Carl Icahn is the new Madoff?

OK. Carl creates trading opportunities too.

Just tell us the bottom line;
Which stocks to short?

 

Lost some money, Bro?

 

Here is the report, quite easy reading: https://hindenburgresearch.com/icahn/

 

Don't know about all the "razzle dazzle" with Icahn's divi's (not earned profits?)
But I think any retail investor would have to be crazy to short against this guy.
He's total old school, and he doesn't like to loose. His son is probably the same.
***
Anybody know how much FCX Icahn owns?
Reason being, the long term IEP chart looks a lot like FCX
(which looks a lot like $copper // HG)

 

Interesting that institutions were not falling for his 15% divi, only retail were the ones who are lapping it up. A 15% divi sounds like a major red flag.

And at 87 he doesn't have many more years, the stock is going tank hard when his health go downhill or when he passes, wont be able to justify 200% premium above NAV with him no longer at the helm.

 

I guess that means you don't know how many shares of FCX he owns.

 

This was also one of my reasons I decided not to go ahead. Also, it kept me out of Berkshire for similar reasons.

 

Since Icahn mainly invests in hard asset companies it makes sense that IEP would mirror Copper prices. In the 1970s he made a lot of money buying up shares of public & private REITs that were severely under priced usually via Greenmail where the board would buy his shares above the current stock value. Icahn's proxy fight with Illumina is an anomaly for him since he is really a hard asset specialist.

The inflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s brought a huge mismatch in accounting prices of industrial equipment versus the inflated actual value so the NAVs or PPE value didn't match. That was the original arbitrage of the early LBO raiders like Icahn, Nelson Peltz, Boesky, etc.

There is an unauthorized biography of Icahn which came out in the early 2000s. I don't remember the name of the book but it does shed light on his early success and some failures most notably TWA which Icahn thought he could run but was soon disabused of that notion. I think that might be the basis of the Bluestar Airlines plot in the film Wall Street. TWA also had an over funded pension which was attractive to a lot of the raiders.

If I remember correctly in his early ventures he never gave equity to anybody except his brother-in-law (I believe he was a banker at Goldman Sachs) who actually lent him the $400,000 to start it.