And lost like 95% of his net worth after the tech bubble collapsed. But he did make it back, so we have to give it to him. MOST of his net worth still comes from the MSTR being a bitcoin proxy play. So Chanos criticizing (although maybe rightfully so) another guy whose net worth is 20+ times more than his, is kind of funny, specially that Chanos' last decade, last 5 year, last year, aka current performance is widely under performing the market. Inshort (pardon my pun), there is no reason to listen to him. I would like to actually hear a guy saying; well, it is all a big bubble built on air, but nobody knows when it is going to collapse, so rider beware. And shorting it is only for pros. Because as we know, timing is everything.
Okie-dokie, so his last famous play was 24 years ago. Got it. By the way, it happened when the tech bubble was bursting, so pretty much shorting any other tech company would have worked. Chanos is 68 years old, I think he should get a metal detector and head down to the Florida beaches. And I say this as one who agrees with him in the video. From his Wiki page: "Throughout the 2010s, Chanos and other short sellers faced a tough environment during a booming period for M&A and a record amount of share reacquisitions. A New York Times profile of several short sellers in 2015 described Chanos and others as "waiting in the wings" for the bull market to end. The same profile described Chanos's Kynikos Associates as losing more than half its value in the last five years from $6 billion to $2.5 billion, compelling Chanos to pitch "a new fund to investors that will take a portfolio of long positions and overlay the firm’s traditional short portfolio".[ 2020 was an especially terrible year for Chanos and other short sellers according to Institutional Investor, calling their firms "a shadow of their former selves."The magazine noted Kynikos ended 2020 with a mere $405 million in assets, compared to $2 billion in 2018. In November 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported that Chanos will close his hedge fund and return outside capital to investors by the end of the year.[2] At the time of publication, the S&P500 was up nearly 20% year -to-date, and Tesla, a notable short position of Chanos' fund, was up nearly 117%."
Amazing that anybody even listens to a guy that lost 93% of his capital in one of the biggest bull markets in history -- from $6 billion to $405 million in 10 years. Chanos was pitching the idea that the leverage afforded MSTR vs. spot Bitcoin didn't make sense. He was vindicated on that to a degree. I remember owning MSTU when it went up 12X in 3 months (post election) and reached a fever frenzy that MSTR still hasn't seen. A lot of short sellers threw in the towel by 2017. I remember there was a famous short seller who said shorting in the time of QE, ZIRP & a tsunami of free money was suicidal. I forget his name but he was a former MSN Money columnist as well as a director at SSRI (Silver mining company). Chanos is a smart guy and I remember he was shorting all the large global banks & insurance companies post Bear Stearns. I always thought was an easier strategy to implement than going the The Big Short way of esoteric illiquid insurance contracts (CDS) where you needed an ISDA membership. It wasn't realistic for the majority of speculators. I still remember the Friday right before Lehman collapsed, Chanos was on Squawk Box CNBC and the guest was the famously ill informed CFO of Lehman who claimed her firm had enough bridge capital to last the end of the year. I remember Chanos started to laugh at that statement.