In late 2021,

2021, Robert walked into a co-working building in Virginia.

It was his first day of his new job.

And I get a little office that's smaller than like 10 by 10 square feet.

Robert is not his real name.

We're calling him that for security reasons.

He looked around and wondered what he was. calling him that for security reasons.

He looked around and wondered what he was doing there.

I'm thinking like, wow, they have no idea how little I know about all this stuff.

Let's see how long this lasts before they fire me.

Robert's new job was at a place called Hindenburg Research.

It was a small financial company that had a big reputation.

You know, if you look up Hindenburg research in the news or Wikipedia or whatever,

I'm sure you'd see some pretty bad stuff.

Like, oh, we hurt companies. We attack companies.

Robert prefers to think of it in a different way.

We're like pirates, but we only rob other pirates.

You see, Hindenburg investigates companies,

but unlike traditional journalists, when the team finds evidence

that a company is involved in fraud, they short shares of its stock.

Basically, they take a big bet that the share price will fall when their report comes out.

It can be very lucrative if it works.

...