sharesleuth

i am looking forward to reading sharesleuth, a new site from mark cuban that promises to look “for companies that were built for fraud, for executives who are enriching themselves at shareholder expense, and for businesses whose behavior runs counter to their stated objectives or to the public interest”. cuban is going to short the companies that are profiled.

i have been following cuban’s blog for a while now, and his pieces about shorting overstock are highly entertaining. there are a lot of companies out there getting away with gross misconduct. you could argue, and in fact some do convincingly, that finance journalism mainly serves wall street, and very rarely critically examines the markets. exposing companies that are defrauding hapless investors is a welcome addition to the field in my opinion. you sure don’t see the mainstream finance press doing expos?©s on companies until the SEC or some other enforcement agency gets involved.

i imagine there will be many lawsuits associated with the site, and a lot of pissed off people. there is a potential for abuse with this sort of thing, but one inaccurate accusation will destroy the site’s credibility, and i think they must know that. for that alone, i am inclined to be at the ready on the short trigger…