923 days ago
The RNS today is headlined “response to further letter from short seller. “ Sure Matt Earl’s Shadowfall is short but he is also a brilliant analyst who has exposed so many frauds over the years. Surely the correct headline should be “lack of response to brilliant analyst who has exposed so many frauds over the years.” For the other thing about this response is that it is not a response at all, it appears a recognition that Civitas (CSH), has no response.
1137 days ago
Shares in loan shark Amigo (AMGO) are down by 12% today to 12p on what appears to be, well what most certainly is, a regulatory setback. But one loyal shareholder, the infamous short seller Simon Cawkwell, aka Evil Knievil, is not deterred and tells me that the shares will still hit 20p and could even go to 30p. The setback first:
1156 days ago
Cohodes is one of the greatest short sellers alive having broken more than 70 frauds in his career. “Remember bears are the good guys, we expose crime!” What he says in this interview about the Reddit GameStop episode is fascinating. His thesis is that it merely exposed systemic risks in the system which are still there. This is a great watch.
2460 days ago
Infamous short seller Matt Earl, aka the Dark Destroyer, has gone to war with Purplebricks (PURP) questioning its absurd valuation and also its response to last night's hatchet job on the BBC Watchdog programme. Earl notes:
2475 days ago
Lucian Miers advised shorting UK Oil & Gas (UKOG) and went short himself at c3.1p, boasting that twice before he had made a packet on the short tack with this perennial darling of the educationally sub-normal wing of the provisional private investor army. The shares are now 4.65p and the Bulletin Boards and the comments section on this website are full of posts by folks laughing at my old friend, the Bard of the Boleyn. So has East London's most feared short seller lost his marbles as well as a vast amount of dosh?
3495 days ago
This video is superb, In a humourous way it demonstrates why bears & short sellers provide such a valuable service to the stockmarket and it promises another major China fraud expose next week. I am almost tempted to head off to the Big Apple for the party...
4114 days ago
When the markets are plunging you tend to read quite a bit about Evil Knievil in the press. Every graduate trainee journalist wants to know what the UK’s best known short seller has to say. When markets are rising as they are now, he tends to fade from view somewhat. Of course you can get the greatest shorting opportunities when folks lose sense of reality in a bull market. But you can also do your conkers as folks can stay mad and shares can defy gravity for quite a while. So if you have not heard from the Great Bear for a while, fear not he will be back.
Evil Knievil acquired that moniker during his shorting of Maxwell Communications. The great socialist newspaper proprietor tried to silence his critics with lawyers letters (something all liars attempt) and so when sending out faxes to explain to dumb City analysts why the sums did not add up Cawkwell signed off as Evil Knievel. The publisher of his first book did not wish to get into trouble with the motorbike rider so made that Knievil. It stuck. Call up Simon Cawkwell and you just ask for Evil.
Like myself Cawkwell’s father was an academic. A distinguished one to boot. George Cawkwell was also an international sportsman (Scotland, rugby). His 23 stone son is no sportsman and no academic – he failed to get into Cambridge. That is not to say that he is not clever, just that he was never suited to the world of academia. Cawkwell trained as an accountant instead.
Although he still practices, for many years he has made a living from the markets. His ruin (other than eating and drinking far too much) is that he is a self-confessed gambler
