Reddit shares plunge almost 25% in two days, finish the week below first day close
Reddit shares are plummeting from the rally highs experienced after the social messaging company's IPO last week.
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Why were insiders allowed to sell so quickly?
There's a lot of confused people in these threads. Steve Huffman sold 500,000 shares as part of the ipo, so they were some of the shares sold immediately before they opened on the market (at the about $30/share price). He still holds 4.1 million shares. Other insiders sold some shares as well. Some shares were created to raise money for the company. Once the ipo actually happens and the price for all those shares is negotiated with the bank assisting and all initial buyers, then it begins trading on the open market. At that point they are in a lockup period, and they can't sell anything for about 180 days. All of this is in sec filings, where you can see the source of all the shares that were part ot the ipo.
Look I hate Steve Huffman too, I'm here on lemmy after all. But this is a grossly over valued tech stock and there hasn't been many tech ipos in a while. It's very not surprising it would start sinking after an initial explosion of buying activity. It's not dropping from insiders unloading stock right now though. They're in lockup.
Steve Huffman sold 500,000 shares as part of the ipo, so they were some of the shares sold immediately before they opened on the market (at the about $30/share price).
I suspected as much. I got the invite too, and thought about putting some money in. But I didn't want to risk the chance of being King Steven's exit liquidity, even if I could make some money on it, so I passed.
I wouldn't have wanted to buy anything either. It's actually slightly more progressive than most ipo's in that sense though since it offered a chance to buy shares directly, but that's not really saying much. A true public offering would allow anyone to place orders as a part of the initial sale. Usually just large financial institutions have the chance and then the price is very inflated by the time most retail traders would be allowed to buy. If we really want to help the rampant wealth inequality in the economy too, there should me some mandated equity that goes to employees whose labor built the company so everyone, and not just the board and a few venture capitalists, can profit from the stock sales. Which I guess is a roundabout way of saying workers should own the means of production. It doesn't make sense to reward only so few for the work and ideas of so many individuals. And I think it's a huge inefficiency in the economy that is detrimental no matter your view point (unless you're a billionaire company founder who doesn't care about the country, economy, or world as a whole I guess).
I believe the employees got taken care of here, at least the ones that worked for them directly and stuck it out. Equity compensation is such a key part of Silicon Valley culture that they probably couldn't even hire devs straight out of college without offering them some stock.
I agree, tech companies are better than most in providing equity as a part of compensation, even for lower level workers. I wish it were that way across the entire economy though.
I still believe it was a PPI collection scam. The form I was given to fill out to get on the list was 100% hosted on reddit.com
I was indeed confused and didn't ask that question with any agenda. It makes a lot more sense now. Thanks for clarifying.
Absolutely, and I did not mean to imply you were asking with any agenda, just trying to be helpful. The articles about this are bascially clickbait and implying things that aren't true in the headlines for more outrage. I think it's unfortunate because there is so much to be outraged about in the process of ipo's, how equity in companies is distributed in general, and who profits, and the clickbait distracts from the things we should truly be outraged about with some false controversies.
