Of course, should they not get compensated for calling out fraud and protecting investors?

“Infamous” short sellers play a big part in public market ethics after all - contrary to current Reddit sentiment. The real villains hide behind anonymous forums like WSB, using social media media to pump and dump stocks and change the public narrative.

Hindenburg also published this piece to emphasize the importance and dispel the negativity of short sellers https://hindenburgresearch.com/clover/

A catalyst towards proper price discovery and liquidity. These are correctly aligned incentives.

If the entire market doesn't care, as it shouldn't, then its merely informative and helps more investors be aware of the great revenue printer.

If the market freaks out because they think others will freak out, those traders are the stupid ones and Hindenburg played the gullible people.

From what I read, the money losing company will likely have some brand conscious companies disassociate, while the money winning company will continue printing revenue.

It would be a pretty stupid business plan to do a ton of fake research about a company just to make a quick buck off the initial drop in the stock. If NKLA turned out to be a great company that was on their way to huge success the researchers would look incompetent, regardless of if they made any money off of shorts.

I don't see this as a conflict of interest or foul play if their assertions are correct and truthful, although I get a sense of your potential hesitation with the practice.

To abstract it a bit for the sake of argument: the police profit from policing, and can continue to do so as long as it remains a societal net good -- if it tips into nepotism then of course it should be corrected.

I view these sorts of firms as a mechanism of reversion to the mean.

IMO These shorters are doing an enormous service to the economy exposing corruption and malfeasance in (relatively) early stages.

If they profit from it, good for them.

Contrast this shorting behavior with massive scale market manipulation done by some multinational powerhouses with strong political connections.

In the absence of any meaningful regulation/enforcement by the FTC/DOJ/SEC/etc, these mechanisms are what the world is left with. Kind of like class action lawsuits, I would prefer a better mechanism, but at least it provides some mechanism to combat these things.

Of course. Why else would they publish them?

welcome to the world of activist investing