DAVID EINHORN

David Einhorn grew up in Demarest, New Jersey, in a family of academics and professionals. He attended Cornell University, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in government.

After a brief stint at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, an investment bank, he started Greenlight Capital in 1996 at age 27 with $900,000 raised from family and friends.

The fund performed well from the start. Einhorn built a reputation for meticulous fundamental research — reading SEC filings obsessively, questioning management in earnings calls, and occasionally going public with short theses that embarrassed companies.

His 2002 short of Allied Capital, a business development company he argued was mismarking its loan book, started a years-long battle with the company and eventually the SEC. He wrote a book about it.

He was ultimately right.

Greenlight Capital is his hedge fund, managing approximately $1.5 billion today — down significantly from its peak of over $12 billion before a decade of underperformance. Greenlight runs a long/short equity strategy, meaning it simultaneously bets on stocks going up and stocks going down.

The short side is where Einhorn has built his public reputation.

He is also deeply involved in poker. He has finished in the money at the World Series of Poker multiple times, made the final table of the Main Event in 2012, and has won over $4 million in tournament poker.

He donated his 2006 World Series earnings to charity. He has said publicly that poker and investing require the same skills: reading information, managing uncertainty, and knowing when to fold.

Einhorn is a long/short fundamental investor. On the long side, he looks for cheap, misunderstood businesses where the market has gotten the story wrong.

On the short side, he looks for companies with accounting irregularities, unsustainable business models, or management teams making misleading claims. His edge historically was doing the detailed work that others skipped: actually reading the footnotes, actually questioning the numbers, actually calling the bluff in public.

He goes public with his short theses, which most short-sellers avoid. He presents at conferences.

He names names. This is controversial — critics say it''s market manipulation, supporters say it''s journalism.

The Allied Capital and Lehman Brothers situations suggest it''s at least occasionally correct.

The Lehman Brothers short is the definitive win. Einhorn began shorting Lehman''s stock in early 2008.

He presented his thesis publicly at a Ira Sohn Conference in May 2008, citing specific accounting concerns about how the firm was valuing its real estate exposure. Lehman''s stock fell immediately.

The firm''s CEO famously called Einhorn a "short and distort" operator. On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.

Greenlight made over $1 billion on the trade. It is one of the most vindicated public short positions in financial history.

The post-2015 period is where the story gets complicated. Greenlight significantly underperformed from 2015 onward.

The fund lost money in 2015, 2018, and 2020. Part of this was a structural problem: value investing broadly underperformed during the growth stock boom.

Part of it was specific bets that went wrong. His short of Tesla was particularly costly — Tesla''s stock rose dramatically while Einhorn remained convinced the company was overvalued, costing the fund hundreds of millions.

He compared Tesla to the fraud companies he''d exposed previously. Tesla kept going up anyway.

The difference between "fundamentally wrong" and "stock going up" is an expensive distinction to make.

Einhorn believes the market frequently misprices securities because most investors are lazy or short-term focused. His philosophy is that detailed, patient fundamental research creates an edge — not access, not algorithms, not macro calls.

He also believes that companies with accounting problems eventually get found out. He has framed his public short campaigns as a form of market policing: if management is lying, someone needs to say so.

He''s been called a hero and a villain for the same trade.

Einhorn is married to Cheryl Einhorn, a journalist and author who has written about financial fraud and decision-making. They have three children.

The couple has donated significantly to education and medical research. Einhorn is active in Jewish philanthropy and has been involved with causes focused on global health and poverty.

He is publicly competitive — poker is not just a hobby, it''s a serious pursuit — but outside of that, he keeps a relatively low profile.

Cornell University, BA in Government, summa cum laude, 1991. He was a member of the Telluride Association, an honors society that placed particularly sharp students in a semi-independent living and learning program.

He has described his Cornell education as teaching him how to think, not what to think — which is, coincidentally, what good investing requires.

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