The Man Who Called Enron Thought He Could Call Tesla Too. He Lost His Hedge Fund.

Jim Chanos earned the title "LeBron James of short selling" for one reason: he called Enron. In 2001, while Wall Street was still rating Enron a strong buy, Chanos spotted the fraud and made a fortune. So when he announced in 2016 that Tesla was his next big short—comparing it to Valeant before its 90% collapse and calling the SolarCity merger "the height of folly"—people listened.

They probably shouldn't have.

Chanos started shorting Tesla around $40 (split-adjusted). The stock is now above $400. That's a 10x move against one of the most celebrated short-sellers in history. His fund's assets under management cratered from $7 billion in 2008 to just $200 million by 2023—the year he finally threw in the towel and shut down his hedge fund after 38 years.

The man who caught the greatest corporate fraud in American history spent seven years insisting Tesla was the next Enron. Instead, Tesla became the most valuable automaker on Earth, and Chanos became a cautionary tale about fighting a stock that simply refused to die.

Turns out, being right once doesn't make you right forever.