I wanted to show a few examples with pictures to illustrate how inexpensive it can be to buy 100 votes
I am going to show pictures of each ticker with me going long 100 shares, short a call, and long a put. The call and put will be for the same strike and the same expiration. At the very end will be a summary table of upfront costs, losses/gains, and then some additional comments.
Please note:
- This assumes no early exercise, which is a risk to this.
- This assumes what is displayed on the ticket can be filled. Technically, it will not fill as optimally, but the gist of this is the key.
- This is all based on data from thinkorswim pulled around 11:30am on 3/30/2023.
Examples
TLDR Summary
- GME: for $2.4k, you can buy 100 votes and you’ll lose is $88
- Robinhood: for $1.1k, you can buy 100 votes and you’ll gain $13
- AMC: for $0.7k, you can buy 100 votes and you’ll lose $138
- Apple: for $16.8k, you can buy 100 votes and you’ll gain $194
- Microsoft: for $27.4k, you can buy 100 votes and you’ll gain $141
For 5 different tickers, this shows how you can shed some or all of your economic risk and have full voting rights. This is empty voting!
Fucking incredible and infuriating.
There’s a portion in marketliteracy.org that talks about some of this (roughly). Corporate voting and all the related machinations around that are truly a complete and total sham.