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Comment by ghobs91 | Hacker News Reader

Right after their sleezeball CEO and all their VCs cash out, leaving small time investors holding the garbage at the end.

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I’ve never understood this point of view. Shouldn’t every investor, regardless of scale, bear responsibility for their investments? If by small investors you mean regular employee 401Ks, controlled by the wealth management division of a bank, with a heavily diversified portfolio, that is still a risk the “investor” may be fine accepting. I don’t really feel bad for anyone losing money when they actively put it into a system of massive speculation.

The thing is that most people don’t know what they are doing.

The 401(k) is the only retirement program we have. At the end of the day when companies go public and then go bust the money is often coming from the collective public in some way.

You are right, it’s a very small detail. But it’s one of those cogs that turn while making the rich richer by extracting value from the public.

The founder of this company is a billionaire. A man that runs a company which makes no money is a billionaire. Where did the money ultimately come from? Who pays the bill? He’s added no value to society by any objective measure, he’s just taken.

In most 401(k) plans the default funds don't invest in IPOs. Most workers and retail investors have no exposure here.

During the last crash, most 401k investors didn't think they had much exposure to mortgage-backed securities. Turned out they had lots of exposure to companies that held those securities. I don't know how much that's also true with these IPO stocks.

Most don’t. Not directly. But you don’t need most, just enough.

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