«When I was 5, I never knew if my teachers were married let alone what their sexual orientation was. I didn’t even know what sex was. Because I was a little CHILD and my parents gave me the gift of a childhood.»
Unknown
Looking at another instance of «go woke, go broke» — Disney going against the highly misnamed «don’t say gay»-bill in Florida — and a stock market loss of the company (and yeah, might be unrelated), I wonder — can you make money this way? Not only seeing when a company goes woke as an outsider capitalizing on that «opportunity», but actually creating such an incident as a CEO or member of the board?
I mean, just take an issue on which a lot of people feel strongly, like having teachers talk to little children (inkl. kindergarten) about sex without the parents knowing about it. Sure, some woke people can frame it in a «care-ethic» kind of way. But many will call bullshit on this framing. And if I were a parent, yeah, that would be a reason to do homeschooling … which would mean leaving the country, as in Germany, you may not raise children without the state (I could write «as this worked out so well in the past», but I want to curb the sarcasm a bit, still, the state’s interest in children is creepy). Anyway, doing something that will lead to many people protesting and not buying the company’s products. So the stock price will fall.
Now if you short shares before creating this fuck up, you could make a lot of money. And yeah, it’s likely illegal, like insider trading. And it would be highly unethical and perhaps also illegal, because you go against the best interest of the shareholders. But if you are unscrupulous and want to make money, why not tank a company for which you just work for, to make a lot of money on their losses. Who cares about a golden parachute if you can get a golden jetpack.
Just a thought. (And no, this isn’t an investment strategy I would recommend.)
