Five short reports, six tickers, and Hindenburg's cold case
Weekly Wrap Up: Sunday, October 4, 2026
Four investigators published five reports this week, covering six tickers across five sectors, and one of them is a firm we had never tracked before. The names they targeted fell 6.3% on average while the S&P 500 slipped 0.2%, but nearly all of that came from one stock. Elsewhere, a new Coffeezilla investigation builds on Hindenburg Research's digging into an alleged Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, work the firm did with no position and nothing to gain.
The Market and the Shorts
| The week in four numbers · September 25 close to October 2 close | |||||||||||||||||||
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Dow (DIA), S&P 500 (SPY), Nasdaq 100 (QQQ), from the September 25 close to the October 2 close. The names shorted this week fell 6.3% on average by Friday's close, each measured from its close the day before the report, and a decline there is a gain for the short side, which is why it is the one number in green. The median of the 6 names was -2.0%. Across all open Activ8 shorts, 66.4% fell and the median move was -2.6%.
The Tape
| Investigator | Target | Day of report |
Since report |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fugazi Research | Greenland Energy Company Common Stock GLND |
-19.0% | -32.7% |
| Hunterbrook Media | LENNAR CORP /NEW/ LEN |
-2.8% | -2.8% |
| Hunterbrook Media | Millrose Properties, Inc. MRP |
-2.3% | -2.3% |
| Vulture Capital Research | JF SmartInvest Holdings Ltd 9636.HK |
-0.1% | -1.7% |
| The Equity Dispatch | Insperity, Inc. NSP |
+4.4% | -0.2% |
| Hunterbrook Media | Ethos Technologies Inc. LIFE |
-3.0% | +1.6% |
Performance since report, close to close
Measured from the close the day before each report to October 2. Each side is scaled to the largest move. The grey bar is the typical five-trading-day move after a report, the median across all our reports.
| GLND | -32.7% | |||
| Median | -4.4% | |||
| LEN | -2.8% | |||
| MRP | -2.3% | |||
| 9636.HK | -1.7% | |||
| NSP | -0.2% | |||
| LIFE | +1.6% |
Why it matters. None of this week's reports gets its five-day score until next week, so none is ranked yet. Greenland Energy comes closest: down 32.7% five sessions after Fugazi Research's Monday report, more than seven times the typical five-day move across all our reports (-4.4%) and past Fugazi's own -23.5% median. Everything else sat within a few points of flat. The one overlap is Ethos, which The Bear Cave covered in May.
Behind the label
Five reports, one shared complaint: what these companies say they are is not what the investigators found. Fugazi Research says Greenland Energy's 13 billion barrels are undiscovered and unrisked. Vulture Capital Research says JF SmartInvest's stock picks come from sales staff, not licensed advisors. Hunterbrook says Ethos sells itself as technology while leaning on multilevel marketing agencies, and argues Lennar met its delivery forecast by selling homes to its own spin-off. The Equity Dispatch says Insperity's profit recovery is mostly an accounting choice. Our September monthly report also landed this week.
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September 2026 Monthly Short Selling Report
Fourteen of September's seventeen activist short campaigns left their target lower by month end, an 82.4% success rate with an average impact of -7.9%. Unlike August, no single campaign carried the average: six targets fell 10% or more. Iceberg Research took Short King for Deep Fission's -34.0%.
New investigator alert
Welcome, Vulture Capital Research. A new name joined the Activ8 tracker this week. Vulture Capital Research's debut report targets JF SmartInvest, a Hong Kong-listed seller of stock-picking services in mainland China, and is built partly on the firm's conversations with the company's own sales staff. On X, the firm describes its work as "peeling back layers of corporate deception." We are excited to track them. Every report they publish will land on their Activ8 profile.
The Campaigns
| Metric | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Close (Day Before) | $5.54 | — |
| Low (Report Date) | $4.23 | -23.6% |
| Close (Report Date) | $4.49 | -19.0% |
| Close (End of Week) | $3.73 | -32.7% |
Greenland Energy is a SPAC-born explorer with rights to earn up to 70% of an oil licence in Greenland's Jameson Land Basin, and no production or proved reserves. Fugazi Research alleges it raised about $70 million on a resource figure its own filings call unrisked and undiscovered.
Key Points
- 13.04 billion barrels: the unrisked prospective resource the company promotes, which its own SEC filing says assumes every horizon across all 58 prospects is productive, according to Fugazi Research.
- December 31, 2028: the new deadline for the first well, pushed back two years on September 24, with the company agreeing to pay its partner 80 Mile £500,000, per the report.
In context. Stocks Fugazi Research targets have typically fallen 23.5% in the first five trading days, so Greenland Energy, down 32.7% after Monday's report, is ahead of the firm's usual pace. Its official five-day score comes next week.
Read the Full Report Summary →
| Metric | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Close (Day Before) | HK$28.48 | — |
| Low (Report Date) | HK$28.32 | -0.6% |
| Close (Report Date) | HK$28.44 | -0.1% |
| Close (End of Week) | HK$28.00 | -1.7% |
JF SmartInvest sells stock recommendation packages, trading courses and AI-branded stock-picking tools to retail investors in mainland China, priced from RMB 25,300 to RMB 99,800. Vulture Capital Research alleges deceiving customers is central to the business and argues the shares are worth nothing.
Key Points
- 576 licensed investment advisors against 3,274 employees at the end of 2025. The report alleges most daily picks are chosen by unregistered sales staff from an internal "stock pool."
- Three months: the ban on signing new customers imposed by the securities regulator's Shanghai bureau in February 2026. Citing sales staff, the firm alleges upgrades and renewals kept being sold to existing clients without disclosing the penalty.
In context. This is Vulture Capital Research's first report, so there is no track record to compare it with yet. Hong Kong was closed on October 1 for National Day, so Friday was only the stock's second trading day since the report.
Read the Full Report Summary →
| Metric | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Close (Day Before) | $33.57 | — |
| Low (Report Date) | $31.26 | -6.9% |
| Close (Report Date) | $32.57 | -3.0% |
| Close (End of Week) | $34.12 | +1.6% |
Ethos sells life insurance online and through outside agencies, a channel that reached 39% of revenue in the latest quarter. Hunterbrook alleges the company presents itself as consumer-friendly technology while depending on multilevel marketing agencies whose agents it has limited ability to monitor.
Key Points
- About 83% of agency revenue from three partners, by Hunterbrook's estimate from roughly 178,000 agent microsites. The largest, Family First Life, received an FTC cease-and-desist letter in 2021.
- 28 agents with live Ethos microsites matched to disciplinary records in just five states, per the report, including suspended or revoked licences.
In context. The Bear Cave, which Hunterbrook acquired this year, got to Ethos first. Its May 21 report, Problems at Ethos Technologies, argued Ethos is closer to a lead-generation business than a technology platform. The full report is available to The Bear Cave subscribers. Ethos closed at $20.02 the day before and fell 11.6% to $17.70 by the next day's close, then rallied. By September 30, the day before Hunterbrook published, it was at $33.57, up 67.7% since The Bear Cave's report. Stocks Hunterbrook targets have typically moved only 0.8% in the first five trading days.
Read the Full Report Summary →
| Metric | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Close (Day Before) | $46.59 | — |
| Low (Report Date) | $46.08 | -1.1% |
| Close (Report Date) | $48.63 | +4.4% |
| Close (End of Week) | $46.48 | -0.2% |
Insperity runs payroll, benefits and HR for client companies on an outsourced basis. Per the public preview of the report, The Equity Dispatch argues the 56% profit rise guided for 2026 rests on accounting and cost shifts rather than a better business, after an 84% six-month rally.
Key Points
- 56%: the guided rise in 2026 adjusted EBITDA at the midpoint, which the preview says leans on a US GAAP rule letting Insperity capitalize costs it used to expense, as it launches HRScale with a handful of "Beta" clients.
- Not enough operating cash flow since the end of 2023 to cover both capex and the dividend, per the preview, which says the second quarter's higher adjusted cash position came largely from new borrowing.
In context. Stocks The Equity Dispatch targets have typically fallen 2.4% in the first five trading days. The report came out on Thursday, so Friday was only its second trading day.
The full report is available to The Equity Dispatch subscribers (subscribe here).
Read the Full Report Summary →
One report, two tickers. Hunterbrook's October 2 investigation covers Lennar and Millrose Properties, the land bank Lennar spun off in 2025, so both cards below come from a single report. Hunterbrook Capital discloses short positions in both, alongside a long position in a basket of comparable securities.
| Metric | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Close (Day Before) | $82.11 | — |
| Low (Report Date) | $77.71 | -5.4% |
| Close (Report Date) | $79.81 | -2.8% |
| Close (End of Week) | $79.81 | -2.8% |
| Metric | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Close (Day Before) | $25.20 | — |
| Low (Report Date) | $23.44 | -7.0% |
| Close (Report Date) | $24.61 | -2.3% |
| Close (End of Week) | $24.61 | -2.3% |
Lennar is the second-largest US homebuilder, and Millrose holds the land it buys back lot by lot. Hunterbrook alleges Millrose quietly bought more than 700 finished Lennar homes in about a month, which it argues carried Lennar past its delivery forecast.
Key Points
- 356 Millrose purchases in the final week of Lennar's fiscal third quarter, by Hunterbrook's count of county deed records, against the 340 homes by which Lennar cleared the bottom of its delivery forecast.
- Two accounting specialists quoted in the report argue an independent Millrose would have little reason to make the purchases. Lennar says it lacks the power to direct Millrose.
Hunterbrook has been here before. Its March 31 investigation, What Lennar Owes, questioned how the homebuilder accounts for billions in land-bank option fees, with no position disclosed at the time. Lennar has fallen 6.0% since, from the $84.88 close the day before to Friday's $79.81.
In context. Stocks Hunterbrook targets have typically moved only 0.8% in the first five trading days. The report came out on Friday, so these are day-one moves.
Read the Lennar Summary → | Read the Millrose Summary →
Campaign Updates
- Viceroy Research published a follow-up on Blue Moon Metals, saying Norway has opened the legal route to reverse invalid sea-disposal permits and is examining whether Nussir's permit has the same defect.
The Borrow
Short selling, explained. One mechanic a week.
Why short two stocks and buy a basket?
Hunterbrook's Lennar investigation came with an unusual disclosure. Its affiliate, Hunterbrook Capital, is short both Lennar and Millrose and long "a basket of comparable securities." That second half turns an outright short into what our guide calls a paired short: short one security, buy a related one, and profit from the gap between them.
An outright short wins whenever the stock falls, including when the whole market falls with it. A paired short cares much less which way homebuilders move. Say the sector drops 10% and Lennar drops 10%: the short gains, the long basket loses about the same, and the trade is roughly flat. It pays only if Lennar and Millrose do worse than their peers, which is exactly what a company-specific allegation predicts.
The trade-off, per the guide: less market risk and volatility than a naked short, but no windfall when everything falls, and the long side has to genuinely track the target. Hunterbrook has not disclosed what is in its basket. Our guide to the three types of short sales covers structural, tactical and paired shorts.
Spotlight: Hindenburg's cold case
Coffeezilla's latest investigation started by accident. When a fund manager pitching pro athletes approached one of UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture's fighters, Couture called him posing as an investor and recorded a pitch of four straight years of 100%-plus returns trading only Bitcoin. His team sent the tape to Hindenburg Research, which called the CPA listed as reviewing the fund's trades. "No idea how my name got on there," he said. Hindenburg had no position and nothing to gain, and when a year passed without regulatory action it handed its data room to Coffeezilla. That is the work activist short sellers do every day. Coffeezilla says his conclusions are opinion and no regulator has ruled, and the fund manager denies running a Ponzi scheme.
Around the Short World
Hedge funds short the midterms - Larry McDonald of the Bear Traps Report says some funds are shorting companies seen as close to the Trump administration, betting a Democratic Congress would put them under investigation. Source: New York Post
Steve Eisman sits down with The Bear Cave's Edwin Dorsey - The Big Short investor went in skeptical of prediction markets and came out convinced. Dorsey argues insider trading on them is overblown, perhaps 0.01% to 0.1% of volume. Source: The Real Eisman Playbook
Michael Burry advises a new short fund aimed at private credit - Laks Ganapathi's Minerva Investment Management is hunting shorts among private-credit borrowers, as dedicated short-biased funds shrink to six from 54 in 2008, per HFR. Source: Reuters
