“From A Place Of Joy”: Short Seller Nathan Anderson Will Wind Down Hindenburg Research After 7 Years

Short seller Nathan Anderson, founder of Hindenburg Research, in a letter published to the firm’s website Wednesday has said he is disbanding his firm from a “place of joy”, citing the ”rather intense, and at times, all-encompassing” nature of the work. 

Bloomberg called Anderson one of the “gutsiest” short sellers to ever do it and The Wall Street Journal referred to Anderson as “Wall Street’s Pre-Eminent Short Seller”. Financial Times called Anderson “one of the most prominent activist short sellers on Wall Street, known for meticulously detailed reports and relentless pursuit of companies he alleged were committing fraud”.  

Legendary short seller Jim Chanos took to X and wrote: “Sadly, the Golden Age of Fraud just got shinier. Godspeed, Nate.”

Hindenburg took on financial world titans like Carl Icahn, Gautam Adani and Jack Dorsey’s Block (who was coincidentally fined $80 million yesterday due to AML violations similar to ones Hindenburg wrote about in their report). 

A track record published by Mint in mid-2024 showed that Hindenburg had a success rate on its short calls of about 81%, despite the stock market roaring to all-time highs during the course of Hindenburg’s tenure. 

“Hindenburg is going out with a Ted Williams type record here. Ain’t nobody touching it amongst public short activists, ever. Especially impressive was not only the velocity of idea generation, but the size of some of the targets,” wrote Jeremy Raper or Raper Capital on X. 

“As I’ve shared with family, friends and our team since late last year, I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research. The plan has been to wind up after we finished the pipeline of ideas we were working on. And as of the last Ponzi cases we just completed and are sharing with regulators, that day is today,” he wrote yesterday. 

In his letter, Anderson says: “When I started this, I doubted I was capable. I didn’t have a traditional finance background. None of my relatives are in this field. I went to a state school. I’m not a slick salesperson. I don’t know any of the right clothes to wear. I can’t play golf. I’m not some superhuman that can function on 4 hours of sleep. In most of my jobs I was a good worker but mostly looked over. I had no money when I started—and after catching 3 lawsuits immediately out of the gate, I quickly had less than no money.”

“I had a newborn child and was facing eviction at the time. I was terrified, but knew that if I stayed still I would crumble. The only option I had was to keep moving forward,” he wrote. 

He said of his team of 11 employees: “They are all smart, focused, and fun to work with. Little to no ego. When you meet them, they are all very nice and polite. But when it comes to this field, they are ruthless assassins, capable of world-class work. Like me, our team didn’t come from traditional finance backgrounds. My first hire often describes himself as a former bartender. We all have a shared view of the world, a mostly calm exterior, and a similar burning underlying intensity. They are all family to me.”

“Nearly 100 individuals have been charged civilly or criminally by regulators at least in part through our work, including billionaires and oligarchs. We shook some empires that we felt needed shaking,” he added. 

“So, why disband now? There is not one specific thing—no particular threat, no health issue, and no big personal issue,” he continued. “Someone once told me that at a certain point a successful career becomes a selfish act. Early on, I felt I needed to prove some things to myself. I have now finally found some comfort with myself, probably for the first time in my life. I probably could have had it all along had I let myself, but I needed to put myself through a bit of hell first. The intensity and focus has come at the cost of missing a lot of the rest of the world and the people I care about.”

He also said he’d be open-sourcing the firm’s methods of investigatory research for others to use: “…over the next 6 months or so I plan to work on a series of materials and videos to open-source every aspect of our model and how we conduct our investigations.”

He concluded: “Lastly, I want to express how grateful I am to our readers. Your messages of kindness and encouragement through the years have gone a long way to help give us the strength to continue. And it constantly reminds me that the world is filled with good. Thank you for all of it—I couldn’t ask for more. It is all a blessing.”

At the bottom of his letter, he left a sole hyperlink to a set by veteran English house music DJ Lee Burridge, telling readers: “If you are chasing something you think you want or need, or are doubting whether you are enough, take a minute and give this a listen. It had a big impact on me at a pivotal time.”

By Thursday morning, the comments to the video were littered with support for Anderson and his firm.