(Harvest) In general, I find reading short reports to be a very valuable exercise. I don’t do much shorting in my accounts for clients, but I find that for the most part, short sellers provide a useful service to the capital markets and I think that the good short sellers (who are few and far between) often do more thorough investigative analysis than the vast majority of long-only investors.
For a good book on shorting, I recommend reading Scott Fearon’s book called Dead Companies Walking. Even if you don’t short, I think it’s useful to read and listen to short sellers—if you can identify the good ones.
