Policy of Truth

Short specialist fund manager, Matthew Earl, unearths companies with suspicious or unreliable business practices. Putting his money where his mouth is, Matt shorts these snaky companies—sometimes sharing his research when there’s a strong public interest.  

Matt’s career is filled with research projects in which he delineated what many others struggled to see, from identifying flawed business models to recognizing signs of aggressive accounting. Among the most public of Matt’s endeavors lies Wirecard; he started raising concerns about the payment processing company in 2015—five years before Wirecard filed for insolvency. Matt dealt with repeated cyber hacking attempts and ongoing surveillance due to his publicly shared research opposing the company.

In this episode, Matt shares and expands upon the three key elements to short selling:  

• have great thesis
• utilize strong risk management
• identify the catalysts

Combining his skill in research with his ability to identify a good short, Matt founded ShadowFall Capital & Research LLP in 2017. The “Capital” portion of the firm is a single strategy pan-European market neutral fund that exclusively focuses on short alpha. The “Research” portion publishes and sells investigative reports; the most recent publicly available publication raises concerns about Civitas Social Housing PLC.  

Matthew Earl is Managing Partner and CIO at ShadowFall. Prior to this role, Matt managed funds at a family office. He began his career as a junior economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland, followed by working on the equity research side at Investec Securities. Matt supported the research offering at Charles Stanley Securities and also conducted research at Matrix Capital Markets Group, an investment bank in London.  

Please note that this episode was recorded on April 28, 2022.

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