Wall Street’s Most Reviled Investors Worry About Their Fate

[Mike B 625]

By Kate Kelly and Matthew Goldstein

Fahmi Quadir fears for her safety, so whenever she travels, she shares her GPS coordinates with her lawyer and a colleague. Nate Koppikar was once tailed by a private investigator into the bathroom in his own office. And Gabe Plotkin recently hired security after threats to his family.

Digging up dirt on big companies, it turns out, doesn’t make you very popular.

Ms. Quadir, Mr. Koppikar and Mr. Plotkin are short sellers — investors who profit off the failures of companies by betting that their share prices will fall. For this, they are reviled by executives and shareholders alike. Short-selling itself is banned in some countries. Dealing with such hatred, Ms. Quadir said, is “a cost of doing business.”

It’s always been a tough job, and especially so in the past year as stocks marched higher. The recent frenzy over GameStop made it worse. Everyday investors, many of them seething against what they see as a rigged system created to enrich Wall Street, bid up GameStop’s stock in part to attack short sellers, dealing them a fresh reputational blow.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/business/wall-street-short-sellers-game-stop.html?referringSource=articleShare