A Short Seller Bets It All on a Spectacular Market Crash
Horseman Capital’s Russell Clark has been bearish for more than seven years. And if he’s wrong? “This could be my farewell interview,” he says.
Russell Clark’s entry into the high-stakes world of investing could hardly have been less promising. As a graduate trainee at UBS Group AG in Sydney, he was wowed by friends getting rich by day-trading tech stocks in 2000. So he spent his first few paychecks on five dot-com shares. Four crashed to zero, and the fifth lost half its value as the tech bubble burst.
That lesson was so brutal that it helped turn Clark, now 45, into a career contrarian. These days the hedge fund he runs for London-based Horseman Capital Management is prepared for a market crash. It’s an audacious contrast to what’s been the most popular trade in town for years: wagers that stocks will keep rising. What’s more, with a resolve virtually unheard of in the industry, he’s been betting on stock declines for more than seven years.