Jim Chanos: the short-seller who called Enron

Jim Chanos has such a good long-term record betting on share price declines that he is known as “the catastrophe capitalist”. But he has struggled since the financial crisis. Jane Lewis reports.

Bear market, illustration
(Image credit: EDUARD MUZHEVSKYI / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)

Celebrated Wall Street short-seller Jim Chanos could hardly conceal his glee when he heard that Elon Musk had once again "called a hero of the Thai cave rescue a paedophile", says Institutional Investor. Chanos began shorting the car-maker in 2015, "and has been nursing losses ever since".

With nearly $10bn wagered against the stock, the 61-year-old founder of Kynikos Associates (the name means "cynic" in Greek) is hardly the only one betting against Tesla. But Chanos is "already a legend", having secured his place in Wall Street history nearly 20 years ago by predicting and profiting handsomely from the 2001 demise of Enron.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.