The Scramble to Invest in Nuclear Fusion... And the Challenges of Shorting Stocks Now

If you missed it, there was big news yesterday... Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory outside of San Francisco had a breakthrough in creating energy from nuclear fusion. Nuclear physicists have been pursuing this technology for decades. And investors being investors, they immediately started wondering the best way to cash in on what very […] Not rendering correctly? View this e-mail as a web page [here](. [Empire Financial Daily] The Scramble to Invest in Nuclear Fusion... And the Challenges of Shorting Stocks Now By Herb Greenberg --------------------------------------------------------------- [GM's next big release has no engine and no wheels]( In a shocking move, auto giant General Motors is venturing into a whole new space (hint: NOT electric vehicles). While industry analysts see this as a way of catching up with Tesla, the bigger reason could be because this new space is getting the full backing of the current administration and could mean huge tax credits in the future. Or it could just be that this fledgling industry has more scope than the declining auto industry. Whatever it may be, this move could put GM into the same bracket as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. [Get the details of this massive trend here](. --------------------------------------------------------------- If you missed it, there was big news yesterday... Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory outside of San Francisco had a breakthrough in creating energy from nuclear fusion. Nuclear physicists have been pursuing this technology for decades. And investors being investors, they immediately started wondering the best way to cash in on what very well may be the most profound development ever for producing clean energy... so important that it could ultimately end our reliance on oil and good old-fashioned regular nuclear. Not so fast, as my friend and former boss Dave Callaway writes in his Callaway Climate Insights newsletter... The chorus of enthusiasm around today's announcement of a successful test of nuclear fusion in a U.S. government lab is sure to send investors running to their online brokers to speculate on fusion plays. Turns out, investing in fusion is only slightly less difficult than creating energy from fusion itself. If you have never heard of Dave or his publication, let me just say: He's well worth listening to... Dave isn't just a veteran journalist (and an incredibly great person)... He was an early reporter at Bloomberg, but I first met him when he hired me at MarketWatch, where he was editor in chief. Dave went on to become the top editor at USA Today – hired there by MarketWatch founder Larry Kramer. The duo then went on to run TheStreet.com, which they ultimately sold. After TheStreet was sold, he started Callaway Climate Insights, which focuses on climate-related issues and their impact on the financial markets and investing – including nuclear fusion. On the topic, he writes... There are about three dozen companies out there working on some form of nuclear fusion, which is the fusing of two atoms to create energy, which is what the sun does. Traditional nuclear energy, which is easy to invest in, is created by splitting atoms, or fission. Because new energy through fusion was, at least until today, unable to be created by technology, there is no startup mature enough to have a business plan around it. All we know is that it has unlimited potential. Wait, like crypto? You can read the rest [here](. --------------------------------------------------------------- Recommended Link: [This 'account' produces shocking returns]( If you'd tapped into this "account" during one of the worst times to invest in history... you could have set yourself up for 796% gains and trounced the S&P 500 in the process. Today, investors are flocking to this "account" again, as the market continues to fall. It's the perfect time to tap into this opportunity. [Check out our full briefing right here](. --------------------------------------------------------------- Meanwhile, shorting stocks is finally back in vogue... but should it be? Let me start by reminding you: I'm the guy who left a short-biased research firm that he co-founded months before the market collapsed. Writing about stocks that might fall, when they were going straight up, stopped being fun. Hearing subscribers say, "Sorry, we're going to stop shorting stocks... for now," was ominous, as was watching the short analysts at your subscribing firms either get fired or quit. At the very peak of the market, nobody wanted to short stocks... Which, of course, is counterintuitive, but that's simply the way human emotion works. Now, with stocks down this year, it seems everybody wants to short stocks... And there may be good reason, especially as the excesses from the free money days continue to be exposed. This is, after all, a period when genuinely great business models will start to shine... and the bad ones will continue to blow up. But as the Financial Times [points out]( shorting may not be as easy as it sounds... While this year's 17% drop in the S&P 500 and 30% fall in the Nasdaq has proved a welcome relief, a declining stock market still carries dangers for short sellers whose pitch to investors rests on their ability to identify the weakest companies. After the golden opportunity presented by the collapse in highly priced speculative stocks this year – Goldman Sachs's non-profitable technology index is down 60% in 2022 – finding new short trades has become tougher. Jacob Mitchell, founder of Antipodes Partners, which manages around $7 billion in assets, said his fund enjoyed its best six-month period for short selling profits in the first half of this year since launching seven and a half years ago. "The shorts that worked kept on working," he said. But he added: "Now, it's not as obvious. You can't say 'this is a slam-dunk short.'" As a friend who was once a short seller added in a post on LinkedIn... The challenge for short sellers now is to find new ideas that will generate both absolute returns and alpha in a stock market expected to have lackluster performance. Plus, when the Fed finally pivots, which bulls will take as the all-clear signal, the focus will shift back to longs instead of short exposure. To which I responded... Bingo. I remember years ago talking to the guy who ran the Grizzly short fund, a mutual fund. It was probably back after a market collapse, and I naively probably called to say that his fund's investors are likely happy and realize why they had short exposure. He said something like, "Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. They always come in at exactly the wrong time – after the market collapses." Humans, after all, will be humans. As I proved aptly when I could no longer take the pain at exactly the wrong time – lots of morals to that story. As always, feel free to reach out via e-mail by [clicking here](mailto:feedback@empirefinancialresearch.com?subject=Feedback%20for%20Herb). I look forward to hearing from you. Regards, Herb Greenberg December 14, 2022 [Get a 60-day, 100% money-back trial to Empire Real Wealth by clicking here.]( --------------------------------------------------------------- If someone forwarded you this e-mail and you would like to be added to the Empire Financial Daily e-mail list to receive e-mails like this every weekday, simply [sign up here](. © 2022 Empire Financial Research. All rights reserved. Any reproduction, copying, or redistribution, in whole or in part, is prohibited without written permission from Empire Financial Research, 380 Lexington Ave., 4th Floor, New York, NY 10168 [www.empirefinancialresearch.com.]( You received this e-mail because you are subscribed to Empire Financial Daily. [Unsubscribe from all future e-mails](