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- Jim Chanos has ridiculed meme-stock buyers and warned about the asset-price boom.
- The short seller and Kynikos Associates boss has also questioned Tesla, Virgin Galactic, and crypto.
- Here are 14 of Chanos' best tweets.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Jim Chanos has blasted retail investors as greedy and entitled, warned the current market boom dwarfs the dot-com bubble, and sounded the alarm on cryptocurrencies in recent months.
The veteran short seller and Kynikos Associates boss has also criticized Tesla CEO Elon Musk, dismissed China's regulatory crackdown as predictable, and compared Warren Buffett's business model to short selling.
Chanos – who shot to fame for anticipating Enron's collapse, and now holds short positions against Tesla and AMC Entertainment – tweets using the handle @WallStCynic.
Here are 14 of Chanos' best tweets, lightly edited for clarity:
1. "Asset prices are up across the board in 2021 (even bitcoin), and the S&P 500 is less than 3% off its all-time high. The sense of entitlement that investors have today is … something." (July 20, 2021)
2. "$GME is up 780% and $AMC is up 1,470% this year. $AMC has tripled in the past three months. This is not outrage, it is greed. The newest generation of entitled retail 'investors' must win all the time, or they cry and blame 'them.'" (August 5, 2021)
3. "The $AMC apes are openly discussing shorting the Robinhood IPO to 'stick it to them.' Anyone else see the irony there?" (July 2, 2021)
4. "Scientists believe the 'Dragon Man' went extinct trading YOLO options on Robinhood." (June 26, 2021)
5. "I was there as well … what is much crazier now is that the concept and fraud-y stocks are 5-10x the market cap today than in early 2000. And burning much more cash now. Also, no crypto/housing speculation in 1999-2000. Finally, there were no $20-30 billion 'short-squeeze' plays then." (July 31, 2021)
6. "If only we could combine the worst aspects of the the 1997-99 dot-com bubble with those of the 2003-06 residential real estate bubble..." "Hold my beer!" - commenting on companies helping people buy homes through crowdfunding or using their parents' investments as collateral. (June 29, 2018)
7. "The number of outright scams going on in crypto right now is breathtaking. #GoldenAgeOfFraud" (May 26, 2021)
8. "God save us from yet another 16-year-old crypto CEO in a hoodie claiming they are changing the world." (August 12, 2021)
9. "You mean to tell me that a totalitarian Communist government can change industries by edict overnight? Interesting. $BABA $DIDI $EDU $GOTU $TAL" - commenting on the Chinese government reining in Alibaba, Didi, and other major companies. (July 23, 2021)
10. "Do you know which companies don't rally 27% after successful product tests? Companies that people trust. $SPCE" - commenting on Virgin Galactic's stock soaring after a successful test flight (May 24, 2021)
11. "Tesla 'FSD' does not exist. Hundreds of billions of market cap depend on $TSLA and Musk maintaining this fiction. Their driver-assist software remains at Level 2, by their own admission. And despite all the miles-driven everyone points to. These are facts." - questioning the reality of Tesla's full self-driving system. (April 3, 2021)
12. "All hail the infallible God of Mars … all unfavorable outcomes are due to the efforts of his technically incompetent knights. Further developments shall come forth in two months, three months maybe. $TSLA" (July 10, 2021)
13. "Lol, Toyota unveiled their robot four years ago. And it wasn't a man in a leotard." - ridiculing Tesla for unveiling its humanoid robot using a person dressed up as a robot. - (August 20, 2021)
14. "Buffett's main business (insurance) is short-selling. It's the biggest short-selling business there is." - Chanos explained in a previous tweet that shorting is borrowing money at an uncertain cost, and Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway invests the premiums it collects from its insurance operations without knowing exactly how much it will pay out in claims. (February 5, 2021)