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What other predictions has this short seller made in a verifiable manner? It's really pointless to find someone who just guessed correctly once and take their

What other predictions has this short seller made in a verifiable manner? It's really pointless to find someone who just guessed correctly once and take their advice. Particulalrly if their failed predictions are never made public, or are too abtract to be verifiable. I used to invest in gold and silver, expecting them to be stable investments. Back in mid 2008, I noticed a lot of large price swings. I made a few trades to exploit the swings before realizing the whole point of me investing in them was because I expected them to be stable. So I cashed out everything, and a few weeks later the economy (and the gold and silver prices) tanked. I don't consider myself a savy investor at all, I just got really lucky that one time.

true_religion 4y ago
The guy isn’t asking people to believe in him because he is a prophet. They are saying, “this is some things I found suspect, and was right about so maybe this can help you make your own inferences later.”
strus 4y ago
> I just got really lucky that one time You didn't tho. Investing in gold should be a long-term investment, and in a long term price of gold trend is still rising. It was constantly rising till 2012, then fall a little bit in 2012-2016, and is rising again.
- neop1x 4y ago
  Not many people want to sit on slowly-rising gold for 20 years. People are often trying to find high-yield, low-risk compromise so they are trading instruments and switching between them instead. The point is that it is very difficult, practically impossible to time the market. So the commenter was right - he got lucky that one time. And if you were trading in the markets for many years, you would see that occasionally you would be lucky too. But unless you employed some kind of risk and money management, the other times where you would be wrong (and those times would definitely happen as well) losses would cancel out all your lucky profits. I was lucky a couple of times too and it means nothing.
nzealand 4y ago
Bleecker Street Research is a hedge fund that has been shorting since 2014. They wouldn't be in business if they were only lucky once. Shorts perform significantly more analysis than longs, as they have to have great timing in addition to being directionally correct. In the article, Bleecker are not making any specific predictions, just explaining their reasoning for shorting this stock. Their one prediction is "This is not a contained event…. I don’t know what happens." Yellen has said she is monitoring a small number of unprofitable banks carefully. From a market perspective, short interest in the regional bank ETF KRE has been rising steadily for a while now. Looking at unprofitable banks with high implied volatility, the market seems to think First Republic Bank FRC is under some duress. It is exceptionally costly to short FRC right now, but I imagine anyone with more than $250k in a single account is moving money out right now. Which is the definition of a bank run.
- somsak2 4y ago
  what incentive do they have to actually give out valid information about "their reasoning for shorting this stock?" they have a serious disincentive as a hedge fund to share their insight since someone else can now make the money that they would have made.
- filoleg 4y ago
  > Bleecker Street Research is a hedge fund that has been shorting since 2014. They wouldn't be in business if they were only lucky once. I disagree. Their model is similar to VCs in a way. Hedge funds don't care about the number of times they were correct vs. wrong, they care about the wins from the correct bets being more than losses from the bets that went wrong. It goes even further, if you think about what the point of hedging positions really is (which is essentially making a bet on something you actually believe the opposite of, as an insurance policy in case your main hypothesis goes wrong). Just like with VCs, they don't expect most of their bets to work out. They just expect those bets that work out to bring in so much money, that the losses from the rest of the bets won't matter. So yes, a hedge fund can be extremely successful and profitable, even if only 10% of their bet predictions end up being correct. It is all about what those bets are and how they are structured. With that in mind, I am definitely still of the same take as the grandparent comment.

true_religion 4y ago

The guy isn’t asking people to believe in him because he is a prophet. They are saying, “this is some things I found suspect, and was right about so maybe this can help you make your own inferences later.”

strus 4y ago

> I just got really lucky that one time You didn't tho. Investing in gold should be a long-term investment, and in a long term price of gold trend is still rising. It was constantly rising till 2012, then fall a little bit in 2012-2016, and is rising again.

neop1x 4y ago
Not many people want to sit on slowly-rising gold for 20 years. People are often trying to find high-yield, low-risk compromise so they are trading instruments and switching between them instead. The point is that it is very difficult, practically impossible to time the market. So the commenter was right - he got lucky that one time. And if you were trading in the markets for many years, you would see that occasionally you would be lucky too. But unless you employed some kind of risk and money management, the other times where you would be wrong (and those times would definitely happen as well) losses would cancel out all your lucky profits. I was lucky a couple of times too and it means nothing.

nzealand 4y ago

Bleecker Street Research is a hedge fund that has been shorting since 2014. They wouldn't be in business if they were only lucky once. Shorts perform significantly more analysis than longs, as they have to have great timing in addition to being directionally correct. In the article, Bleecker are not making any specific predictions, just explaining their reasoning for shorting this stock. Their one prediction is "This is not a contained event…. I don’t know what happens." Yellen has said she is monitoring a small number of unprofitable banks carefully. From a market perspective, short interest in the regional bank ETF KRE has been rising steadily for a while now. Looking at unprofitable banks with high implied volatility, the market seems to think First Republic Bank FRC is under some duress. It is exceptionally costly to short FRC right now, but I imagine anyone with more than $250k in a single account is moving money out right now. Which is the definition of a bank run.

somsak2 4y ago
what incentive do they have to actually give out valid information about "their reasoning for shorting this stock?" they have a serious disincentive as a hedge fund to share their insight since someone else can now make the money that they would have made.
filoleg 4y ago
> Bleecker Street Research is a hedge fund that has been shorting since 2014. They wouldn't be in business if they were only lucky once. I disagree. Their model is similar to VCs in a way. Hedge funds don't care about the number of times they were correct vs. wrong, they care about the wins from the correct bets being more than losses from the bets that went wrong. It goes even further, if you think about what the point of hedging positions really is (which is essentially making a bet on something you actually believe the opposite of, as an insurance policy in case your main hypothesis goes wrong). Just like with VCs, they don't expect most of their bets to work out. They just expect those bets that work out to bring in so much money, that the losses from the rest of the bets won't matter. So yes, a hedge fund can be extremely successful and profitable, even if only 10% of their bet predictions end up being correct. It is all about what those bets are and how they are structured. With that in mind, I am definitely still of the same take as the grandparent comment.