i'm a long only quant, and i've always been fascinated by the short side of the market. Haven't really been able to develop a quant model that is interesting enough to try to pursue on the short side. My very first published idea was for a high flying financial services company called baldwin united august 82. It turned out it ended up beingth massive fraud. We ran quant based hedge on our short business back in the nineties.
Our guest this week is renowned short-seller Jim Chanos, founder, and president of Kynikos Associates. Over the course of his long and successful career, Jim has publicly bet against companies like Enron, which Barron’s deemed the “market call of the decade, if not the past 50 years.” While many know him for these famous shorts, fewer know that Jim is also a passionate historian, and is a firm believer in the notion that history can act as a useful guide for investors today. In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss:
- How Jim started his career in finance
- The Mississippi Bubble
- How past financial frauds and manias can be useful for modern investors
- Tesla
- Lessons from the Great Financial Crisis
- Jim’s financial history course at Yale and Wisconsin
- Theranos
And much, much more… we hope you enjoy.