Betting on Zero

Writer/director Ted Braun follows controversial hedge fund titan Bill Ackman as he puts a billion dollars on the line in his crusade to expose Herbalife as the largest pyramid scheme in history.

This is just about as perfect as a documentary can get. The very moment I was introduced to Herbalife in the early 2000s, I knew it was a pyramid scheme. But obviously others do not see that, as the business continued to be profitable and thriving.

This documentary not only explores the pyramid nature of the business, but explains how people fall for it. In some cases, it is because they are unsophisticated immigrants. Other times, they had the business misrepresented to them. But it is not just stupid or ignorant people who fall for it.

Without giving anything away, this story will have you cheering on Ackman. He may be one of the very few Wall Street investors who is actually hoping the little guy will win.

Great story, however there is quite a long stretch of the film that does not translate any of the Spanish speakers! I watched this on Netflix, so, I don't know if it was an oversight on their part or not. Otherwise, I'm inspired that people are speaking up about being ripped off. It's embarrassing but it helps so many people!

Overall this is movie is really interesting. William Ackman does his best trying to expose the business model used by Herbalife, which is cleary unethical and the potential to harm a lot of uneducated and unsophisticated investors. Meanwhile, another CEO of an investment firm tries to fight him by buying buying shares from Herbalife, which creates this competitive rivalry between investors. It does a great job highlighting all sides and the consequences the business model has (which is not officially defined as a pyramid scheme by the FTC, but is pretty damn close).

For me, someone that studies banking and finance this movie could be a lot more attractive than for someone that is uninterested in finance or markets in general, my advice is therefore watch it if you are interested in the field of finance or like documentaries regarding economicies, else this is propably not worth it.

It's an interesting story, but there's 15 minutes of useful content in the story; the remaining ninety minutes is pure filler. As you're watching, whenever you feel "god we get it, you've already said this a dozen times" jump forward 20 min -- you won't miss anything.

I have nothing to say beyond that. Hopefully IMDB won't force me to pad this reviews with vast amounts of filler!

I started to watch the document mainly because I was curious about Mr. Ackman's investment style.

But, at the end, I got to learn and think about a lot more things than it.

The document stitches well different facts, people, struggles, and battles surrounding Herbal Life, a controversial but quite successful U. S. company.

Yes, it's about Ackman's challenging investment journey of shorting on the company's shares for multiple reasons (including humanitarian ones).

But it's about innocent people lured into businesses where they are mostly destined to lose and fail. This part was sad as they were real people rather than abstract numbers on excel sheets or legal documents.

It's also about flaws and loopholes in our economic, political, and legal systems (not only in the U. S. but across the world): Nearly imposed damages not being dealt because they are not illegal; controversial entities/people flourishing through connections and lobbying.

I don't want to go far by making too big an analogy. But I now keep thinking about this pyramid scheme. Maybe many more companies and societies (than the focal company) may work on similar mechanisms to a less controversial and subtler extent, or maybe not!