Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Sometimes Andrew Left Was Right

Citron

Andrew Left is an activist short seller with a following on social media, where he goes by Citron Research. In 2024, he was arrested and charged with criminal market manipulation; his trial started last week. The theory of the US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission is essentially that Left was doing a pump-and-dump scheme in reverse:

1. He would pick some random stock and sell it short.
2. He’d go on Twitter and say “this stock is a fraud, and I am shorting it until it hits zero.”
3. His legions of devoted followers would sell the stock, ...