Name James Chanos Spouse Amy Chanos (m. ?–2006) | ||
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Education Yale University, Birmingham Groves High School Similar People Scott Bessent, Kyle Bass, Tom Waits, Mark Cuban, Joana Vicente | ||
Organizations founded Kynikos Associates | ||
James Chanos | Charlie Rose
James S. Chanos (born December 24, 1957) is an American investment manager and currently serves as president and founder of Kynikos Associates, a New York City registered investment advisor who is focused on short selling.
Contents
Early life and education
James Steven Chanos was born in 1957 into a Greek immigrant family living in Milwaukee that operated a chain of dry-cleaning shops. He graduated from Wylie E. Groves High School, and received a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Yale University in 1980.
Career
He describes his investment strategy as being based on "intensive research into stocks" looking for fundamental and large market failures in valuation, typically based on underestimated or previously unreported failings in the business or market of a stock. He follows this research by committing to a (usually large) short-position which he is willing to hold for long period of time—almost the mirror image of Warren Buffett's reputed "fundamentals+long stay" investment strategy. Because of this model, his investments function more like those of a whistle-blower than most typical investments. Examples of this include short-selling companies such as Baldwin-United, and more recently Enron Corporation.
He began his career in the 1980s as a short seller. After working as an analyst in several firms, he founded Kynikos (Greek for "cynic") in 1985 with $16 million, as a firm specializing in short selling. A critical position taken at Kynikos was his shorting of Enron. He gained notability as a short seller when he predicted the fall of Enron Corp. before it filed for bankruptcy in 2001.
Chanos was a short seller of Enron throughout 2001, increasing his short position as more information surfaced. Kynikos profited from the trade.
Chanos is a long-time skeptic of the Chinese economy. In a January 2010 interview in the New York Times, Chanos predicted the Chinese economy would crash, resembling “Dubai times 1,000 — or worse”. He reasoned that historically analogous evidence points especially to a property bubble, particularly in commercial real estate.
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