SpaceX Takes Off, and Short Sellers Keep Firing Everywhere Else
Weekly Wrap Up: Sunday, June 14, 2026
The activist short selling world spent the week watching two heavyweight investigators converge on the same target. Hunterbrook Media opened Monday with a statistical case alleging The Ensign Group systematically understaffs its nursing facilities, and Muddy Waters followed Thursday with allegations the company rents Administrator licenses to deceive regulators. Two independent shops, two different methodologies, one nursing home giant, and a stock that ended the week down double digits. Elsewhere, White Diamond Research called SEGG Media a fake company propped up by fabricated press releases, Viceroy Research accused Abaxx Technologies of manufacturing exchange volume through wash trades, and Shortfinder's models flagged Virgin Galactic days before a steep slide. Beyond the reports, short sellers are sizing up the SpaceX IPO with caution, and Citigroup strategists flagged some of the most aggressive short positioning in US stocks in months. On the site, we sat down with Jack Patrick, the 20-year-old founder of Pelican Way Research, and published our May performance report covering the most polarized month we've tracked.
- Hunterbrook Media targeted The Ensign Group (ENSG) alleging systematic understaffing that saved the nursing home operator an estimated $161 million in five months. Stock closed the week down 12.3%.
- Shortfinder flagged Virgin Galactic (SPCE) in its systematic short rankings. Stock closed the week down 14.8%.
- White Diamond Research targeted SEGG Media (SEGG) alleging the company has issued at least 14 fraudulent press releases to inflate its stock for insider selling. Stock closed the week down 30.9%.
- Viceroy Research targeted Abaxx Technologies (ABXX) alleging the company fabricates exchange volume through wash trades and pre-arranged block trades. Stock closed the week up 4.6%.
- Muddy Waters Research targeted The Ensign Group (ENSG) alleging a scheme to rent Administrator licenses at roughly 20% of its facilities. Stock closed the week down 1.5%.
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Our latest Behind the Bear profiles Jack Patrick, the 20-year-old founder of Pelican Way Research and likely the youngest activist short seller in the market. From walking Manhattan grocery stores to verify a smart-cart maker's claims to his 5 a.m. routine, Patrick explains why "the truth is both simultaneously our weapon and our shield."
May was the most polarized month we've covered. Twenty-one campaigns averaged a nearly flat -0.19% impact, but three targets collapsed more than 25% while four rallied more than 29% against the research. The full report breaks down a 62% success rate, the month's deepest decline (Akanda, -48.5%), and why semiconductors were the most productive hunting ground.
New Activist Reports
Hunterbrook Media Short Report on The Ensign Group
| Metric | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Close (Day Before) | $170.30 | — |
| Low (Report Date) | $151.21 | -11.2% |
| Close (Report Date) | $156.42 | -8.2% |
| Close (End of Week) | $149.37 | -12.3% |
Stock Price Impact
Ensign shares fell hard and stayed down. The stock dropped as much as 11.2% intraday to $151.21 on Monday's report before closing at $156.42, down 8.2%. There was no relief rally. Muddy Waters' separate report on Thursday kept the pressure on, and ENSG finished the week at $149.37, down 12.3% from its pre-report close. For a company with a market cap near $9 billion, a sustained double-digit decline is a notably strong reaction, and the lack of any meaningful bounce suggests the market is taking the staffing allegations seriously.
About The Company
The Ensign Group operates the nation's largest chain of CMS-certified skilled nursing facilities, with 329 facilities across 17 states. The company is reimbursed by Medicare and Medicaid primarily through the Patient-Driven Payment Model, which ties payment to resident acuity rather than services delivered. Ensign's own 2025 10-K states the company focuses on very sick residents to increase government reimbursement. Growth has come almost entirely through acquisitions, and the company says it has never sold a skilled nursing operation. Hunterbrook found related-party payments across 208 Ensign facilities totaled at least $339 million in 2024.
Key Points from the Report
- Hunterbrook estimates Ensign's 301 facilities were understaffed relative to resident acuity by 5,248,725 nursing hours from July through November 2024, saving an estimated $161 million. Recognizing that cost would cut net income by roughly 30%, from $298 million to $207 million.
- According to the report, deducting those costs would collapse the executive bonus pool by an estimated 88%, from $30.8 million to $3.6 million, exposing a compensation formula that structurally rewards understaffing.
- A 2024 congressional letter cited by Hunterbrook called Ensign's related-party payment structure a "deceptive tactic" to hide profit, and Hunterbrook's analysis found higher related-party payments correlated with worse staffing metrics.
- Hunterbrook's difference-in-differences analysis of 161 acquired facilities found residents lose roughly nine minutes of nursing time per day after Ensign takes over, while Ensign scores above average only on self-assessed quality metrics and below average on most independently verified ones.
Read the Full Report Summary →
Shortfinder Short Report on Virgin Galactic
| Metric | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Close (Day Before) | $4.59 | — |
| Low (Report Date) | $4.27 | -7.0% |
| Close (Report Date) | $4.71 | +2.6% |
| Close (End of Week) | $3.91 | -14.8% |
About the Publisher
Shortfinder isn't a traditional activist short seller. It's a system.
Rather than building narrative cases against individual companies, Shortfinder ingests SEC filings daily and runs machine learning models that score small and micro cap equities on the likelihood and magnitude of price declines across 1, 5, and 20 day horizons. The output is a ranked, systematically updated universe of short candidates built from the filing record itself.
Coverage Areas
Dilution Risk · Financial Health · Insider Behavior · Ownership Networks · Enforcement History
Visit Shortfinder →White Diamond Research Short Report on SEGG Media
| Metric | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Close (Day Before) | $1.75 | — |
| Low (Report Date) | $1.13 | -35.4% |
| Close (Report Date) | $1.39 | -20.6% |
| Close (End of Week) | $1.21 | -30.9% |
Stock Price Impact
This was the week's most violent reaction. SEGG cratered as much as 35.4% intraday to $1.13 before clawing back to close at $1.39, still down 20.6% on the day. The recovery did not hold. Shares slid through the rest of the week to finish at $1.21, down 30.9% from the pre-report close. A decline of this magnitude, sustained into the weekend, is severe even by micro cap standards and suggests investors found little to push back on in the report's catalogue of unfulfilled announcements, especially with the World Cup launch deadline the report highlighted arriving the very next day.
About The Company
SEGG Media, formerly Lottery.com, describes itself as a digital lottery data publisher and operator of the sports.com domain, claiming to deliver lottery results from roughly 40 countries through a B2B API. White Diamond alleges the company generates zero revenue from either property: lottery.com offers no ticket purchasing capability, and sports.com has displayed only an email-capture landing page since SEGG acquired the domain in early 2021. The company is delinquent on its 2025 10-K and Q1 2026 10-Q and is a defendant in six active lawsuits, including an SEC civil fraud case tied to its SPAC merger.
Key Points from the Report
- White Diamond catalogued 14 press releases since February 2025, each announcing an expansion, acquisition, or partnership the firm alleges never materialized, and argues their sole purpose is inflating the stock so insiders can sell. The firm has reported SEGG to the SEC.
- The report alleges the April 28 "exclusive partnership" with Polymarket is fraudulent: the PR contains no quote from Polymarket, the firm's outreach to Polymarket went unanswered, and sports.com remained an inactive landing page days before the 2026 FIFA World Cup launch it touted.
- White Diamond verified with the Tarrant County, TX clerk that SEGG's announced $179 million lawsuit was filed but papers were never served. After an earlier 2025 press release about legal action, director Christopher Gooding immediately sold his shares, and no lawsuit was ever filed.
- According to the report, a February 2026 acquisition announcement valued SEGG shares at $10 when the stock closed the prior day at $1.10, and no SEGG executive has ever bought shares at any price while insiders continually sell.
Read the Full Report Summary →
Viceroy Research Short Report on Abaxx Technologies
| Metric | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Close (Day Before) | $43.50 | — |
| Low (Report Date) | $36.00 | -17.2% |
| Close (Report Date) | $44.09 | +1.4% |
| Close (End of Week) | $45.50 | +4.6% |
Stock Price Impact
Abaxx delivered one of the sharpest intraday reversals we've seen this year. Shares plunged 17.2% to $36.00 as the report hit, then ripped all the way back to close at $44.09, up 1.4% on the day. By Friday the stock had extended the rebound to $45.50, up 4.6% on the week. Full round-trip recoveries on report day are uncommon, and a target finishing higher than where it started is rarer still. The reversal suggests either committed buyers stepped in aggressively or the thinly traded float amplified the bounce. Viceroy's allegations about regulatory exposure remain a live overhang regardless of the price action.
About The Company
Abaxx Technologies operates the Singapore-based Abaxx Exchange, a futures exchange offering physically delivered contracts in gold kilobars, LNG, and carbon credits under authorization from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The company is also developing Digital Title, a blockchain-based settlement and collateral technology. Both businesses are central to its equity valuation. Abaxx generated just $1.4 million in trading and settlement income in Q1 2026 against an operating loss of $17.5 million, and has funded operations through equity placements, including a $22 million raise in October 2025 followed by a forced warrant call that generated roughly $35 million more.
Key Points from the Report
- Viceroy's analysis of Abaxx's own published data shows a volume-to-open-interest ratio of 32.6x versus roughly 0.28x at legitimate exchanges like COMEX and ICE, with ~99% of positions closed by end of day. A Monte Carlo simulation against 10,000 samples from legitimate exchanges returned a 0% probability of this occurring organically.
- According to Viceroy, 62.9% of all contracts cleared on the exchange from February through April 2026 appear to be one entity trading with itself through matched calendar spreads, with 67 paired transactions matching in size down to the lot.
- The report alleges Kilo Capital and Ivanhoe Capital are undisclosed related parties involved in capital raising and wash trading, noting CEO Josh Crumb is a director of an apparent Kilo subsidiary and an Abaxx Singapore director is also CIO of Ivanhoe.
- Viceroy says Singapore registry filings show CBOE quietly transferred its strategic stake back to Abaxx in March 2026, undisclosed to investors, while Abaxx's core settlement patents have been rejected on appeal.
Read the Full Report Summary →
Muddy Waters Research Short Report on The Ensign Group
| Metric | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Close (Day Before) | $151.65 | — |
| Low (Report Date) | $141.58 | -6.6% |
| Close (Report Date) | $147.13 | -3.0% |
| Close (End of Week) | $149.37 | -1.5% |
Stock Price Impact
This was the second short report on Ensign in four days, landing on a stock already down sharply from Hunterbrook's Monday salvo. Shares fell another 6.6% intraday to $141.58 before recovering to close at $147.13, down 3.0%. By Friday the stock had stabilized at $149.37, just 1.5% below its pre-report level. The muted follow-on move partly reflects how much damage was already priced in: from its close before Hunterbrook published, ENSG finished the week down 12.3%. Two independent firms hitting the same target with entirely different theses in the same week is unusual, and it leaves Ensign defending on two fronts.
About The Company
The Ensign Group acquires and operates skilled nursing facilities across multiple states under numerous distinct brands, a structure Muddy Waters argues has kept regulators from seeing patterns across its portfolio. Medicare and Medicaid account for 69% of revenue, making compliance with federal Conditions of Participation, including the requirement that each facility have a licensed Administrator actually managing it, essential to the company's ability to bill those programs. According to Muddy Waters, Ensign's acquisition-driven growth and above-peer margins are structurally dependent on the practices described in the report.
Key Points from the Report
- Muddy Waters sent investigators to 57 of Ensign's 379 facilities across eight states and found red flags consistent with rented Administrator licenses at 12 of them, or 21% of facilities visited. The firm obtained a "Consulting Agreement" it says is used to rent licenses, corroborated by nine former employee interviews.
- Under the False Claims Act, the report estimates theoretical sanctions of roughly $7 billion if the alleged scheme has been in place for one year at about 20% of Ensign's facilities.
- Muddy Waters estimates that compliance alone, before any penalties, would compress EBITDAR margins by roughly 210 basis points, limit growth to the ~2% peer rate, and reduce 2027 EBIT by approximately 35% versus consensus.
- According to the report, a former DOJ prosecutor and a former OIG special agent each concluded the conduct, presented as a hypothetical, likely amounts to fraud, emphasizing these were not minor paperwork violations given the vulnerable patient population involved.
Read the Full Report Summary →
Activ8 Newswire
- Citigroup strategist sees aggressive short selling in US stocks — Citi's Chris Chew reported some of the most bearish positioning flows in months as shorts accelerated late in the week ahead of inflation data and the first Fed rate decision under new Chairman Kevin Warsh. Source: Bloomberg
- Short sellers to tread carefully as Musk's SpaceX debuts — With the largest IPO ever expected at $75 billion and a float under 5%, prominent shorts say borrowing costs and Musk's history of punishing bears (Tesla shorts have lost $27 billion since 2021) will keep them on the sidelines until lockups expire. Source: Reuters
- Andrew Left faces 20 years, but a correct stock opinion shouldn't be a crime — Following the Citron founder's fraud conviction, this opinion piece argues that prosecuting a short seller whose calls were often right sets a dangerous precedent for market commentary. Source: New York Post
- Fugazi Research declares the public space sector "lost in space" — Days before the SpaceX IPO, the firm published a sector-wide short thesis on six space stocks including AST SpaceMobile and Virgin Galactic, arguing $33.2 billion in combined market cap rests on just $361 million in revenue. Source: Fugazi Research
