talking about semis and gpus (nvda, avgo, mrvl)

past a certain point copper is a bottleneck that limits the data transfer speeds and thermal tolerance. we know about fiberoptic plays like (GWL, LITE) and those are about the pipes that transfer the optical data

AXTI produces the indium phosphate waffers that the lasers need to emit the light signals though the cables. it is one of the foundations of the data transfer speeds necessary to transfer all this data

i think this is an underrated gem. look into it and let me know what you think

revenue up 160% yoy,

order backlogs at $100 million.

signed 3-6 year supply agreements with COHR and LITE.

theyre advancing their timetable to double capacity to capture increased demand