With short selling under pressure amid the GameStop frenzy, a well-known short seller says his firm isn’t planning to give up the practice any time soon. And he has a new short call to back up the promise.
In a report published early Thursday, activist short seller Hindenburg Research outlines a negative view of health-care software maker Clover Health Investments (ticker: CLOV). Hindenburg’s report claims that Clover failed to disclose a Justice Department investigation into the company’s marketing practices and undisclosed third-party deals.
Hindenburg also alleges that Chamath Palihapitiya, the billionaire investor who backed the blank check company through which Clover went public, misled investors about “critical aspects of Clover’s business in the run-up to the company’s SPAC go-public transaction last month.”
Clover and Palihapitiya didn’t immediately return a request for comment. Shares of Clover dropped 10% in premarket trading.
Hindenburg is making one concession, though, to the negative environment around short selling. Hindenburg and its founder Nate Anderson aren’t currently short Clover Health stock.
Known for the firm’s widely-read short report on electric vehicle maker Nikola (ticker: NKLA), Hindenburg isn’t taking a position in Clover Health’s stock, even after four months of investigation. Instead, the new research is meant to prove a point, Anderson says, particularly as retail traders—and Reddit users- have tried to push short sellers out of the market.
Last week, noted short seller Andrew Left of Citron Research bid farewell to his own short reports, vowing to publish long-only research going forward.
Hindenburg is hoping to remind investors that short selling still has a role in markets with its latest salvo. In Anderson’s view, short research can offer a perspective on a stock that departs from the conventional view largely established by investing professionals, auditors, regulators, and the companies themselves. Adversarial research will generate controversy because it threatens the interests of powerful people and corporations, Anderson wrote.
Meanwhile, taking the money out of the equation for one report, should help the public understand what the work is: “deep-dive investigative research,” Anderson wrote.
Hindenburg published a report without taking a position in 2019, and again the year before. In an interview last year with Barron’s, Anderson described his operation as an investigative journalism outfit with a different business model.
Anderson concedes, though, that his decision not to short Clover’s stock is partly driven by the difficultly with executing a successful short trade under current market conditions.
“We have published purely public interest stories before, and we thought it was an opportune time to make a statement about the important role critical research plays in a healthy market,” the Hindenburg founder told Barron’s.
Shorting has been unpopular since it got started soon after the Dutch invented the stock market in the 17th century but it now appears to be achieving a new level of infamy. The Securities and Exchange Commission may issue new regulations, and congress is holding a hearing over the practice.
“Hedge funds have a long history of predatory conduct and that conduct is entirely indefensible,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said when announcing the hearing. “Private funds preying on the pension funds of hard working Americans must be stopped.”
Write to Max A. Cherney at max.cherney@barrons.com
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February 04, 2021 at 09:09PM
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Hindenburg Defends Short Selling and Offers Up a New Short Idea - Barron's
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