Short Stories: The activist short seller
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2023
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Short selling – the trade where you hope a stock’s value will fall rather than rise. If it does, the trader can win. Big.
That’s led to the growth of what’s called the activist short seller. A trader who comes out to tell the world why a company’s stock should be lower than it is. They’re betting on its failure.
Carson Block from the firm Muddy Waters is one of the most prominent new short sellers – vocal on the news and social media, he explains why the companies he shorts are usually the ones with something to hide.
Producer: Ciaran Tracey Presenter: Leanna Byrne
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Any society needs heroes. |
| 0:01.9 | To have something to believe in. |
| 0:03.6 | Something really extraordinary. |
| 0:05.0 | Not always just the winner. |
| 0:06.8 | Amazing sports stories. |
| 0:08.4 | Coming soon to the BBC World Service. |
| 0:10.7 | Nothing is ever quite as expected. |
| 0:13.1 | Follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode. |
| 0:16.1 | Search for amazing sports stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:25.4 | Sometimes and let's be honest, |
| 0:33.8 | not often. A financial idea grabs hold of the popular imagination. I don't know if you remember, |
| 0:39.7 | but that's what happened with the big short. It was an amazing book, a blockbuster movie, |
| 0:45.7 | but more than anything, it was a phrase that stuck, because it took something difficult about markets and made it easy. The practice where an investor sell shares they don't actually own |
| 0:51.0 | in the hope the stock will fall and can then be bought at a cheaper price to |
| 0:55.1 | yield a profit. I'm Leanna Byrne, and for this three-part Business Daily series, that's what we're |
| 1:00.8 | diving into. The idea that a few smart people can see what other people can't and bet big on |
| 1:07.7 | failure. For activist shortsellers, when we're doing this, it's the opposite of negative, |
| 1:13.6 | and there just really aren't enough of us. |
| 1:16.4 | These attacks hurt companies causes them to lose a lot of money and not just a stock price |
| 1:23.1 | decline. |
| 1:24.0 | We're going to unpick the new prominence of short selling, what it is, why it matters, |
| 1:29.9 | and how a new breed of trader might just be coming into your sidebar sooner than you think. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

