And perhaps unintentionally the Nintendo folks come out looking cool, authentic and passionate about making great games while the Sega folks seem like a bunch of cargo cult marketers who happen to be trying to sell games.
Part of the SPAC structure is that you can redeem each share for roughly the IPO price in cash instead of taking shares in the new company (actually it's tied to the amount of the cash in the SPAC), at merger. So this basically sets a price floor on pre-merger SPACs, minus opportunity cost.
And, indeed, 1 out of his 3 merged SPACs is below IPO price.
SPACs usually start at $10 when formed, then shoot up at least 4x on announcements and hype, the early investors (i.e. people like Chamath) cash out at the peak, then the stock price tanks to $15. Technically the stock is "up" from the original listing price, but it's really just a big scam.
You grossly misunderstand SPACs if you think they shoot up at least 4x on announcement & hype.
This is a very rare phenomenon, and even with the most prominent SPAC sponsor (Chamath), of his current 4 SPAC deals that are post-DA, only 1 has exemplified what you characterize (Virgin Galactic's $55 ATH). The others have never broke $40 or above. This includes every SPAC he has been in the PIPE (5) with exception of 1 (NYSE: MP) which has broke $40.
Therefore, of the 9 post-DA SPACs that have had some form of association with the one of the most popular SPAC sponsors (Chamath), only 2 exemplify what you describe.
However, I do agree with the general premise of your comment. SPACs without founder and PIPE lockups are most likely destined to perform poor in the long term.
Is this a big scam? Considering the fact that most of the 130~ SPACs that have a DA do not fit into your characterization (most do not shoot up even 2x after LOI/DA announcement & hype, most sponsors have not cashed out - whether that be peak or not, most do not trade at $15 but rather way closer to NAV), I would be inclined to say they are not scams in that regard. I would say they are unfair rather than scams (most SPACs have a high % of founder shares, no lockup etc).
Ok maybe I should have said my description is the ideal scenario in the eyes of SPAC creators. Obviously not every one will have a 4x price surge, and not every one will completely tank. There's a reason why they try to attach celebrities or well known businesspeople...purely to build hype. If you (and the creators of the SPACs) agree they're destined for poor performance, how is it not a big scam?
It's kind of like around the time of the Dutch East India Company when tons of bogus companies popped up and publicly sold shares that completely tanked shortly after (e.g. a company claiming it invented a perpetual motion wheel machine, etc).
I'm referencing tickers such as APPH, NKLA, HYLN, THCB, LACQ. I'd wager a bet that most of the early investors for these examples are already cashed out at a significant profit knowing they would tank shortly after they did.
This. Even ignoring the number of students that go study banking/finance in college, the banking/finance industry also employs many CS and math graduates.
There’s a million tools like this out there but brokers just want to get deals closed so they fall back to whatever is preferred by the borrower which is always email.
I think we’ve seen that UGC is and always has been a bit of a myth. Social media companies have always quietly employed armies of people to moderate user posts, persuade famous people and Companies to post, to actually do the posting and “media strategy” for those VIPs and companies, and then of course to sell the ads and pro services that come with it all.