Meet the Man Who Kills Stock Values for Fun and Profit

If Andrew Left writes about a company, its stock drops 10% on average
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 8, 2017 4:36 PM CDT
Meet the Man Who Kills Stock Values for Fun and Profit
Andrew Left, the man the "New York Times" calls the "bounty hunter of Wall Street."   (YouTube)

Andrew Left made $280,000 in two hours by short-selling stock in a Chinese real estate company, then publishing claims the company was committing accounting fraud. Shortly after the 2016 election, Left issued a series of tweets about a company called Express Scripts, accusing it of inflating drug prices; the company's stock is still down 13%. He's also mused about short-selling stocks of companies before revealing them as a subprime lender or publishing proof their new MS drug doesn't work. Perhaps surprisingly, this is all completely legal (assuming the short-seller isn't committing fraud themselves). It's known as activist short-selling, and Left might be the best there is at it. The New York Times has his story.

Basically, Left bets against the price of a stock, then intentionally hurts the stock by publicly accusing the company of fraud or abuse. He gets his information from confidential sources and calls himself an investigative journalist with one difference: He "can make millions of dollars." An expert on activist short-selling says people look at Left and realize "it's not a lot of work" to do what he does. That's not exactly true. While activist short-selling campaigns increased 1,300% between 2006 and 2015, very few activist short-sellers have a record of success. Left does. If he writes about a company, its value—on average—drops 10% in a year. Sometimes it's as much as 95%. "Some guys know this stuff better than me. But I know how to put it in [expletive] tweets," he tells the Times. Read the full story here. (More Longform stories.)

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