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Nintendo Shares Plummet After Investors Realize It Doesn't Actually Make Pokemon Go (theverge.com)

Sam Byford, reporting for The Verge: Nintendo shares have skyrocketed since Pokemon Go's release and instant transformation into global cultural phenomenon, but they fell dramatically today after investors realized that Nintendo doesn't actually make the game. Nintendo put out a statement after the close of trading on Friday pointing out that the bottom-line impact will be "limited" as it only owns 32 percent of The Pokemon Company, and that revenue from the game and its Pokemon Go Plus smartwatch peripheral have been accounted for in the company's current forecasts. Pokemon Go is a collaboration between The Pokemon Company and Niantic Labs, the developer who previously created the similar AR game Ingress as part of Google. This apparent revelation caused shares to plummet in Monday trading, with the stock dropping 17 percent at one point, representing about $6.4 billion in value; as Bloomberg notes, Tokyo stock exchange rules prevent share prices from moving more than 18 percent in a single day.

19 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Breaking news: investors are idiots by jxander · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real news here isn't really about Nintendo or Pokemon.

    The real news is about investors pumping billions into a company without even the most cursory research.

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    1. Re:Breaking news: investors are idiots by geek · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The real news here isn't really about Nintendo or Pokemon.

      The real news is about investors pumping billions into a company without even the most cursory research.

      Gotta jump on them stocks fast!

    2. Re:Breaking news: investors are idiots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      The real news here isn't really about Nintendo or Pokemon.

      The real news is about investors pumping billions into a company without even the most cursory research.

      Gotta jump on them stocks fast!

      Gotta buy 'em all?

    3. Re:Breaking news: investors are idiots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      The real news here isn't really about Nintendo or Pokemon.

      The real news is about investors pumping billions into a company without even the most cursory research.

      Investors, by definition, would have sought enough information to know this. The trouble is with the traders, including the automated algorithms that trade based on news wire feeds.

    4. Re:Breaking news: investors are idiots by tnk1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not really all that hard, you just have to avoid greed. You sell some as soon as it hits a predetermined point, and some more at another higher predetermined point. Remember, if goes even higher, you aren't losing money by not getting that price, you've made money no matter what. Nintendo isn't a pump and dump stock, so if you end up with some left over at the normal price when the bubble pops, you're doing just fine.

      Also, when the stock plummets you have some buy orders when the market irrationally decides that now the company is completely worthless because it isn't overpriced and you make even more money by using your gains on Nintendo to buy Nintendo when everyone is underpricing it. When Nintendo's stock price levels out, you've made even more money.

      You will have a problem if you're holding all your cash for that "perfect moment" where you can maximize your take. That's how you end up getting your ass handed to you in sudden downturns in price or you simply miss most of the profit. Free money is free money. Don't get greedy.

    5. Re:Breaking news: investors are idiots by randm.ca · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm guessing a lot of the people who wished they had shorted don't have any stock to sell, so "just sell the stocks" isn't an option and short selling makes more sense.

    6. Re:Breaking news: investors are idiots by StikyPad · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unfortunately, the laws of physics still forbid investing with the benefit of hindsight.

  2. Up, down, flying around by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's still 60% above what it was on 7th July... but doesn't seem to be done plummeting yet.

    Just let them get Wii U Zelda out before folding, eh?

    Here's something for graph fans, since there wasn't one of the share price:

    http://abstrusegoose.com/191

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  3. Great example of a key flaw in the stock market by sabbede · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Too much emotion, not enough reason. Excess enthusiasm and pessimism are the top causes of market instability. People got whipped up into a buying frenzy based on bad/incomplete information, and a third party (Nintendo) suffers for it.

    Automated trading only reinforces the problem, since it magnifies emotionally driven market conditions.

    1. Re:Great example of a key flaw in the stock market by Major+Blud · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The market corrects for it by brutally penalizing those who make bad decisions and rewarding those who make good ones.

      If only that were true....
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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    2. Re:Great example of a key flaw in the stock market by thrasher+thetic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The market DID penalize all of those. The government bailed them out.

  4. Mark Twain quote from The Big Short by Doaner · · Score: 4, Insightful

    “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

  5. Re:"Business People" by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The stock market isn't rational. It never was.
    A company lays off people the stocks go up. Not because the company is restructuring to something new, but because that is what people are told is how it works. Layoffs raise the stock prices. So you hear about layoffs you run to try to get the price before it rises more.
     

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    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  6. Re:Niantic Sux by Shortguy881 · · Score: 3, Funny

    But I got "minor text fixes" today.

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    Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
  7. Shares falling %17 after growing nearly %100, meh by Timmy+D+Programmer · · Score: 3, Informative

    A %17 pullback after doubling? seriously, that's not hardly a plummet

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    (If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
  8. Is this accurate? by wardrich86 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Did they really jump-ship for that reason? Nowhere in the game is Nintendo even mentioned. I never did understand the stock jump with Nintendo, though. I figured if anything, Pokemon Company, Game Freaks, or Niantic would be the ones that would skyrocket (assuming they're tradeable companies).

    Now I'm seriously confused as to how the stock market works. Is it really full of that many idiots that just throw money at anything without doing ANY research beforehand? The only real tie that Nintendo has with Pokemon is their tie to The Pokemon Company, so why didn't people jump on those stocks?

  9. Re:idiots by Touvan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Nintendo's position seems to be that they can keep innovating in the console space, and keep their position atop a heap of their own making. They don't want to deliver on someone else's platform, because it isn't as profitable. They are going after big long term profit, not reactionary short term profit.

    No matter how many times folks at Nintendo explain this, people still don't seem to get it - maybe the same people who invest in Nintendo after another company releases Pokemon Go. Or maybe because it's a bigger gamble or bolder play, and most people are very risk averse, they can't wrap their heads around it?

  10. Re:"Business People" by chipschap · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The stock market is insane. I never understood why the market would shoot up or down in a matter of hours based on some transient event. I blamed it on the stupidity of traders and their shortsightedness. That isn't completely wrong but then I read about our favorite people, hedge fund traders, having to make large short-term profit to stay alive. (It would be better if they all disappeared, I think, but that's another discussion.)

  11. Re:"Business People" by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't know who gave this analogy:

    The stock market is like a bet on the outcome of a beauty contest.

    You see all the beauties, and probably can easy pick your favourite, however: you have to bet whom the jury will choose.

    Betting who the jury will choose, is a complete different thing than deciding which is the most beautiful or agreeing with friends at a table about the three most beautiful ones.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.