YouSaid · the spoken record

Fahmi Quadir

lines on the record: 31
first: 2026-05-22
most recent: 2026-05-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So they are there, they're noisy, but they are not the largest part of the retail public. The largest part are traditional value investors who have really tried to build generational wealth through their accounts. And they've stayed away from Korean equities, again, because of what they viewed as value destruction. And suddenly now, because of the incentives and because of these structural changes that are happening, those investors are now starting to buy into Korean equity.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I've been fortunate enough to spend a lot of time with retail investors there, and you definitely do have a younger generation of retail investors that's very digitally connected. And they are certainly trading meme stocks. They're proud to have their triple lever ETF single stock ETFs.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Over the past couple of years, and this new generation doesn't really know how to rid themselves of that history. Because the thing about the Korean investing public is they're very passionate. And traditionally, these Korean retail investors have stayed away from Korean equities because of the bad experience holding these trouble companies that have these depressed value. But now actually the financial regulator just announced recently that if you are a company on the COSP where you're trading below book value, you will be named and shamed. So that will be a great place to start.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, yeah, exactly. So it's a fraud to make things cheaper, not more expensive. Right. And that's really interesting for me because I have an expertise in fraud and I can actually unlock that discount, that value from these businesses. But the other interesting dynamic with these troubles is that they're now either entering or exiting their third succession. So you have a new generation of owners that are much more globally oriented. They're looking at what's happening in U.S. markets. They're much more capital where they start seeing the prestige behind having a big stock price. So they're much more willing to engage. So the companies that I'm looking at in Korea are not the ones that are the high flyers. I'm not looking at Samsung and SK Hynex. I think they know what they're doing. I'm looking at the businesses that don't have as much experience with foreign markets, that have sort of been bogged down by these corporate structures.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Act. Korea has been dominated by these trebles, and one of the main things that they've been trying to avoid is inheritance tax. So a lot of the governance issues have been related to different structure transactions they would do to depress the value of the assets in order to minimize their inheritance tax burden. But now they realize they can't do this.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to first say that stock price has not been the guiding factor of Korean companies. I mentioned these utilities holding companies before. That was back in the 1920s in the US, before the establishment of the SEC. Well, Korean companies have looked like that through most of the modern era. And it was only this past year, not even a full year ago, that Korea enshrined the rights of shareholders into their corporate code. So companies now have a fiduciary duty to shareholders, to provide fair and equitable treatment. So there's now this idea of Shemiyun now applies to stock price. And that is going to change a lot of the behavior of how companies act and how these holding companies and these families that run them, the troubles, how they”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Effort to fix a lot of the structural issues that were holding Korea back, especially Korean markets. There's a big focus on deepening the FX market, stabilizing the wan, encouraging domestic equity flows, and of course modernizing corporate governance. And it's on this last point where I feel like I can really add value. And it's really exciting for me to be a part of the transformation there.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And that is crazy, but at the same time, most chairmen of Samsung have also been investigated, prosecuted, and sometimes jailed and sometimes pardoned. So there's this idea of accountability and a certain expectation that the Korean public has on its institutions. And this arises from a Korean value called Shemyun, which is face, basically the face that you show to the world. And it's through this concept and through this lens I really started to understand the market very well. I spent a lot of time there as I'm looking to launch this new fund. We're looking to do long shareholder activism in Korea. But in the aftermath of this short-selling ban, after the democratic administration came into position, they've made a really concerted”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a bit of a capital markets reform geek, especially when it refers as far as short selling regulations. So I follow any developments related to short selling. Alarm going off in my head, and Korea's on my radar. So, because whatever is happening there is going to be interesting, you know, good or bad. At that time, I was thinking it potentially as a place I would want to go short sometime. But then I started to learn more about Korea and what was happening there. We've all been touched by Korean culture somehow, Korean food, K-pop, K-drama. And Korea is such an interesting country to me because it's really developed its national identity after World War II in the face of globalization. So as we've seen the rise of globalization, we've seen the rise of Korea. And we see it as this really sophisticated manufacturing-based economy that exports a lot. But at the end of the day, technically, it's still an emerging market, which is crazy. And if you look at the political history of Korea, most presidents have”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's what I want to say. I wouldn't read too much into this as the last short seller puts in the towel. That's not what this is. Obviously, thinking back to just the business landscape for short sellers and the funding environment for short sellers, it's really about thinking about my identity as a short seller and what do I want my legacy in the markets to be? Yeah, I love being the assassin and there's, you know, I have great pride in helping talk, you know, bring up the discussion of drug pricing, bringing down a money laundering organization. These things are important to me, but my skills have more utility than just that. And that was a starting point. How do I use my skills in the golden age of fraud? If I can't go and whistleblow on companies in the US, in the West, then where can I go? Who wants to see me use these skills? Who will value me? And for a long time,”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While this is all happening, Wirecard is saying everything is all okay, Wirecard is putting out press statements saying that I'm just not a good analyst. That's why I think it's money laundering. But his best friend was arrested. And after that happened, there was a psychological collapse. You know, a few weeks later, it was Jan Marcelik's birthday party. He was chugging bottles of vodka, rolling around on the floor, not sure what to do with himself. Bad sign. And then within a month and a half, two billion dollars missing, wire card goes bust. So it's about understanding what are these pressure points, what will actually make these guys sweat.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Money laundering, and that basically the business was built around money laundering. So apart from what the Financial Times was doing on the accounting side with WireCard Asia, we were looking at Wirecard's business in the US. And this was a part of the market, you know, no one really followed. But the kingpin, the fixer, as I'd like to call him, for Wirecard's business through the US with US dollars was this guy who was actually best friends with Yan Marcelik, the Russian spy, co-founder of Wirecard. So we presented information on him, and it was, I believe it was towards the end of March 2020 when we were following the docket every day in the southern district of New York, and we saw finally there's an arrest warrant out for this guy who is the best friend of Jan Marslick. And this was something the market is not following.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we really focus on, and this kind of goes along the lines of people, in cases of terminal fraud, especially where you're going to have fraud at a systemic level. So it's going to go all the way up to the top. It's the people that are running that business that are somehow rotten. You need to understand how they think. And this behavioral component, where you have to understand what the pressures on them are. Because many times that is not the stock. There's going to be other exogenous factors that are worrying them when the House of Cards is starting to fall in on them. And I'll use an example for your audience. You know, we're in London so you guys all probably know about Wirecard. You know, the headline of Wirecard was always with the Financial Times and the accounting fraud in the aftermath, we all know now that the co-founder of Wirecard was a Russian spy. And from our research, it was always about the money.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If only it was simple as just one thing. Of course, following people matters, following money, investor quality also matters. Who's funding this business? In this market, especially, you have to be weary of the dependency on narratives, right? There are healthy companies that are using narratives to explain their economics, but then there are dodgy and failing companies that are using narrative to explain away their economics. So you have to be able to tell the difference. We tend to follow sectors where you have some sort of structural component that is going to put pressure on the business because that is really the test of your management, their governance and their ability to, when they are dealing with pressure, do they turn to fraud and financial engineering and potentially financial fraud, accounting shenanigans? Or do they transparent about their problems? And they face the repricing themselves. But I would say”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Enforced rules. So the SEC, for example, enforcement activity for the SEC from 23 to 24 dropped, I believe, 26%. And then the following year dropped another 22%. So I want to say, you know, this isn't something that's tied to a single administration. It really is tied to pro-cyclicality because no regulator wants to stand in the way of something as big as the AI boom. And it's always in the aftermath that we realize this.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, because I think most short sellers I know are not bearish the market. And if you ever look at some of the things that short sellers go long, sometimes it's highly speculative, momentum-driven stuff. And many short sellers are, again,”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going around and what this is effectively doing because we don't see everything. It's manufacturing to some extent demand. That demand is driven by capital flows. So I think an important catalyst for the market will be the Open AI IPO whenever that may happen, an informational catalyst, because we'll see the financial narratives will be laid bare. You'll get the perspectives. Exactly. Presumably a flowchart that kind of goes like this. We'll see. Exactly. And I think investors then will be forced to reckon with how they've priced some of this demand. And maybe that will be an important repricing moment for the market in general.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everyone loves to talk about private credit. It's not necessarily a theme we look at because we are pretty idiosyncratic. So, you know, we are looking at it where it touches some of the consumer-facing businesses that are getting credit from these business. But I think everyone likes to talk about the dot-com mobile and the parallels to right now, but let's go further back to radio utilities and electrification. And if we look at the structure of those utility companies, the holding structure, and there were layers of financing at each level, and there was cash flows being recycled between each of these layers. And the thing was it was an entirely black box. No one really knew what was going on. And that's kind of how I see things unfolding today, especially within AI and within the circular deals. You have a lot of money.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To mask the deterioration in the fundamentals of the business. So I would say the safest shorts in this environment are companies where you have that sort of structural break, where the narrative is broken. The company may try to acquire new businesses and say they're changing the story. But if the economics aren't following up and lining up with these acquisitions and you still see continue to see the fundamental deterioration, those are the shorts you can still even in this market sit in and ride down. You know you mentioned levered private equity roll-ups. Can you give us your thoughts on private credit in general? Because we keep getting these sort of idiosyncratic blow-ups, you know, the things that Jamie Diamond refers to as cockroaches. And they seem idiosyncratic, but then they keep happening. And so it's kind of difficult not to ask the question about whether or not this is a more generalized issue.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there is definitely an alignment here because fraud is never good for business and taking advantage of your consumer is also never good for business. So these things do converge. You know, if you look at consumer finance, these stocks have done really well lately. But if you're actually looking at the underlying assets and what's being securitized, it's not looking as good. And loss recognition is really lagging. And again, this goes back to putting more pressure on an already stressed consumer. And a lot of these businesses that rely on price gouging and kind of taking advantage of a looser regulatory environment, they do so because they may have structural issues that they're already contending with. And the thing about businesses that are facing a structural decline, whether that's circumstantial or something that's fundamental and terminal, they will all turn to financial engineering because that's the only way they can try.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of those in the US. So levered roll-ups in the consumer discretionary space, but we're also looking a lot in healthcare, healthcare services. I think for the mid-long term, healthcare is going to be an important theme on the short side, because yes, this is the golden age of fraud, but it's also the age of populism. And the themes around reimbursement, cost of care, and the systemic issues in the U.S. healthcare system, these are here to stay. And I think as we lead into the midterms and into the next presidential, there are going to be important themes that we can invest on. For the past two years, I think investors have really gone full into this sort of deregulation investment theme. But the reality with deregulation is that it's almost like what I like as a short seller like to call willful blindness. A lot of these businesses may look robust in this kind of environment, but those fundamentals depend on exploiting the consumer price gouging.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the market, some way you could go to regulators and you could blow the whistle on some of these frauds. But a lot of these levers that we traditionally had just don't exist anymore. Many of the contacts that I had are no longer in their old positions. So we've had to go more and focus on fundamental catalysts, which was always an important part of shorting. But now it's a lot more and more than I necessarily like focusing on what will happen during earnings really.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we're trying to find smaller windows of opportunity to make profit and de risk our positions. We say more about the golden age of fraud because, I mean, it feels like grift is everywhere right now, so you could, in theory, find a bunch of targets, but on the other hand, it also feels like everyone is willing to ignore Grift because they just want to grab onto the momentum and go along for the ride. What is the target environment actually like for you? The target environment is very rich, of course, but the way you're actually timing the trades is very different. Historically, you could build conviction and position, and you could at least have some small exposure to that over time and trade into certain catalysts that you see. You could ensure that your thesis is materialized.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think by the skin of my teeth, it isn't easy. I was fortunate enough to have picked investors who really gave me a lot of leeway to figure things out. But I would say since 2021, it's really been an existential crisis for me to understand what is the value of short selling in the golden age of fraud. Because the informational alpha we provide, the research that we do, that has to affect price discovery because ultimately the role of a conviction short seller or any short seller for that matter, whether you're a systematic algo or a market maker, is to provide liquidity and support price discovery, right? And conviction shortsellers do that too. But the informational alpha components, it's just not affecting price discovery at this time the same way it has traditionally. So short sellers have had to essentially become factor investors like everyone else. We're chasing momentum.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even if you're a short seller who never touched GameStop or any of the meme stocks, an allocator doesn't care because they just see the risk associated with concentration on the short side. So we got to a point where basically it became, there was no business case for running a short fund because no one was willing to pay you to do it. And sadly, it's probably a, tells us something about where we are in the market cycle. So every day is a day about trying to evolve and stay in business.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's never been an easy time. I think the institutional allocator community was interested in funding shorts back after the GFC. So that was the point where you had the rise of larger short biased funds, but years of underperformance meant that these allocators lost interest. So by the time I was launching in 2018, there was really limited interest in funding shorts. Investors believed in short alpha, but the allocator community was really moving towards market neutral strategies. So it was never easy. And then as we head into 2021 and everything with GameStop, the idea of having conviction short positions also became a huge risk.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we launched in 2018 and we traditionally focused on high conviction shorting. So our fund exclusively shorts. And I really mean that we're only holding short positions. We're not allowed by fund mandate to go directionally long in any way, not hedge in any way. So we need to be really damn right on every position we take. So what's client demand actually like at the moment? Because we were talking about short sellers kind of becoming a dying breed. If you think about someone like Jim Chenos, who we've had on the show a number of times, he basically closed his fund, converted it into a family office because he said no one was interested in shorting the market anymore. It's wild. I've been in this business as a short seller now for about 11 years. And I've seen multiple cycles of short sellers coming and going. And I have to say,”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really, the perfect person to speak to. Go ahead and take a listen. In that introduction, I didn't actually even say one of the coolest things about you because there are a lot, but you are famous for going up against Valiant and Wirecard and shorting those successfully. And you are also known as the assassin, which as someone who has always yearned for a cool nickname, I am very jealous of. That's so cool. Yeah. Yeah, I guess ever since I got the nickname. So let you in on a little secret. Sure. I got that nickname before anyone knew who I was. It was a way to basically assign my research, my product as it was being sent out to other short sellers and investors because I was an unknown entity. So another short seller who knew who I was just said, let's call her the assassin. So it was sort of genderless, ageless, but it stuck.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, she's actually going long for the first time ever, and she's chosen Korea, which is a very hot market at the moment to do that. Our guest is Fami Qadir. She is the founder and CIO of Safkat Capital. She also has a cool nickname, the Assassin. Yeah.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And sometimes they get a lot of pushback as well, which if you go out and Google this particular guest when it comes to a company like Wirecard. Like famously, she was being attacked on the streets of Manhattan and things like that. So just an incredible story. And we were very lucky to have her on stage with us live at our show in London.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Out a particular story about a specific company and bring it to light. And I always wanted to talk to this particular short seller. She's kind of famous. In the space, I think she's one of the few short sellers maybe who's been in a Netflix documentary more than one, I think, at the start.”
2026-05-22 · Odd Lots · 'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source