In this interview with Jason Buck of The Mutiny Fund, famed short-seller Marc Cohodes of Alder Lane Farm pulls no punches as he diagnoses the true culprits behind the exponential volatility in stocks such as GameStop: extreme leverage and the hedge funds who use it in order to juice returns. Cohodes argues that hedge funds like Point72 and Melvin Capital are creating significant systemic risk for all market participants, most notably themselves, and he congratulates the retail trades on r/WallStreetBets but warns them that, generally, buying a stock merely because it has high short interest is a very bad idea. He closes by sharing with Buck his personal journey during the 2008 Great Financial Crisis. Filmed on February 1, 2020.

Key learnings: The stock market is not a game – it is a serious thing for serious people. The reckless use of leverage ought to be constrained by regulators, and all investors, institutional as well as retail, should be prepared to lose if they are wrong.