• H1-2026 was a strong and a busy half for short-sellers: 91 new major public short and critical campaigns, up from 72 in H1-2025.
• On average, shares fell 11.7% following publication of a report.
• As usual, activists did not shy away from taking on popular retail hype stocks, and scored several big wins there.
• Fugazi Research had an impressive H1, running 12 campaigns. The activist alone occupied five of the Top 10 best-performing campaigns.
• We have seen increased focus on Europe: Hunterbrook politely asked uncomfortable questions about Europe's biggest-ever defense IPO, while Grizzly Research became a genuine nightmare for a number of European companies.
• We close with a brief look at the H2 2026 outlook and look at Citron's Left verdict.

H1-2026: Shorts in the zone? 

In H1-2026, we registered and tracked 91 new major short campaigns. This is about 30% higher than pro-rated number of campaigns in H1-2025. At the time of this report, on average, targeted stocks were down 11.7% following a short call/report. Some reports did partuclarly stand-out in terms of performance. The ten best-performing from H1-2026 are:

Fugazi Research takes amazing five of the ten spots. Budget Group (CAR) is the standout, Fugazi's thesis wasn't even really "the business is bad", it was that the stock's meteoric rise was a "prisoners' dilemma" squeeze between two hedge funds sitting on over 100% of the float. When that structure finally unwound, we have seen a genuine meme-stock collapse that dominated financial media for days:

$CAR is down almost -50% after our short report at 9:35am EST today. 

A Prisoners' Dilemma of Two Hedge Funds

Full report https://t.co/9rGUrHvDXKpic.twitter.com/1yy8aIE4mQ

— Fugazi Research (@FugaziResearch) April 23, 2026

Citron's win, Fundrise Growth Tech Fund, LLC (VCX), is the cleanest thesis of the half, a closed-end fund hit a very high NAV on Anthropic/SpaceX retail mania, Citron and others simply pointed at the math "trading at $400+. Its assets are worth $19", and shares plunged.

Hunterbrook's Richtech Robotics (RR) is a classic Hunterbrook move, Richtech touted a Microsoft "collaboration," stock 'mooned', Hunterbrook just called Microsoft, who, as per Hunterbrook. described it as a standard free-lab customer engagement:

BREAKING: Microsoft denies "commercial" relationship with Richtech Robotics — after $RR added $370 million in market cap after announcing a "close collaboration." Microsoft told us the engagement was a "standard" customer program. pic.twitter.com/Rq1mwySAkA

— Hunterbrook (@hntrbrkmedia) January 29, 2026

Night Market's POET Technologies (POET) win came the old-fashioned way: camping at a trade show and asking POET's own named partners if the relationships were real:

In March we attended OFC 2026 in Los Angeles. We spoke to seven $POET partners including Celestial AI/Marvell, Foxconn, Luxshare, Mitsubishi, Multilane, Adtran, and Semtech. All described immaterial or dead partnerships.

— Night Market Research (@NMRtweet) May 15, 2026

Grizzly Research's 2CRSi (AL2SI) is your best evidence yet for "nightmare for European companies": a French Euronext-listed server maker that requested a trading halt and fired back with a rebuttal webinar.

Looking at the campaigns from a geographical perspective, U.S. companies, by far, were most often in the focus of short and critical reports. On average, following 61 U.S.-focused reports, corresponding shares are down 13.5%. However, an even better regional success has been achieved in Canada, where shares plunged 18.7% on average.

Activists in Our Focus

In H1-2026 we again saw plenty of activists with a prolific output. Top performing activists in H1-2026 with at least two campaigns are: 

Fugazi Research tops the table on volume and delivered -35% on average across its 12 calls, remarkable consistency for that much output, and paired with five Top 10 placements, it makes them a stand-out activist of the half.

Pelican Way Research quietly earned the second spot with 4 calls averaging -33%. Their playbook seems remarkably consistent, find a microcap whose stock just ripped on a deal with a counterparty that seemingly barely exists. Blaize's $50M "partnership" with a four-month-old company, as per Pelican, seemingly sporting photoshopped product images, and Hyliion's $133M data center deal, as per Pelican, with a four-employee shell, both fit the mold.

White Diamond follows at -26% across 4 campaigns.

Hunterbrook Media is at -16% across 7 campaigns. Beyond the names already covered, the newsroom model kept producing consequential work, the Ensign Group investigation (quickly seconded by Muddy Waters) is seemingly an interesting watch in H2

Culper Research slots in between at -18% across 5 calls.

Among the two-call activists, Citron technically posted the best number of anyone at -45%, driven by the VCX collapse. Jehoshaphat (-22%) and Viceroy (-16%) also delivered, with Viceroy's Abaxx campaign (-33%), still in full regulatory-letter-writing mode:

Abaxx - Letter to OSC & CIRO

Viceroy's letter to the OSC and CIRO requesting an investigation is now live on our website. $ABXX.TO 1/ pic.twitter.com/JubIvWQqxt

— Viceroy (@viceroyresearch) June 26, 2026

The aggregate tells the story: 91 campaigns averaging -12%, a market that keeps serving up hype cycles faster than activists can short them.

What to expect in H2-2026? 

The single most consequential event for the space won't be a short report at all. Citron's Left was convicted on 13 of 17 counts in his federal securities fraud trial on June 1, with sentencing set for August 31 and an appeal all but certain. Citron's Left has framed the case as a free speech fight. Notably, the conviction seemed to have rested not on the truthfulness of Citron's research but on the gap between Left's public price targets and his private trading. That distinction is exactly what the appeal will test, and many activist have a stake in the outcome: if the verdict stands, "we may close our position at any time" boilerplate may no longer be enough; majority already took a much more cautious disclosure stance. That Citron still topped our per-campaign performance table in the same half its founder was convicted is one of the stranger footnotes in the space's history.

The main retail vs shorts battleground has meanwhile shifted to Europe, and specifically to Sivers Semiconductors, where NINGI Research took on a Swedish retail darling that had rallied over 1,200% on AI-optics hype. Things heated up considerably as H1 closed, the stock has dropped about 50% from its early-June peak,, and NINGI has kept the pressure on with a follow-up talking about the company's SEK 700M raise. With so many developments going on, such as, Nasdaq dual-listing narrative, a reshuffled board, this one is set up to be H2 must-watch campaign either way it resolves. The shares were about 20% down since Ningi's report (Note on 2026-07-06: since the writing of this overview report they crashed further and are now down 33%).

Finally, watch whether new retail hype narratives pull activists in more forcefully. H1 already gave a preview, Richtech's robots, Blaize's edge AI, POET's optical interconnects, and if the emerging robotics-for-AI narrative inflates the way quantum and space did before it, expect activists to be waiting. The half showed they have become remarkably efficient at monetizing the gap between a press release and reality; a fresh hype cycle would give them plenty of new material.

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