Hunterbrook Media

Last year, hedge fund Hunterbrook Capital launched a news site called Hunterbrook Media, a newsroom similar to short sellers such as Muddy Waters and Citron Research. The hedge fund makes trades based solely on news from Hunterbrook Media, getting advanced copies of the articles and placing trades before publication. This novel experiment, co-founded by investor Nathaniel Horwitz and writer Sam Koppelman, blends Wall Street and the newsroom to make investigative journalism profitable. Hunterbrook Media has a full-time staff of seven, dozens of freelancers and part-time editors. The hedge fund, however, has just one trader. Nathaniel Horwitz makes investment decisions after reading Hunterbrook Media’s reports.

Hunterbrook Media launched with a report that United Wholesale Mortgage, the biggest U.S. mortgage lender, had been incentivizing independent mortgage brokers to funnel almost all of their business to UWM. Hunterbrook Capital had placed a short position on UWM before publication, shared its findings with Boies Schiller Flexner which filed a RICO class action, and reached out to other law firms about possible securities fraud. Hunterbrook Capital stated that the proceeds from such litigation would be used to fund Hunterbrook Media.