Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Best H1 Activist Short Calls

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Those shorting stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic have made more than $50 billion in profits. Billionaire Bill Ackman recently said that activist short sellers are far more efficient than regulators at unearthing corporate frauds, and that regulators should work with short sellers. Here we take a look at the top 10 best performing activist short calls in the first half of 2020 that paid off big time.

Shorting stocks is a challenging business, especially during an economic crisis when regulators try to restrict short selling. But a crisis also brings tons of opportunities for short sellers.

Short sellers bet that a stock is going to fall. They borrow shares of a stock and sell them, hoping that it would tumble within a specified period. When it falls, they buy from the open market at dirt cheap prices and return the borrowed shares to the lender, pocketing the difference.

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Quintessential Capital

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Quintessential’s most recent target is Akazoo. The firm released its short thesis on the Luxembourg-based company in April. Akazoo was listed on the NASDAQ but then delisted in May following Quintessential’s campaign.

In Grego’s short thesis for Akazoo, he described it as “a castle of cards” and “a scheme conceived by management to enrich themselves at the expense of shareholders.” The company marketed itself as a successful multinational music streaming company that could rival Pandora and Tidal in terms of size, revenue and profits.

However, Grego argued that Akazoo was “just a tiny, loss-making company based in Greece with negligible user base and sales.” He believed that the company’s accounts may have been hiding serious irregularities or worse.

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