Andrew Left

Andrew Left founded Citron Research in 2001 and published over 200 short-selling reports over two decades, targeting companies he believed were overvalued or engaged in fraudulent practices. His reports moved markets and attracted both praise and legal challenges. In January 2021, Left became a central figure in the GameStop short squeeze, when retail traders on Reddit targeted him after he published a bearish note on GME. The episode cost him significant losses and led him to announce Citron would stop publishing short reports, pivoting to a long-focused approach. Left's career trajectory — from feared short seller to target of coordinated retail short squeezes — marked a defining inflection point in how market dynamics shifted with the rise of social media-organized retail trading, fundamentally changing the risk calculus for public short sellers who had previously operated with relative impunity in the face of angry management teams.