YouSaid · the spoken record

Jim Chanos

lines on the record: 35
first: 2025-04-12
most recent: 2025-04-12
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

“I don't know. I've called this the Golden Age of Fraud. And it just seems that we have a willingness in the corporate sector and elsewhere and in the nexus of government corporate of just not holding people to account for this stuff. The white-collar crime area. And I think Medicare is just a wonderful example of that in our budget, the federal budget. And so the fact that they haven't even gone after this or addressed this yet from Doge is really telling to me because it's there. It's low-hanging fruit. If you look at the 10Ks of these companies that we were short, I mean, there's... Criminal investigation after state level investigation listed in their legal proceedings. And yet most of them, when they get caught, they pay a fine. And nobody goes to jail and the cost of doing”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No idea. I mean, given what's driving markets as we sit here, I don't think we've ever seen anything like this where a global hegemon has willingly said, I'm going to basically shoot myself in the foot and get rid of the exorbitant privilege that we've had as being the global hegemon with the reserve currency. They're trying to dismantle that as we speak. And I think that just has all kinds of impact that none of us have lived through. So we'll have to see unless it gets reversed. And so I don't know what the analog for this is. We're just going to have to, like everybody else take it day by day. But the idea that markets are now going to react to tweets and as someone I follow said, you know, this is still a vibes market, not a math market. And that as it relates to the equities. And I think that's well said. I think that”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're authorized, right? And need legislative prescriptions. So I think they're not even going to come close to their target of a trillion dollars and two trillion dollars. I think that's just pipe dreams.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, they're going after the small stuff. They're going after the. I'm a bear on Doge. I mean, they're going after the political stuff. They're going after this ridiculous thing from two weeks ago about the number of Social Security numbers going to illegals and things like that. I mean, this is all political theater. And the real cuts are in areas that they haven't touched. And so we'll have to see. But it didn't get past me that Musk basically now is all but saying he's going to be gone from Doge in May. You know, four months. And so, and Vivek never got going. And so I think that this is, they're finding out that what they thought was fraud and ways is turning out to be authorized programs that you might not agree with politically, but”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could be relatively healthy. I don't know how they're going to code me when they go to the government for their reimbursement to say, Mr. Chainhos is very sick and blah, blah, blah, blah. So we get X thousand dollars from him per year as opposed to Y thousand dollars for him per year. And that's a big problem. There were some public companies that were purely in Medicare Advantage that we were short, and a lot of them were bought up by companies like CBS and others. And we just couldn't believe it because if you did any kind of due diligence on these companies, you realized that. They were upcoding”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, you would. So I tweeted out when Doge started out. I said, if they don't go after Medicare Advantage right away, then you know they're not that serious. And so that kind of tells you where I'm coming out on this. Medicare Advantage has been just a windfall for the insurers. It's basically for people that are eligible for Medicare. It's supplemental and it's also all, it can be all inclusive, meaning that you have a carrier treat you for not only that which Medicare covers, but additional things. The problem becomes what we call upcoding. And that's where the fraud has occurred. Because the government will give Medicare Advantaged Carriers a tiered set of payments depending on how sick their patient is coming into the program. So, you know.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, again, I mean, I think that number one interest rates have a big determinant on those kinds of stories because If we believe at least some of the rudiments of finance, you're willing to pay more for profits and cash flow 10 years in the future than when rates are higher. That's number one. And for all these companies like this, 95% of the value is in the terminal value. That's number one. Number two, look, it's castles in the sky. In bull markets, people believe these stories, and it's as old as human nature. And when things get tight, I mean, we kind of forget Tesla was $100 a couple years ago down from $500. And it dropped 80% in... In 2022. So it varies.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Being the skeptic, I think I don't see the robotics, the humanoid robotics market being a whole lot different from the car market, right? It's utility. People will have one. It'll be 30 to $50,000. There'll be 15 companies making them, and margins will be a manufacturing margin business. Cars have tons of software in them, tons of chips in them. They're amazing utility for the consumer, but they're cars. They have a low margin. And a lot of people make them. And I think it's going to be the same with robotics.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I remember when the Est was where we were all going to be driving Teslas in 2030, right? That's not happening. And so it'll be curious to see one in the RoboTaxis are rolled out this summer in Austin. How exciting is that? And then, of course, you know, the big one is we're all going to have, you know, Rosie the Robot from the Jets in our house, doing our tasks from Tesla. And again, I...”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I've always said that in bull markets, people put a premium on promises, and in bear markets, they put a discount on reality. And this is a stock that's still, and there's a handful of others that still trade at 40, 50 times revenues, where people still believe, they still believe in the promise of robotics and AI and robotaxis. And he's captured the imagination of a whole set of investors, particularly retail investors, who just are rabid with the idea that this is the company of the future. And so that's number one. Number two, I mean, Ultimately, he's going to have to deliver on these promises. And because, you know what? The car business he's got right now ain't all that. Margins are imploding. Profits are down now for three or four years in a row. He's going to have down, I think, down sales this year in terms of units.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I mean, he's tied himself to the administration in a way that is frankly kind of to me amazing and shocking at the same time. So he is tied now politically in a way that he never was. That's number one. But to me, Tesla is beyond Elon Musk. Tesla is a real sort of benchmark stock for me because of the way in which Elon effortlessly sells the story of the future to investors.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Walmart's warning this morning was maybe instructional in that they went out of their way to say that they were pulling their profit guidance, I believe, but told people that their revenue growth guidance was still intact for this year, which seems to me to imply that they're not going to pass on these tariffs since they get so much of their stuff from China, right? They're going to eat it. And because otherwise they would say, well, we're going to hike prices 15, 20%, and our revenue is going to be up 15 to 20%. They didn't say that. They said 3% to 4%, but margins, you know, we don't know on margins yet.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there definitely is a level of disbelief. I mean, the stock market is still at 20 times latest 12 month earnings. And they're coming down, but people still think earnings are going to be up 10% this year. And I don't know what planet they're on. I think that that's number one. And the size of the tariffs was stunning. I remember watching the press conference after the market closed, and I don't have the best eyeset in the world. I had to get close to the TV to make sure I was reading the numbers.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These tariffs that I don't think we kind of know all the implications and how it will ripple through the economy. And I suspect you'll start by May getting some pretty decent real-time feedback from businesses saying we're cutting our profit guidance because if they can't pass it on completely and study after study shows they can't usually, then profit margins, which by the way, let us not forget are at all-time highs. Are going to hit an air pocket”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, the transmission mechanism via tariffs will happen pretty quickly, I think. I mean, you saw Walmart warn today. Delta has pulled their guidance. Both of those were just today. I mean, it's kind of stunning how if you think about the nuts and bolts of these tariffs and how they work, despite what our president says, the importing entity pays the tariff Right, it's not a tax on China, and so you're a small and medium businessman, you just got $100,000 worth of product that landed at Long Beach Port from China. And your broker is saying, yeah, just come down with a cashier's check for $100,000 for the governments and we'll release your product. A lot of businesses don't have that. And so, I mean, there's real practical aspects.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it also depends, Tracy, how you define dry powder. A lot of firms define dry powder as the ability to capital call on their limited. It's not actually cash sitting in a bank account.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Finally, it crashes. I don't know. I mean, you'd have to get into the sort of weeds of every specific fund. But I mean, if they've been holding cash for years and years and years, they certainly weren't earning that 14 and 15% investors were hoping for. I don't know how the accounting works on that, but I'm sure, look, there is some unused capacity in the private equity world. But on the other hand, that doesn't get you your returns, buying companies and adding value to them is where the returns are. So if there were funds and firms holding dry powder and asset prices get marked down a lot, that should be a good thing for them.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. And so if you can't cash out. And so, yeah, I think it's going to be problematic for a number of funds. I mean, I'm sure there'll be plenty that'll do fine. But the days of saying, well, I'm going to earn 14, 15% with very little volatility. So this is a free lunch, I think, or over.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You better practice your writing of a heartfelt apology letter to your LPs because the IRRs you've been telling them that the fund has been getting prior to its windup are going to turn out to be way overstated to the actual returns. So look, it's problematic. I mean, investors are going to get back stakes in private companies that they might not want.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think spreads matter more, and we've seen a widening out of credit spreads. So I think that one of the reasons people think the Fed is going to ease is because of that, right? Weakness, not because of low inflation. And so you're seeing a relatively very quick. Increase in credit spreads over the past two weeks. I mean, it's really moved. So I don't think that that's the panacea that people are expecting, at least not yet, even with a fed ease, because junk credit rates are going up.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there was a story, I think, on Bloomberg just yesterday or the day before where one of the funds was asking investors if they wanted to sell their LP investment in one of the funds or transfer it, they had to get permission from the GP in order to get permission they had to agree to put money into the next one. And that story caught my eye. And so, you know, when you start to see that, and now we're starting to see time series of fun performance that are starting to become more lackluster, right? Rolling 10-year returns on private equity are beginning to converge with that of the regular equity market.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sell offs have been relatively short and sharp, so if you held off on marking your portfolio down, you generally were rewarded by not having to take the mark, right? The markets kept going. And the nightmare scenario for private equity and arguably private credit. Period of lackluster or no equity returns with higher interest rates.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I'm a little surprised at how intense the selling has been so quickly. But look, I mean, I agree with Cliff Asnes, who's done a great job talking about this. This is volatility laundering. And the idea that these funds don't have the same risks as equity funds have is, to me, preposterous. You're buying businesses on leverage. And we're now seeing that as it's becoming increasingly hard for these deals for them to bring these deals public or get exits. And again, on the margin, you're seeing a little bit of odd behavior in some of the private equity funds in trying to entice their investors to stick around. We'll have to see. I mean, up until now, for the last 15 years, getting back to the beginning of our conversation,”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know, and that's we still haven't seen the aha moment as we did with the internet with online retailing and communities like America Online, where suddenly your aunt was on it and then getting emails and paying money for it and getting emails.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, I'm open minded about it. I think it really is an amazing technology. And I think it's just you're going to have to see both sides of the coin for capitalism with it. It'll probably devastate a number of business models as well.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I mean, I think there's going to be a lot of winners. If it's as revolutionary as a technology as it appears to be, we'll see all kinds of new business models and probably a company that we might know, like Nvidia or whatever, succeeding, or maybe a couple of companies we don't know yet that will take advantage of it. The flip side to be the glass half empty guy is that what everyone also forgets about the internet was that it destroyed as many businesses as it brought forward. Any business that was in the analog business that went digital. So you actually had a physical product that went digital was absolutely devastated, like Kodak or Blockbuster Video, the yellow pages, what have you. And I suspect that AI will be very similar. We'll see.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, look on the margin again on the margin. I think these numbers are not material. They deal with core weeds. The distributor they're bought, but it's something to keep an eye on.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About in January. I saw your post earlier today about if tariffs run away like this, all the other stuff that is suddenly.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the margin where companies are increasingly round tripping with their customers or financing their customers or buying in their inventory via distributors, you begin to wonder if it's just on the margin, that's fine. But as we all know, on the margin is everything, right? If you miss your earnings by a couple of pennies, your stock can be devastated. And if they're doing deals like this to basically make sure they make or beat numbers, then we have the old 1998-99 2000 dynamic at work where companies are stretching to make numbers that has not been the case up until now, right? Through 2023, 2024. Demand's been amazing. Blowout numbers. It's something to keep an eye on as a shift.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, for those of us that are a little bit older than you two, I mean, we remember some of the round tripping that was going on in telecom equipment back in 99 and 2000 with Nortel and Lucent providing financing for its customers and then selling things into those customers on cheap terms and the whole thing unwound very quickly when the dot-com bubble and telecom bubble imploded. I put a tweet out that got some notice where I saw it NVIDIA not only was doing the core we've kind of deals, but had just bought a distributor of theirs. And that was also a little worrisome. It's only a small part of their business. It's not material. But when you start to see this stuff,”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we kind of said, all right, AI is a thing. It's an uncertain thing. Market loved it. Now the market's questioning it. But we do know that the old data centers, the ones that have been around now. Is this like an equinox for 20 years? Yeah, Equinax, digital realty, digital bridge. Those have really challenged business models.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the AI bet is an uncertain bet. We don't know what the returns on this massive investment is going to be yet. And even the MAG-7 will tell you it's uncertain. We think it's going to be worth the risk, but it's an uncertain payout. And I'll leave that up to people who are much more well versed in technology than I am. Our view was that the old legacy data centers that were built to basically handle the cloud, not AI, were in trouble and were a bad business to begin with and have gotten only worse. And that was the bet. It's still the bet. I think it's a really, I've called it one of the worst business models I've ever seen because the CapEx is enormous. You got to keep replacing the air conditionings and the racks and the networking equipment and to keep these centers running. And the returns on capital are just abysmally low.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, again, the lines are going up, but it was all a matter of if you're selling insurance as I was and advise people do do now. The idea was, is the insurance working? And the insurance was working really for even post-global financial crisis for quite a while. And then starting about 2018, 2019 and right into the GameStop episode in the first quarter of 2021, it didn't work at all. But it has worked since GameStop. And even though the market's made new highs recently, I think it's January, the short side has not been too bad. I mean, Bloomberg has an index, the most shorted basket, which you can take a look at if you're a Bloomberg subscriber.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, in our business model, over 40 years, basically it morphed into the idea that fundamental shorts allow you to be more long. And that's really, at the end of the day, your shorts are financing, your long portfolio. If your shorts don't go up or go down, it enables you to have a long portfolio that actually will outperform.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we're not in the business of running outside money anymore. So that ended a couple years ago, but we do advise clients and then, of course, run our own money. So since 1996, we've always been hedged. But we've seen obviously substantial alpha in the last couple of weeks, i.e. the stuff we're short has gone down much more than the market. We tend to be long the market passively And that usually happens, right? When the market shifts gears, a lot of the more questionable story stocks, frauds, hypes begin to underperform. And that was not the case until really about the tariff, the liberation day. And now it's really kicked in.”
2025-04-12 · Odd Lots · Jim Chanos on Who's Getting Caught Swimming Naked · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source