March 11, 2014

How to short sell stocks

A commenter on the post about Herbalife recommended the blog of short-seller John Hempton of Bronte Capital in Sydney. Here Hempton is explaining short-selling to his 12-year-old son:
We also talked at length for the first time about our business. We run a hedge fund. Our job is simple: make rich people richer through investing, trading in financial markets. 
Half of that is relatively easy to explain: we buy shares in good companies. ... 
But then the area our fund is best known for came up. I am a short seller.
I went through the mechanics of short-selling. I borrow a share from a broker. I sell it in the market. If the stock goes down I get to buy it back for less than I sold it. I repay the loan by returning the share and I keep the profit. I explained it does not work so well when the stock goes up. 
Then I got to the nub of the issue: I am a short-seller of frauds and stock promotes. I look for people in the stock market who have fake accounts and who are stealing from gullible shareholders (also known as marks, dupes, fools, day traders or mutual fund managers). There is a torrent of money being ripped off (many billions of dollars for instance in the case of the Chinese frauds a surprising amount of which came from Fidelity). Through short-selling I stick up my sail on my little boat in the hurricane of theft and some of that loot drops into the cabin. 
He asked me how I find all these fake accounts and fake companies and I told him a few of our methods (we have many). 
He asked if I ever dobbed the scammers in to regulators and I said I did sometimes but it was mostly not a satisfactory experience. To be a good short-seller I only need to be right about 90 percent of the time. If most the companies I short-sell have fake accounts I will do fine. However if I dob them into regulators I need to be absolutely right in that it does not bode well to dob an honest person into the authorities. So mostly I keep my gob shut and express my opinion (and it is an opinion) in a bet in the financial market. 
Moreover talking about which stocks you think are frauds is a dangerous thing. Regulators sometimes (even foolishly) have been known to investigate short-sellers for telling the truth. (Being short Lehman Brothers and vocal about it was a good way of getting an SEC investigation for talking truth to power.) Also crooks sue short-sellers giving you nasty and expensive legal bills. 
Silence is altogether a better strategy. 
But then he came to the nub of the issue. The easiest scammer to find is a repeat offender. We actively seek out people who promote dodgy stocks and who who are repeatedly involved in dodgy companies. The slogan is “once a scumbag, always a scumbag”. That slogan is probably not strictly accurate -  but we only need to be right 90 percent of the time to be fantastic at this business – and the recidivism amongst scammers is surprisingly high. 

Chris Brand talked about a "g factor" for committing crimes, that would be just plain dishonesty. It seems to be a pretty persistent character trait.

Hempton cites Steve Madden, the dodgy shoe designer in The Wolf of Wall Street, as his nightmare counterexample. Madden went to prison for crookedness involving his IPO, but has made a bundle since he got out designing shoes that teenage girls think make them look hot. The market cap of his company is now over $2 billion.
In that sense long sentences for people like Bernie Ebbers are not in my interest. I would prefer slime-bags to be back-in-business rather than in prison. More opportunities for me. 
So, perceptively my son asked whether it was in my interest to dob scammers into regulators – he asked whether the reason we did not do it much was because of the reasons stated above or because we liked the scammers to be free and profitable. Alas – and I had to confess it – at least part of it was that being a successful short-seller required that regulators were inadequate to the task of policing fraud. 
I did not talk about this with him – but it is becoming harder under Mary Schapiro. The SEC is getting better at their job – and that is not good for me. It would be better if regulators stayed hopeless. Alas they are getting better. 
So, says my son asks you like nasty people to steal from poor investors, mutual funds (and he did not say pension funds for school teachers) so that you can join them in taking the loot by being a short-seller – and you don't want the regulators to do anything about it because there are more opportunities for you? 
Sheepishly I confess yes. 
And he says with a mixture of admiration and horror: “daddy you are more evil than I thought”.
    

41 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is also naked short-selling which is even more evil than regular short-selling. It's when you short-sell stocks without even borrowing them first:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_short_selling

David said...

Wonder if he's shorting T-bonds.

ATBOTL said...

There are a colossal number of companies out there that are simply fraudulent from top to bottom, they don't even have real products or any revenue. China and Israel are some of the biggest sources.

Some of them are so sloppy I don't know how anyone could be fooled, yet stick around issuing more and more stock for years.

Anonymous said...

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/03/10/foreign_policy_history_study_ukraine

Dave Pinsen said...

"There is also naked short-selling which is even more evil than regular short-selling."

It seems clear from the Hempton post Steve quotes that what Hempton (and his son) consider evil isn't short selling per se but rooting against regulators locking up crooks, so he'll have more crooks' companies to short.

Anonymous said...

He's BSing about the SEC. You'll know they're serious about reining in the financial mafia if and when some people ever start actually going to jail.

.

Short-sellers aren't really the evil ones. In a healthy economy short-selling would act as a very skilled and risky financial early warning system.

In the crooked economy we have now they're just little fleas taking a bite out of the big fleas running the vast array of organised crime based on Wall St.

"Big fleas have little fleas,
Upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
and so, ad infinitum."

Dave Pinsen said...

Re Hempton's comment about short sellers getting investigated by regulators, one short seller that happened to was David Einhorn, as mentioned in this New York Mag article about him from June, 2008. At the time, incidentally, Einhorn was short Lehman Brothers, which of course famously collapsed a few months later.

It's also worth noting (as that article mentions), that Lehman's CFO at the time was a woman, Erin Callan. It's worth noting because a meme promulgated by Nick Kristoff among others was that finance wouldn't have blown up if Lehman Brothers were "Lehman Sisters" (i.e., if there were more women in senior positions on Wall Street). I mentioned in a blog post a few years ago, that there were women senior execs in Citigroup (down ~82% since before the financial crisis) and other major banks as well.

Anonymous said...

The very fact that a guy like steve madden is back making money is what is wrong with America.

In some countries such people and their immediate family are not allowed to handle more than a certain amount of money for say 10 yrs.

Portlander said...

Regulators sometimes (even foolishly) have been known to investigate short-sellers for telling the truth. (Being short Lehman Brothers and vocal about it was a good way of getting an SEC investigation for talking truth to power.)

He's not exaggerating. Michael Burry hit on that subject in the commencement speech he gave at UCLA.

He starts leading into it @12:54. The brass tacks are from 14:05 to 14:58.

Anonymous said...

It's all good, because crooked lies churn the market, washing the gold to the bottom of the pan. And that is where the gold belongs.

Neil Templeton

Anonymous said...

A friend of mine was fired, so he took revenge on the company by selling short its stock. It worked, and the company is no more.

CJ said...

I find it hard to believe that the SEC is actually getting better. The Madoff fiasco showed how ludicrously unserious they really are, full of diversity hires and women lawyers on the mommy track.

Anonymous said...

There are a colossal number of companies out there that are simply fraudulent from top to bottom, they don't even have real products or any revenue.

Yup. Here's an easy one: MEDBOX, Inc (MDBX). It's a company which consists of eight employees and the 'exclusive' rights to a marijuana vending machine patent (brilliant!). The founder/major shareholder is an Iranian Angeleno with multiple criminal convictions, including fraud, and a bankruptcy in 2010. It has annual revenues of about $3 million and it's net profit over the last two years is negative. There have been multiple and shady restatements of financials. What would be a reasonable valuation for an outfit such as this?

Shortly after the New Years Day its stock rocketed on press reports/popular enthusiasm re: states' marijuana-legalization initiatives and perhaps (probably?) pump-and-dump newsletter scams.

The company's mkt cap went from a grossly-overpriced (I'm simply at a loss for words...) $150 million to right around $1.1 billion. It's since fallen to a mere $450 million.

TGGP said...

Bronte Capital is also the source of the worst dating profile ever created (this was a phishing scam instead of a boiler room).

CJ:
"I find it hard to believe that the SEC is actually getting better. The Madoff fiasco showed how ludicrously unserious they really are"
The worse they were before, the more plausible it is that they are better now. That's a low bar to clear!

Anonymous said...

That's just self-serving nonsense. Of course he wants the SEC to take down the bad men - but only after he has taken a big short position.

And Ackman with his billion dollar short on Herbalife? He almost certainly hedged his position with out-of-the-money calls in the private market (they don't show up in the public options postings). He is going to make money just with big swings in the stock price.

eah said...

There is also naked short-selling which is even more evil than regular short-selling.

There's nothing "evil" about short-selling. Dummkopf.

Naked short-selling should not be allowed. This is a regulatory issue. Naked short-selling typically occurs with 'hard to borrow' securities. But shares can usually, if not always, be borrowed, assuming your broker is willing to find them for you, and you are willing to pay the fees and interest.

Corporate Shark said...

Here's an easy one: MEDBOX, Inc (MDBX). It's a company which consists of eight employees and the 'exclusive' rights to a marijuana vending machine patent (brilliant!).

It is cheap and easy to register a corporation. A few hundred bucks in fees. Cut and paste corporate charter and bylaws.

It is cheap and easy to file a patent application on anything. Again, a few hundred bucks apiece. Cut and paste from existing patents.

They are great for buffing your resume, or for supplementing your kid's college applications or the like.

Manolo the Shoeblogger said...

Allow the Manolo to say the few words about the Steve Madden as the "designer" of the shoes the teenaged girls wish to buy. These few words would be: he is not.

He does not design the shoes. What he does is steal the designs for his shoes from the real shoe designers and produces them in China with the cheapest materials possible. And, because the fashion cannot be copyrighted, he gets away with this outrageous behavior.

Here is the example from 2007, from the humble shoe blog of the Manolo, in which Steve Madden method is discussed:

http://shoeblogs.com/2007/11/20/louboutin-miss-fred-tacco-vs-steve-madden-becks/

Notice that the Steve Madden version of the shoe is exactly the same as the popular Louboutin bootie sold at the Saks Fifth Avenue. It is exactly the same because Steve Madden has stolen the photo of the Louboutin shoe from the Saks website and has used it on his own site! (Notice how the Madden graphic designer has photoshopped out the Louboutin trademarked red soles, the one element that can be defended in court.)

Here is the other example that is slightly less egregious:

http://shoeblogs.com/2008/04/24/the-shameless-steve-madden-knockoff-machine/

Thus, you may see why the Manolo becomes angry anytime someone refers to the Steve Madden as the "shoe designer."

sunbeam said...

What are these "fake accounts" he is talking about?

chucho said...

On the other side of the coin, crooked hedge funds and other investment scams are unlikely to be uncovered these days due to TBTF and other papering programs.

Anonymous said...

"So, says my son asks you like nasty people to steal from poor investors,..." probably needs to have the word "says" removed to make sense.

"So, my son asks, you like nasty people to steal from poor investors, ..."

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

Short-sellers aren't really the evil ones."
that doesn't mean they aren't evil. They conspire with brokers who loan out their clients stock for the purpose of undermining its' value.

It is theft.

Mr. Anon said...

Hempton's occupation consists of being a parasite - a cockroach picking up the leavings of productive society. Do guys like him have any shame at all? Or is he every bit as shameless as that Duke-coed/whore who is in the news now?

Anonymous said...

Watching out facebook. This one attracts a lot of short sellers.

brendan said...

As an investor, and fan of Hempton, and Steve's, I say with confidence: Steve would've been an incredible stock picker. Breadth, contrarianism, rationality, and an insane inductive memory. If you'd gone into investing you'd be filthy rich, but we'd be worse off.

Mike said...

The sheer stupidity of people regarding short selling is breath taking:
"There is also naked short-selling which is even more evil than regular short-selling."

"A friend of mine was fired, so he took revenge on the company by selling short its stock. It worked, and the company is no more."

These comments literally in response to someone explaining short selling to a child! In response to both comments:
1) Short sellers are almost always the good guys. They are typically vastly more intelligent than long only investors. As the article mentioned, they love to expose FRAUD. This is evil how?
2) The odds of ANY employee having the firepower to move the needle on any stock price approaches a statistical likelihood of zero. Your friend is a braggart at best and likely simply lying. This misconception is common that somehow a company can go out of business by being shorted. A company that is not full of BS has zero chance of going under even if every share somehow got shorted. If you are running a real business and have real profits the shorts will lose their shirt.

Anonymous said...

The world of finance is an unregulated Wild West, and the risk/reward ratio is such as to encourage a lot of law-breaking. You can make very large amounts of money by doing unethical/illegal things, and even in the unlikely event you get prosecuted and convicted your sentence will be minimal.

Madoff broke the unwritten rule here - he didn't screw over ordinary Joe Q Public types, he screwed over wealthy and influential people - so he wound up with 150 years in prison. Daniel Porush got away with just over three years behind bars. The message is clear - pick your marks carefully and you too can rob people with impunity.

Gene Berman said...

"He who sells
What isn't his'n
Must buy it back
Or go to prison."

---old Wall St. caution

Can someone please explain why "naked" short-selling is any more "evil" than ordinary short-selling (which isn't "evil")?

Dave Pinsen said...

"This misconception is common that somehow a company can go out of business by being shorted. A company that is not full of BS has zero chance of going under even if every share somehow got shorted. If you are running a real business and have real profits the shorts will lose their shirt."

This is particularly true if a company doesn't need to borrow to finance its operations. If it funds its operations from its own cash flow, there isn't much short sellers can do to hurt a legitimate company. They can actually benefit current shareholders, as, at some point, the shorts will have to buy back their shares, and a short squeeze can drive up the share price.

The kind of companies that are more vulnerable to short sellers are ones that are highly leveraged and require constant borrowing to finance their operations. If their share prices start tanking, their lenders can loose confidence in them.

Anonymous said...

Mike is right
"1) Short sellers are almost always the good guys. They are typically vastly more intelligent than long only investors. As the article mentioned, they love to expose FRAUD. This is evil how?
2) The odds of ANY employee having the firepower to move the needle on any stock price approaches a statistical likelihood of zero. Your friend is a braggart at best and likely simply lying."

Accusing someone who has lots of money of fraud is dangerous. you can be sued for defamation. Requiring someone to personally have a real case before doing anything when you suspect fraud is license for more fraud. Anyone who can short their employer out of business really did not need a job in the first place.

Anonymous said...

Short sellers can also be hurt by the "short squeeze" - the price rises, they're forced to buy to "cover their shorts", price gets pushed even higher.

I believe short sellers have to declare themselves, so the percentage of a firm's stock "out on loan" is known. Which also means smart operators, probably the usual suspects in cahoots, can sometimes "burn them".

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortsqueeze.asp

In 2008 Volkswagen shares went through the roof because of this.

"Volkswagen shares (VOWG.DE) soared as much as 55 percent to a record high on Tuesday, driven by frantic short-covering, traders and analysts said.

As of Oct. 3, 13.5 percent of available Volkswagen shares were on loan, more than for any other DAX stock, according to dataexplorers.com, a financial market data consultancy.

The cost of borrowing VW shares for short-selling was about five times the average for DAX stocks, broker data showed."

Anonymous said...

"Hempton's occupation consists of being a parasite - a cockroach picking up the leavings of productive society."

It's true that pretty much all of financial services is parasitic. But Hempton's IMHO one of the more beneficial parasites. Think of him as a leech or maggot*, cleaning the putrescent financial flesh.

* you can buy wound dressings containing live maggots for ailments like leg ulcers. They work well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggot_therapy#Application_of_maggot_wound_dressings

Anonymous said...

"1) Short sellers are almost always the good guys. They are typically vastly more intelligent than long only investors. As the article mentioned, they love to expose FRAUD."

In a basically honest economy they *might* be the good guys but in the organised crime economy we have they're at best bounty hunters. They don't love to expose fraud. They love to quietly profit from other people's fraud.

.

"This misconception is common that somehow a company can go out of business by being shorted. A company that is not full of BS has zero chance of going under even if every share somehow got shorted. If you are running a real business and have real profits the shorts will lose their shirt."

Not entirely true. For example if a company is going through a temporary bad patch they might survive unshorted but not otherwise.

Also a lot of the Wall St. mortgage scams involved banksters passing off bundles they knew were totally toxic
and then shorting the companies they sold them to. Shorting made that tactic profitable.

.

However in a healthy economy (i.e. not now) shorting would be a risky way of guessing what firms are hiding something from the outside world and thus would serve a useful purpose.

Anonymous said...

"This misconception is common that somehow a company can go out of business by being shorted. A company that is not full of BS has zero chance of going under even if every share somehow got shorted. If you are running a real business and have real profits the shorts will lose their shirt."

The kind of companies that are more vulnerable to short sellers are ones that are highly leveraged and require constant borrowing to finance their operations. If their share prices start tanking, their lenders can loose confidence in them.

IIRC, Mr. Friend said that The Company:

1) was fairly small,

2) was an eternal start-up, the way some people are perpetual students,

3) was always looking for investors,

4) was always operating at a loss, not a profit,

5) was largely vaporware,

6) had no goods or services to sell, just vague future plans,

7) was poorly managed,

8) had some strange priorities, such as being extremely litigious while never having the money to keep on or pay its employees decently.

David said...

A lot of smarts goes into thinking about stocks and sports. These fields seem to be where much (not all) of the man brains in America are to be found nowadays. Imagine some of the better thinkers among them deciding that America needs a new political structure. Things could get interesting. (Of course, you can argue that this has been happening for a while already, in a negative way.)

Anyway, it's great to read some of the comments here and realize that people are still out there who are alive above the neck.

Anonymous said...

A lot of smarts goes into thinking about stocks and sports

And Star Wars, and Star Trek.

Mr. Anon said...

I have yet to find anyone who will explain to me why it is ethical for the broker who bought a stock for you to loan it to someone else, without your permission, so that that someone else can use it to devalue your investment. Why is this not a breach of fiduciary duty? Would you patronize a doctor who loaned out your medical records to a bookie who was placing bets on your imminent death? If you placed some family jewelry in a safe-deposit box, would it be ethical for your bank to loan it out to a guy who was having an affair with your wife, and who made a gift of your jewelry to her?

Mike said...

"Mr. Anon said...
I have yet to find anyone who will explain to me why it is ethical for the broker who bought a stock for you to loan it to someone else, without your permission, so that that someone else can use it to devalue your investment. Why is this not a breach of fiduciary duty? Would you patronize a doctor who loaned out your medical records to a bookie who was placing bets on your imminent death? If you placed some family jewelry in a safe-deposit box, would it be ethical for your bank to loan it out to a guy who was having an affair with your wife, and who made a gift of your jewelry to her?"

You have yet to find anyone to explain it to you because this is not what happens. The broker can lend your shares to a short seller and the short seller becomes responsible for paying dividends to you plus a lending fee.

You can also decline to have your shares available for borrow into the market and some people/groups do this.

In the time it took you to write your comment you could have done a Google search which would have cleared up your ignorance.

Mr. Anon said...

"Mike said...

You can also decline to have your shares available for borrow into the market and some people/groups do this."

How does one do this, and why doesn't everyone do it?

Mr. Anon said...

"Mike said...

In the time it took you to write your comment you could have done a Google search which would have cleared up your ignorance."

It appears you are right. I was under the impression that this was not the case. I imagine that there is a great deal that you have posted on about which you are ignorant, and the same thing you said would apply to you. So don't be such a dick about it.

Though I ask again - why doesn't everybody do this? Nobody has an interest in having their stock shorted.

Anonymous said...

It is cheap and easy to register a corporation. [...] It is cheap and easy to file a patent application on anything.
-Corporate Shark

Not sure if you were elaborating or thought you were contradicting, but yes, that was one of my points. The scam is beyond ridiculous and transparent to anyone with a modicum of business experience/acumen.

Despite our technology and universal education society hasn't moved one bit beyond the gullibility-level possessed by those townspeople in Huck Finn.

It's still like taking candy from a baby. Shooting fish in a barrel. America is truly the Land of Opportunity.