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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.

13 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. 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.

  3. 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.”

  4. 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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  5. 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?