The Andrew Left guilty verdict is a painful reminder that as short sellers we are all 2nd class citizens
But we still think there's a stark difference among short-sellers. There are the ones that believe their own work & stay short the shit-cos for the long-haul.
A short story about the founding of Fuzzy Panda Research:
We actually engaged with activists like Left early in our short-selling career (~10-15 years ago). It both felt icky and was incredibly frustrating.
We kept asking ourselves the same questions:
- Why give away months/years of our work to some random guy?
- Especially if they will cover their position day 1 & won't be around to fight the long fight?
Even worse they would often mess up the short thesis because they hadn't done the work and didn't understand the details.
One of the worst/weirdest interactions we had was back in the Summer of 2017 when we attempted to help Andrew Left on a short idea. We'd spent months working all summer long sending Andrew lots of details on an auto company that we believed used predatory financing to steal from consumers. It was disgusting how the company would use usurious fees to entrap poor people in a cycle of poverty. This company somehow had even repo'ed a car when there was still a baby in the back seat.
But at the end of summer 2017, Left called me:
"It's time. I'm finally publishing on what we've been working. It's happening this week!"~Left
(I thought, thank god, finally! But then the next words immediately shocked me):
"We are finally going to expose Ubiquiti" ~Left
"Wtf!?" ~Me
"What?! i thought you'd be excited?" ~Left
"Andrew! I'm not working on Ubiquiti with you." ~Me
"uh, umm. Well......I'm doing Ubiquiti this week, we will do the other one next week." ~Left
(Note-Ubiquiti Inc is tech co that makes wireless enterprise communication products...it's not at all related to predatory auto financing. Also for some plainly obvious reasons I decided to stop speaking to Andrew about investment ideas right after that)
Crappy interactions like that ultimately led me to ask one of my advisors from business school, the late Jack McDonald, his thoughts. At the time we were talking about a different fraud that was going through a painful short squeeze (a Chinese bank that had a fake HQ in NYC & was pretending to be an American Co. It had even tricked the FTSE-Russell into adding them into the Russell 2000)
Professor McDonald was an investing legend. He was close friends with all my own investing heros: Andreas Halvorsen (from Viking), Jim Coulter, the SPO founders, and even Charlie Munger & Warren Buffett. But more importantly Jack was not only a great investor but he was a great human. All advise from Jack was gold and the advise he gave that day about this Chinese fraud changed the course of my career...
"Don't be afraid to use your own voice. You have freedom of speech too. The information you found is amazing. Everyone has to know about it. ~Jack
Then Jack gave me a wink & a smile and said
"Let's expose these guys"
So that is how Fuzzy Panda Research was born
Why a Fuzzy Panda?
Because it is a completely ridiculous name. For anyone to believe a Fuzzy Panda the research must be damn good. It is also hilarious when a management team puts out a press release saying that "an evil fuzzy panda is out to get them." Plus early on it was a solid bonus that the anonymity was like a warm security blanket, it protected our identities just in case this whole fuzzy panda thing didn't work out and we all needed to get real jobs at a hedge funds later.
So how do we think the Andrew Left verdict affects activist short-sellers?
- For some (that like to smash & grab or flip out of a position day one) it's a complete game changer
- For others, like us, probably nothing
But we are a different breed short-seller. The degenerate short-seller! The one that truly believes their our own work & will fight through short squeezes.
(Tag your favorite degenerate short-seller below)