This story is part of Holiday Gift Guide 2021, our list of ideas, by topic, by recipient and by price, to help you discover the perfect gift.
If you’ve spent any time on CNET over the past year, you’d be well aware that foldable phones are back.
And, as of right now, one of the top selling items during the Black Friday sales is a foldable phone. But it’s not a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 or a Microsoft Surface Duo 2.
No, it’s one of these… things.
Welcome to 2004.
Amazon
That’s an LG Classic Flip phone and you can currently pick one up for a ridiculous $20. If you’d went back in time and told 2004 year old me you could pick a phone like this up for the cost of a DVD, I’d lose it.
Sincerely, one of these would work well for a kid’s first phone. Just something you could use to stay in contact without worrying about all that unfettered internet access. At time of writing it was #1 on Amazon’s “movers and shakers” list in the electronics section. Who is buying these things and for what reason? Some questions are better left unanswered.
The 88-year-old British screen icon revealed in an interview broadcast Friday that the newly released “Best Sellers” — in which he stars with Aubrey Plaza — has “turned out to be what is my last part really.”
“Because I haven’t worked for two years, and I have a spine problem which affects my legs so I can’t walk very well, so—” the two-time Academy Award winner told BBC radio host Simon Mayo.
“And I also wrote a book, a couple of books, which were published and were successful, so I’m now not an actor, I’m a writer,” he continued. “Which is lovely, because as an actor you have to get up at half-past six in the morning and go to the studio. As a writer, you can start writing without leaving the bed.”
Michael Caine said he is finished with films.
Pressed by Mayo as to whether “Best Sellers” really was his last picture, Caine confirmed, “I think it would be, yeah.”
“There haven’t been any offers honestly for two years, because nobody’s been making any movies I’d wanna do,” he added. “Also, you know I’m 88. There’s not exactly scripts pouring out with a leading man that’s 88, you know?”
Caine has penned multiple biographies and said he wrote his fictional debut, a thriller titled “If You Don’t Want to Die,” during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
His decades-spanning movie career has included roles in “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “The Cider House Rules,” “Alfie,” “The Italian Job,” “The Quiet American” and “The Dark Knight” trilogy, among more than 170 acting credits.
Fans may get at least one more shot at seeing a new Caine movie, though, with historical drama “Medieval” — which he filmed before the pandemic — scheduled for release in 2022.
These days, most of the merchandise on Amazon’s online marketplace isn’t actually from Amazon. An estimated 56% of all products sold on the platform come from third-party sellers. Now, these sellers aren’t supposed to be able to email their Amazon customers directly, and doing so outside of Amazon’s official channels violates the platform’s terms of service.
However, a concerning new Wall Street Journal report shows that some sellers are still finding ways to get in touch with buyers and hound them about editing or deleting their negative reviews, and some companies even offer “email extraction” and “reviewer lookup” services so sellers can hunt down unsatisfied customers.
One such customer the Journal spoke with is New Yorker Katherine Scott, who said she left a negative review for a kitchen oil spray bottle that she bought in March after the product didn’t work as advertised. A week later, someone claiming to be a customer service rep from the seller reached out via email to offer her a refund in exchange for deleting her review.
“We are willing to refund in full. When we do not receive a response, we will assume that you did not see it, and will continue to send emails,” the message read via the Journal. It concluded with a plea: “We hope you can reconsider deleting comments at your convenience okay?”
When Scott asked for a refund but refused to take down her review, she received an email from another representative offering her $20, double what she paid for the product, to delete it. She received several more unwanted emails over the next few months, all pestering her to take her review down.
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“It was so creepy. They emailed me directly about it over and over,” Scott told the outlet.
At least a dozen other customer reviews for similar products mentioned that the seller reached out and pressured them to revise their negative review. “Product doesn’t work and company will bother you till you change review,” one customer wrote, the Journal reports. “Seller offers $20-$30 to delete negative reviews,” said another.
Another Amazon customer, Ben Hendin of Tulsa, Oklahoma, told the outlet that a seller reached out to him four times after he left a negative review of a finger splint. To try to convince him to delete the review, the seller kept upping the refund amount, eventually reaching $40, more than double what the splint cost.
When it comes to sharing information with third-party sellers, Amazon only releases “customers’ personal information related to those transactions with that third party,” according to its privacy notice.Qualified sellers have the option of using Amazon’s buyer-seller messaging service, but that uses a unique encrypted email address rather than the customer’s personal email.
“We do not share customer email addresses with third-party sellers,” an Amazon spokesperson told Journal.
Amazon’s customer product review policies for sellers explicitly prohibit them from asking a customer to change or remove their review. Sellers are also banned from offering “a refund or other compensation” to a reviewer in exchange for editing their review.
As for how the seller got her email address, Scott told the Journal she had a theory. Her Amazon package came with a “free gift” insert for a cooking thermometer that prompted her to enter her email address and order ID, she said. This kind of insert is also against Amazon’s policies, a company spokesperson told the Journal. Hendin said he asked the seller directly about how they got his contact information, to which the representative reportedly replied: “Boss found it through social software search for names.”
There’s apparently enough demand from sellers that companies have begun offering services explicitly dedicated to finding contact info for unsatisfied customers. One company the Journal investigated, Matic Chain, reportedly offers an “email extraction service for Amazon sellers.” A company representative told the outlet that it combs through Google and social media to match a buyer’s name with their contact information.
Another company that offers similar services, ZonBoost, openly boasts about it on its website. As screenshotted below, it advertises a “Reviewer Lookup” tool where, for just $60 a pop, you can plug in the link to the Amazon review and ZonBoost promises to “find you those buyers’ name & personal email with 100% accuracy!” (Technically it’s 60 “credits,” but each credit costs one dollar.)
Screenshot: ZonBoost (Gizmodo)
“The data source of all of our features is Amazon’s database, which guarantees 100% accuracy!” reads the tool’s Q&A page.
Amazon and ZonBoost did not respond to Gizmodo’s request for comments.
After the Journal reached out to Amazon about Scott’s experience, the listing, seller, and brand all disappeared from the platform, according to the outlet.
“The issue you’re highlighting was detected by our internal processes, and the appropriate enforcement actions were taken,” an Amazon spokesperson told the outlet. They continued:
“Amazon provides a great deal of help content, proactive coaching, warnings and other assistance to sellers to ensure they remain compliant with our clearly stated policies. We have clear policies for both reviewers and selling partners that prohibit abuse of our community features, and we suspend, ban and take legal action against those who violate these policies. Bad actors that attempt to abuse our system make up a tiny fraction of activity on our site and we use sophisticated tools to combat them and we make it increasingly difficult for them to hide.”
So what should you do if a seller tries to pressure you into changing your review? An Amazon spokesperson told the Journal that customers can report them by emailing community-help@amazon.com or click the “Report Abuse” link on the review page.
In a decision that may have significant implications for the Mets, the Cubs have elected to become sellers at the July 30 MLB trade deadline, The Athletic reported Friday morning. According to the report, a Cubs scout was recently seen at a Mets Low-A affiliate game, further fueling trade speculation between the two clubs.
The Mets were linked during the offseason to Kris Bryant, who even received a mysterious “Welcome to the Mets” text over the winter amid a bevy of trade rumors. Bryant, a free agent at season’s end, would add right-handed pop to a Mets offense that ranks second-to-last in all of baseball in runs scored. A four-time All-Star, Bryant is hitting .268 with 16 home runs and 43 RBIs on the season, seeing time at both third base and in the outfield.
Bryant is far from the only Cub likely to draw heavy interest ahead of the trade deadline. Out of the bullpen, closer Craig Kimbrel has rediscovered his All-Star form, posting a 0.57 ERA and notching 20 saves. Veteran Kyle Hendricks is a reliable innings-eater in the rotation, pitching to a 3.83 ERA.
Kris Bryant is likely the Cubs’ most valuable trade chip.Getty Images
Shortstop Javier Baez and first baseman Anthony Rizzo, two franchise cornerstones, are also on expiring contracts, seemingly incentivizing the franchise to net a haul of prospects rather than simply let the pair walk as free agents come the offseason.
Chicago’s decision to become sellers comes on the heels of an 11-game losing streak that saw the Cubs take a nosedive in the standings, plummeting from first place to 9.5 games back in just 15 days. They are only one game closer to the first-place Brewers than they are to the last-place Pirates.
“We’ve believed in these guys since 2015,” Cubs president Jed Hoyer said on Thursday prior to Chicago’s 8-0 loss to the Phillies. “They’ve had a ton of success and I would never count those guys out. But 11 days ago, we were certainly fully on the buy side of this transaction and everyone was calling about that. Obviously, people are now calling to see which players are available, so it’s a very different scenario than we expected. Life comes at you fast.”
NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Gunmen on motorcycles attacked a group of civilians returning from market day in a volatile corner of Niger, leaving at least 58 people dead and then burning granaries to the ground, the government said Tuesday.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday’s massacres, though extremists belonging to the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara group are known to be active in the Tillaberi region where the villages were attacked.
The victims were returning home from a large livestock market in Banibangou, near Niger’s troubled border with Mali. The suspected extremists also destroyed nearby granaries that held valuable food stores.
The announcement was read on Niger state television Tuesday evening by government spokesman Abdourahmane Zakaria , who declared three days of national mourning for the victims.
Monday’s attacks underscore the enormous security challenges facing Niger’s new president, Mohamed Bazoum, who won the election in late February to succeed outgoing leader Mahamadou Issoufou.
Not only are jihadis active in the Tillaberi region, but the counterterrorism offensives against those extremists have helped given rise to ethnic militias, analysts say. Intercommunal tensions have been exacerbated as a result, particularly near the border between Mali and Niger.
Monday’s attack echoed a January massacre that left 100 people dead in two villages also in the Tillaberi region that hadn’t been claimed by any extremist group or militia.
Extremists staged mass attacks on Niger’s military in the Tillaberi region, killing more than 70 in December 2019 and more than 89 in January 2020. It’s near the area where four U.S. Special Forces soldiers were killed along with five Nigerien colleagues in 2017.
___
Associated Press writer Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed to this report.
Investors who bet against stocks are targeting special-purpose acquisition companies, one of the hottest growth areas on Wall Street. The dollar value of bearish bets against shares of SPACs has more than tripled to about $2.7 billion from $724 million at the start of the year, according to data from S3 Partners.
Some of the stocks under attack belong to large SPACs that surged in recent months, in part because they were backed by high-profile financiers. A blank-check company created by venture capitalist
Chamath Palihapitiya
that plans to merge with lending startup Social Finance Inc. is a popular target, with 19% of its shares outstanding sold short, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The short interest in
Churchill Capital Corp. IV,
a SPAC created by former investment banker
Michael Klein
that is merging with electric-vehicle startup Lucid, more than doubled in March to about 5%.
Others are wagering against companies after they combine with SPACs. Muddy Waters Capital LLC announced last week it was betting against
XL Fleet Corp.
, a fleet electrification company that went public in December after merging with a SPAC. XL has since said Muddy Waters’s report, which alleged XL inflated its sales pipeline and made misleading claims about its technology among other issues, had “numerous inaccuracies.”
XL’s stock price dropped the day Muddy Waters released its report by about 13%, to $13.86, from its prior close on March 2. Shares closed Friday at $12.79.
Shares of
Lordstown Motors Corp.
fell nearly 17% Friday after Hindenburg Research released a report saying the electric-truck startup had misled investors on its orders and production. The company, which merged with a SPAC in October, said the report contained half-truths and lies. The short interest in Lordstown shares rose to 5% from 3.4% in the week before the report’s publication, according to data from S&P.
“SPACs are an area of focus,” said Muddy Waters’s
Carson Block.
The veteran short seller said SPACs largely make up the universe of companies he views as both “abysmal” and relatively free from technical challenges, such as high short interest, which can make betting against them difficult.
SPACs are shell firms that raise capital by issuing stock with the sole purpose of buying or merging with a private company to take it public. They are dominating the market for new stock issues, becoming a status symbol for celebrities while pumping the value of acquisitions, like betting company
DraftKings Inc.,
into the tens of billions of dollars.
Hedge funds that buy into SPACs early see them as a way to make lofty returns without much risk. Individual investors are attracted by the chance to get positions in newly public companies that they could rarely purchase through traditional IPOs. The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a statement on Wednesday warning that it “is never a good idea to invest in a SPAC just because someone famous sponsors or invests in it.”
A monthslong rally in the stocks lost steam recently amid a broad selloff in technology and high-growth companies. An index of SPAC stocks operated by Indxx fell about 17% from mid-February to March 10, while the Nasdaq Composite Index declined about 7.3% over the same period.
“These are all momentum stocks, and a lot of people want to short them,” said
Matthew Tuttle,
whose firm Tuttle Tactical Management runs an exchange-traded fund that allows investors to hold a portfolio of SPAC stocks. Mr. Tuttle is preparing to launch an ETF that bets against “de-SPAC” stocks of companies that have merged with a SPAC—like electric-truck manufacturer
Nikola Corp.
and baked-goods maker
Hostess Brands Inc.
—and a separate fund that invests in the stocks.
Private companies are flooding to special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, to bypass the traditional IPO process and gain a public listing. WSJ explains why some critics say investing in these so-called blank-check companies isn’t worth the risk. Illustration: Zoë Soriano/WSJ
Postmerger companies are particularly attractive to short because they have larger market capitalizations, making their shares easier to borrow, and because early investors in the SPACs are eager to sell shares to lock in profits, analysts and fund managers said.
Short sellers borrow stocks they believe are overvalued and immediately sell them, hoping to repurchase the shares for a lower price when they need to be returned and to pocket the difference. The strategy proved dangerous in recent months when individual investors organized on social media to push up stocks like GameStop Corp., forcing short sellers to buy shares and cap their losses, helping to drive prices still higher.
Continued strong investor demand for SPACs could catch short sellers in a similar squeeze. Shorting SPACs can also be risky because their shares have a natural floor at $10, the price at which they can be redeemed before a merger, and because they are prone to sharp price moves, analysts said.
Still, the portion of shares sold short in SPACs and their acquisitions is climbing.
A blank-check company created by venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya that plans to merge with lending startup Social Finance Inc. is a popular target.
Photo:
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Some are betting against stocks they believe rose too fast, to unsustainable valuations. The price of bioplastics company
Danimer Scientific Inc.
nearly tripled to $64 in the first six weeks of the year after it was bought by a SPAC. The short interest in Danimer stock has climbed to 8.5% from around 1% in January, and its share price has traded down to about $42, according to data from S&P.
Others are making bearish bets to hedge against potential losses in SPAC stocks they own.
Veteran short seller
Eduardo Marques
cited SPACs and their boosting the number of U.S.-listed stocks as a short-selling opportunity, according to a pitch for a stock-picking hedge fund called Pertento he plans to launch this year. America’s roster of public companies had shrunk from the mid-1990s onward, but that trend has recently reversed, partly because of SPACs.
Their popularity has helped spark new Wall Street offerings.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
this year started offering clients set baskets of similar stocks to short, pitching them as a way to hedge SPAC exposure, people who have seen the offering said. Clients typically customize the baskets Goldman offers, which are thematic and sector-focused, such as on bitcoin and electric vehicles.
Kerrisdale Capital founder
Sahm Adrangi
started shorting postmerger SPAC companies earlier than most, with a public bet in November against the stock of frozen-food maker
Tattooed Chef Inc.,
which still trades above its price at that time. But the stock has fallen about 13% during the recent market slump.
“We saw these stocks go up a lot and now that people are de-risking, these highflying SPACs are coming down to earth,” Mr. Adrangi said.
—Amrith Ramkumar and Mike DeStefano contributed to this article.
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Write to Matt Wirz at matthieu.wirz@wsj.com and Juliet Chung at juliet.chung@wsj.com
GameStop’s stock price, which had dropped steadily over the previous five years before beginning a climb last fall, closed at an all-time high on Friday following a tremendously volatile week in which Reddit-organized day traders made a lot of trouble for investment firms short-selling the stock.
Trading of GameStop stock on the New York Stock Exchange was halted twice Friday, but not before the price peaked at $73.09. It closed at $65.01, beating the previous record of $63.30 set on Dec. 24, 2007. GameStop closed on Thursday at $43.03, and when the surge began last week, it was around $20 a share.
What’s going on? Well, at the beginning of September, the stock started rallying out of the $5 doldrums where it had been for a little over a year. That’s because dog food tycoon Ryan Cohen (the founder of Chewy, which he sold for $3.35 billion in 2017) had just purchased a 10% stake in the beleaguered video game retailer. He and two allies have since joined GameStop’s board of directors, and those positions could help Cohen act on his tough talk about where GameStop’s priorities should be. Cohen says the Texas-based company needs to give up its continued brick-and-mortar retail focus altogether and move to “a technology-driven vision.”
What’s behind the eye-popping stock price surge this week, reports Ars Technica, is “a massive short squeeze bubble.” In the investing practice known as short selling, a party borrows shares of a stock and immediately sells them at the current market price; when the price later drops (as a short seller is betting it will), the short seller buys back the same number of shares to return them to the lender — and makes money by having to pay back less than what the shares were worth at the time of borrowing.
In this case, GameStop’s stock price is rising, forcing these short sellers to buy more shares at a higher price to cover their positions. That has put GameStop’s stock price in an upward spiral, one that analysts like Wedbush Securities’ Michael Pachter think will quickly come to an end.
“The smart money already got in and probably got out,” Pachter told Ars.
The smart money got in more than a year ago, reports Motherboard. Some of it came in from investors on the subreddit WallStreetBets, a community that styles itself as “Like 4Chan found a Bloomberg Terminal.” A Redditor there posted screenshots from 2019 of a $50,000 purchase of GameStop shares, when the stock price was below $1.
That’s because WallStreetBets (and others) reasoned that if they bought in to GameStop, short sellers would eventually have to cover their positions together, driving the price way up. “There is likely not an original GameStop-issued share left on the market,” noted one Redditor. In other words, GameStop has issued more shares than are actually available to buy. Higher demand plus scarce supply equals a higher price, of course, and short sellers buying up stock to cover their debts — along with, of course, interest from new investors looking to short the stock — is what’s driving the demand.
Citron Research is one of those short sellers, and on Friday the firm said it was no longer commenting on GameStop’s stock because “an angry mob” had made it a dangerously volatile stock, Bloomberg reported. Citron also alleges that these miscreants had tried to hack the company’s Twitter account, after the company criticized the stock on Tuesday and then made plans for a livestream on social media to discuss that.
At the close, GameStop is worth $4.5 billion, its highest market cap since late 2015 and 18X what it was worth halfway through last year.$GME is now up more than 1,300% in the past year and 245% in 2021. Nothing substantial about the company’s future has changed in that time.
— Jeremy C. Owens (@jowens510) January 22, 2021
GameStop’s closing price on Friday gave it a market capitalization of $4.5 billion, almost 20 times higher than what the company was worth as of late July. But none of this means GameStop has actually recovered or saved itself as a business. Indeed, its last quarterly earnings report, in December, showed revenues still declining and losses per share increasing over the same figures a year before.
In the past two years, the company has closed more than 750 stores out of the 5,700 locations it had as of 2019. The same year, the company got rid of top executives and fired more than 100 corporate staffers, in a round of layoffs that also gutted the staff of GameStop-owned Game Informer magazine.
