If there’s one thing Jim Chanos isn’t lacking, it’s conviction. The legendary short seller—most famous for calling out Enron long before the collapse—joined On The Tape for a candid, sharp, and often hilarious look at the state of today’s markets, and let’s just say: he’s not bullish.
Right off the bat, Chanos reminded us that short sellers aren’t villains. “People vilify short sellers because they think they’re anti-capitalist. It’s actually the opposite,” he said. In his eyes, shorting is detective work—ferreting out fraud and overhyped narratives long before the SEC wakes up. And these days? There aren’t many sleuths left. “There’s literally like 10 of us left at this point.”
Chanos has seen this movie before. The speculative mania of 2021? “The most speculative market I’ve seen in my career,” he said. And by early 2025, the market was at it again—“stocks going parabolic, mass speculation in crypto, and the belief that politics was solved to the upside.” Then, the pin showed up and popped the balloon, just like he knew it would.
What’s different this time? According to Chanos, it’s the erosion of enforcement. He’s sounding the alarm over changes at the SEC and DOJ: “There’s no cops on the beat… what few there were a few years ago are even less today.” The chilling part? The White House now reportedly needs to approve SEC investigations. “That’s terrifying,” Chanos said.
Still, he’s never relied on the feds. “Financial regulators and law enforcement are archaeologists,” he quipped. “Short sellers and financial journalists are financial detectives.”
When the conversation turned to Tesla—a long-time Chanos short—he didn’t hold back. The SolarCity acquisition? “The first huge tell.” And now? “It doesn’t trade on fundamentals,” he admitted, though he still advises clients to stay short.
Chanos is still teaching his fraud class at Yale and Wisconsin, diving into centuries of scams. “The tools get different, but the human behavior is pretty constant,” he said. His students learn models for spotting fraud—and the history to understand how it always, eventually, unravels.
And for retail investors trying to avoid being the next bagholder? Watch the stories that don’t line up. “We want to see when there’s a narrative about a stock that is completely nonsense, yet the company plays along because they love what it’s doing to their valuation.”
In short: in a world full of memecoins, mark-to-model accounting, and CEOs dodging questions, Chanos is still doing the work. “I think probably one of the reasons I’ve made the most money in my career is by not meeting with management,” he laughed. “Really good financial sociopaths believe their own BS.”
Amen to that.
You can watch the entire interview here:
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