Kay Wiggins

Yeah.

So Andrew Left is among the most well-known short sellers in the US.

By short sellers, that's somebody who bets against companies.

He is a prolific poster on social media, particularly on X. He has been a regular on lots of business TV networks.

He built credibility more than a decade ago when he accused Valiant, which is a pharmaceutical company, of accounting irregularities.

And those allegations were eventually confirmed.

And he has since become a prominent figure who speaks publicly about the positions that he's taking in stocks.

So what they have accused him of doing is basically that they said that he would take a position in a stock, whether that's a long position, so betting that the share price would rise, or whether that's a short position, so betting that the price would fall.

Either way, they say he would take a position in a stock, and then he would post about that position, and then he would very, very quickly exit that position at a profit.

So they say that he knew that he had this influence.

He knew that by going public and talking about his position, he would be able to move the market.

And then as soon as he had done that, he would very quickly sell his position and make money from doing so.

Well, that's what's really interesting about this case, and that's why it has sort of potentially huge implications for other investors who take similar positions and who trade in similar ways.

The prosecutors in the Andrew Left case were saying this was a very short-term thing.

He would take a position, post about it, and then immediately, sometimes within minutes or hours, he would take steps to get out of that position.

But this raises a really huge question because his argument is –

I didn't believe that I was obliged to hold on to my positions for a fixed period of time after I had gone public and said that I thought the company was great or that I thought the company was bad.

And so that's what's got other hedge funds kind of scratching their heads and saying, hang on a minute, what are the rules here?

Are we allowed to trade after we've sort of said what our position is?

The whole thing is a bit of a gray area and that's what's causing concern.