{"id":486295,"date":"2026-06-06T15:16:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T15:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/486295\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T15:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T15:16:12","slug":"conviction-of-short-seller-andrew-left-is-not-a-sad-day-for-free-speech-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/486295\/","title":{"rendered":"Conviction of short seller Andrew Left is not \u2018a sad day for free speech\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Left, one of Wall Street<\/a>\u2019s best-known short sellers, is facing years in prison after being convicted of securities fraud. Should investors be concerned?<\/p>\n

The prosecution\u2019s case was that Left would take both short and long positions, publish commentary aimed at moving the market<\/a>, and then rapidly exit those trades once the price moved in his favour. They also alleged he shared upcoming research with hedge funds in advance, receiving a cut of their profits, while failing to disclose those arrangements.<\/p>\n

A defiant Left says the verdict is a \u201csad day for free speech\u201d and could discourage investors from expressing honest views about companies.<\/p>\n

This columnist has often defended short sellers, an unpopular bunch who nevertheless help root out fraud (think Enron, Wirecard and others) and expose weak and over-hyped companies (think dotcom stocks in 2000, and Anglo-Irish Bank<\/a> and other financial stocks in 2008). Left himself deserves credit in this regard, particularly for his expos\u00e9 of drug company Valeant Pharmaceuticals in 2015.<\/p>\n

However, complaints about \u201cfree speech\u201d and the value of short selling miss the point. Conventional long investing is obviously a good thing, but pumping and dumping stocks isn\u2019t. By the same token, short selling is all very well, but short-and-distort schemes are not.<\/p>\n

It leaves a bad taste in the mouth if commentary is used less as genuine analysis than as a way of trading on the reactions it provokes \u2013 in effect, \u201ctaking candy from a baby\u201d, as one of Left\u2019s messages put it. In cases like this, there is a thin line between opinion and exploitation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrew Left, one of Wall Street\u2019s best-known short sellers, is facing years in prison after being convicted of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,975,60,1388],"class_list":["post-486295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-investment","tag-ireland","tag-new-york-stock-exchange"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}