Short selling giant Jim Chanos is still short on Coinbase, Tesla and the FOMO-investment market – MarketWatch

Posted: December 12, 2022 at 12:28 am


without comments

Short selling giant Jim Chanos is still pretty bearish on a number of stocks including Coinbase and Tesla, he said on Thursday.

In a Twitter Spaces conversation, Chanos was asked about the FTX fiasco and whether he thinks institutional investors should have done more to scrutinize founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

Chanos said that the due diligence (or lack thereof) was common behavior in Silicon Valley and the crypto industry for the past few years.

Look at the texts that were released in conjunction with people wanting to invest in Elons Twitter deal, he said. You know, Ill send you a couple billion dollars in effect, no due diligence necessary.

This is the ultimate FOMO [fear of missing out] type market and people are investing in personalities not businesses, he said, adding that that is a scary development in the investment space.

Chanos said he remains short on Coinbase COIN, -6.00%, but not because of the FTX blowup and the dive of crypto prices.

This isnt about crypto prices. Thats not why we why we shorted the stock and thats not why we remain short. I mean, crypto prices will obviously fluctuate. Its really the business model that I dont think people appreciate here, he said.

Aside from Coinbase being its prime short in the crypto space, Chanos said that there arent many other options other than shorting cryptocurrencies themselves.

Theres the miners, theres a Coinbase and then youve got like the odd one-offs like MicroStrategy MSTR, +0.34%, which is which is basically you know a giant closed end fund of Bitcoin trading at a huge premium. But thats really kind of it. I mean unless you go and short the currencies themselves, there arent a lot of choices. So let Coinbase is our prime short in that area, he said.

Chanos is still short on Tesla TSLA, +3.23%, because despite how Chief Executive Elon Musk wants the company to innovate, he says Tesla is still a car company at the end of the day, and will increasingly face car company issues.

He said that the luxury car market is becoming a tougher place to maintain margins, something that could present a struggle for Tesla.

The luxury car market globally is about 4 million units a year and the estimate for next year is that theyre going to sell 2 million. So theyre going to be 50% of the luxury car market globally next year if they hit their numbers and the problem will be for them of course, its decelerating sales, he said.

See the rest here:
Short selling giant Jim Chanos is still short on Coinbase, Tesla and the FOMO-investment market - MarketWatch

Related Posts

Written by admin |

December 12th, 2022 at 12:28 am

Posted in Investment




matomo tracker