Hess AG: From IPO to insolvency in less than half a year

Hess AG is a German based enterprise with 360 employees producing lights and lanterns.
They IPOed on the 25th of October and quite high priced, starting at 15 EUR/share.

The graphic shows the development.

On January the 21 Hess AG announced the sacking of key personal ( among them the CFO) and suspected manipulations.

On valueandopportunity the consolidation of cash flows doesn t work out, it seems that revenues have been booked against receivables.
By what it seems, the fraud might had been discovered quite easy.
Interesting for me was that numerical information that is underlying the prospectus is based on is not double checked.
Yesterday on the 13th of February the filed for insolvency for the mother company as well as one subsidiary.
The company states that its is deeply indebted and lacking perspectives for the future.

This is an incredible story i would have expected in China (no offense) or other less developed financial markets; yet this thinking now seems like arrogance to me.
No thinking about it, everybody profited well from this scheme, until it blew. The banks receiving underwriting fees, the key employees bonuses. The auditors (here DHMP according to this news) might have to justify themselves, but against such foul-play they are helpless (of course...). Regulatory bodies are knee deep in work anyway.

Now the company is insolvent and possible claims from law suits can most likely not be covered.

Thoughts on luxury tax

Recently a rich German (Maschmeyer) promoted the idea of a tax on luxury goods, which ran through the media.
Distribution through such a tax would "hit the right ones".

I disagree with this view.
While showing off with luxury to promote personal wealth and status receives widespread negative sentiment, it also has its advantages.
Especially in Germany many of those goods are manufactured, some of the companies are even listed, such as HanseYachts AG.
By "wasting" money on such goods, employment is created. Money is circling in the economy, similar to a distribution by above tax, yet without repression.
The actual problem is people not spending their money on goods/services, but holding it in highly liquid investments. Due to their high elasticity taxation becomes difficult.

Thereby in my view people should under no circumstances be discouraged to spend their excessive wealth as long as it stimulates the real economy.

While it is true that such luxury goods (esp. real estates) would be more difficult to move abroad, thereby being easier to tax, the registration and collection of such a tax would be a horrific work. If the outcome would be really a fiscal surplus given the additional work and bureaucracy is doubtful.
Just the definition of what is luxury is Sisyphus work and would be accompanied by thousands of law suits i can imaging.

Analyst Recommendation and Stock Performance: Performance Jan (Pt. 06)

The January episode, again very interesting. Yet the result is strikingly often similar:

We begin with the mtm graphic:

The worst basket outperformed all other indexes again with +8,5%, mainly driven by centrotherm (+64%), the most volatile stock in the indexes.

The total performance:

The worst basket caught up again with the DAX30 (only 0,7%). The DJ also had a strong month, second best performance (+4,5%). The best basket increase by 3,6%.

I would like to point out that this little research does have a big flaw:

The dividends payed out are not registered in the performance! Unlike in the two performance indexes DAX and DJIA. 

Of course I could adjust for dividend payed out per stock, however i do not have so much time to watch over all the stocks regarding a payout.

This effect might be stronger on the best basket, since stocks in worst basket might have major problems regarding liquidity and do not have the reserves for dividend payout.