📈 Zero-vote dual-class governance orphans Snap - and the super-voting era ends at 4% rates
Chamath's read on why a company with steadily compounding DAUs trades 91% off its peak: Snap's IPO took 100% of the voting power away from the common shareholder, which is 'the most glaring example of corporate misgovernance that has ever happened on the Internet'. With no feedback loop, no institution can size into it, so investors abandon it and it becomes 'stranded' - 'a refugee in the public markets'. Structurally, governance overreach was a zero-rate artifact: with liquid alternatives yielding 3-5%, the buy side refuses super-voting structures on new IPOs. Bearish zero-vote issuers and the governance-discount cohort.
0
CONVICTION
peaked 35.2 EMBER
DORMANT
band · contested
▼ SHORT SNAP
expression · bearish equities
MISS
outcome · R -13.6% · α -26.5%
2023-10-22
window closed
⚠ CONFLICTING IDEA ON THE SAME TICKER
— the board is arguing with itself; net it before trading (ticker view →)
also touching these tickers, same direction: Narrow Section 230 carve-out unleashes a tort wave on social platforms 4 (SNAP)
⚖ Why this verdict
fully deterministic — evaluate.py replays this from daily closes; nothing below is editable or hand-set
- Window: 2022-10-22 → 2023-10-22 — first mention + 12-month horizon, then the window locks.
- The call: ▼ SHORT SNAP (primary play). SNAP rose 13.6% over the window → direction-adjusted R = -13.6% (the call lost money).
- Benchmark: holding SPY over the same window returned +12.9%
→ α = -13.6 − (+12.9) = -26.5%
— what this call made or lost against just owning the index. This is the number the verdict uses.
Stock-selection read: -0.7% — did SNAP move the predicted way relative to the market. The two only differ on a SHORT: this call was right about direction relative to the index but still cost money versus holding it.
- Rule fired:
· HIT — R ≥ +10% AND α ≥ +5· PARTIAL — R ≥ +5% OR α ≥ 0▶ MISS — everything else
- Credit: supporters of a MISS earn 0 each, opposers the inverse — this feeds the scoreboard weights. supported: Chamath | opposed: Brad Gerstner
Conviction timeline
bands: green ≥ 65 · watch ≥ 45 · ember ≥ 15
Plays vs SPY · % since first mention (2022-10-22)
Plays
| expression | symbol | kind | relevance | rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ▼ SHORT | SNAP | stock | PRIMARY | the named company Chamath says investors abandon and strand |
| ▼ SHORT | IPO | etf | adjacent | recent-IPO cohort where the super-voting structure gets repriced at 4-5% rates |
Mention log
Chamath
equities w=0.84 · n=160
· E101 (2022-10-22) · explicit_prediction · strength 3
▶ 30:07
SUPPORT
“And so we just completely whipsawed to the other side and said we need to own anything that grows. So tech got a disproportionate amount of attention, but in that we lost our standards. And we are now going to go through the hangover of dealing with it. And so, you know, Snap will be an example of where investors are going to abandon that company.”
Brad Gerstner
(regular guest ×1.0)
equities w=0.95 · n=22
· E101 (2022-10-22) · explicit_prediction · strength 2
▶ 26:42
OPPOSE
“You know, I think it's again, when Facebook was doing really great and Snapchat was doing great, nobody complained about Super Voting Stock. Okay, so I think that, you know, my preference would be that I partner with a company where I know the founder, irrespective of their votes, right, listens, cares, and has the mental flexibility to make course corrections, right?”
Who built this conviction
each voice's total force on the score — supports and opposes from every mention, weighted exactly as the replay applied them · share = % of all mention-driven movement
⏳ decay drained -19.8 over the idea's life — that's time passing, attributed to no one
Score events
| episode | kind | Δ | after | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E101 2022-10-22 | init | +35.2 | 35.2 | E101 born by Chamath (explicit_prediction x3) [w=0.84] |
| E101 2022-10-22 | oppose | -11.5 | 23.7 | E101 Brad Gerstner opposes x2 [w=0.95] |
| E102 2022-10-29 | decay | -0.9 | 22.8 | E102 silent |
| E103 2022-11-05 | decay | -0.9 | 21.9 | E103 silent |
| E105 2022-11-19 | decay | -0.9 | 21.0 | E105 silent |
| E106 2022-12-03 | decay | -0.8 | 20.1 | E106 silent |
| E107 2022-12-10 | decay | -0.8 | 19.3 | E107 silent |
| E108 2022-12-16 | decay | -0.8 | 18.6 | E108 silent |
| E109 2022-12-24 | decay | -0.7 | 17.8 | E109 silent |
| E110 2023-01-06 | decay | -0.7 | 17.1 | E110 silent |
| E111 2023-01-13 | decay | -0.7 | 16.4 | E111 silent |
| E112 2023-01-20 | decay | -0.7 | 15.8 | E112 silent |
| E113 2023-01-27 | decay | -0.6 | 15.1 | E113 silent |
| E114 2023-02-04 | decay | -0.6 | 14.5 | E114 silent |
| E115 2023-02-11 | decay | -0.6 | 14.0 | E115 silent |
| E116 2023-02-17 | decay | -0.6 | 13.4 | E116 silent |
| E118 2023-03-03 | decay | -0.5 | 12.9 | E118 silent |
| E119 2023-03-11 | decay | -0.5 | 12.3 | E119 silent |
| E120 2023-03-17 | decay | -0.5 | 11.9 | E120 silent |
| E121 2023-03-24 | decay | -0.5 | 11.4 | E121 silent |
| E122 2023-03-31 | decay | -0.5 | 10.9 | E122 silent |
| E123 2023-04-07 | decay | -0.4 | 10.5 | E123 silent |
| E124 2023-04-14 | decay | -0.4 | 10.1 | E124 silent |
| E125 2023-04-21 | decay | -0.4 | 9.7 | E125 silent |
| E126 2023-04-28 | decay | -0.4 | 9.3 | E126 silent |
| E128 2023-05-12 | decay | -0.4 | 8.9 | E128 silent |
| E129 2023-05-19 | decay | -0.4 | 8.5 | E129 silent |
| E130 2023-05-26 | decay | -0.3 | 8.2 | E130 silent |
| E131 2023-06-02 | decay | -0.3 | 7.9 | E131 silent |
| E132 2023-06-10 | decay | -0.3 | 7.6 | E132 silent |
| E133 2023-06-16 | decay | -0.3 | 7.3 | E133 silent |
| E134 2023-06-24 | decay | -0.3 | 7.0 | E134 silent |
| E135 2023-07-01 | decay | -0.3 | 6.7 | E135 silent |
| E136 2023-07-09 | decay | -0.3 | 6.4 | E136 silent |
| E137 2023-07-14 | decay | -0.3 | 6.2 | E137 silent |
| E139 2023-07-27 | decay | -0.2 | 5.9 | E139 silent |
| E140 2023-08-04 | decay | -0.2 | 5.7 | E140 silent |
| E141 2023-08-11 | decay | -0.2 | 5.5 | E141 silent |
| E142 2023-08-18 | decay | -0.2 | 5.2 | E142 silent |
| E143 2023-08-25 | decay | -0.2 | 5.0 | E143 silent |
| E144 2023-09-01 | decay | -0.2 | 4.8 | E144 silent |
| E146 2023-09-22 | decay | -0.2 | 4.6 | E146 silent |
| E147 2023-09-29 | decay | -0.2 | 4.4 | E147 silent |
| E148 2023-10-07 | decay | -0.2 | 4.3 | E148 silent |
| E149 2023-10-13 | decay | -0.2 | 4.1 | E149 silent |
| E150 2023-10-20 | decay | -0.2 | 3.9 | E150 silent |