Mark Cohodes
One of the world’s greatest short sellers
For thirty-seven years, Marc Cohodes has bet big money against bad companies. Due to his success he is regarded as one of the world’s greatest short sellers. From 1985 to 2008, he was General Partner at Copper River (formerly Rocker partners), a $2 Billion mostly short hedge fund. During that period, The New York Times described Marc as 'the highest-profile short-seller on Wall Street'.
Lives on a farm outside of San Francisco, California
Lives on a farm outside of San Francisco, California
Many of his shorts have attained legendary status. These include Lernout & Hauspie, one of the largest securities fraud cases in European history, and NovaStar Financial, for which Marc is now the subject of a Harvard Business Review case study.
Follow Marc Cohodeson twitter: https://twitter.com/AlderLaneeggs?lang=en
He makes home-made rum punch
Thinks you have to be de-ranged to do shor selling
He primarily sticks to shorting stocks
- Grew up in Chicago
- Never really good at school - went to Babson College
- Often did his own thing as a kid
- Was a runner on the Midwest Options Exchange - when it was all manual
- Always has been into the market - from 14-15-16 years old in high school. It's all he ever wanted to do
- Turned 1k into 20k while in High School
- Turned 20k to 60k in College
- Invested his own and family/friends money in a company (Data Access Systems) that turned out to be faudulent - this is what got him into the short world
- You better be 'ready, aim, fire' - not the other way around
- Banks are the most fu**ed up place known to man
Shorting Advice
Don't get involved in something you can't explain to a 10th grader with a single paragraph. Don't get into biotech, dreamy or pie in the sky
Look for shi**y companies, frauds, criminals, bad actors, charlatans, something stupid, career misfits
Don't look unless you think you can make 60-90% return
Look for many ways to win - not just one
Don't short anything 'legitimate companies'. A good acid test for 'legitness' is if people would miss that company if it wasn't here tomorro
Legit companies use stock to finance their business. Bad companies try to create a stock and then the business second
Other Notes
- He'd love to run the SEC for a while just to clean up lots of frauds that are out there