Recording Artist Benn Jordan Successfully Bet Big Against Spotify, Tesla, TikTok Influencers

In late December 2021, Benn Jordan, a successful recording artist, YouTuber, and scientist, ventured into the risky world of margin trading. Convinced that Spotify (SPOT) was an overvalued business model, he leveraged an entire year of his publishing royalties to borrow hundreds of shares in the music streaming service and immediately sold them at market value. A year later, the share’s value had plummeted by nearly 70%. Jordan repurchased the shares at the lower market value, returned them to his broker, and pocketed the six-figure difference.

A month later in January 2022, Jordan attended the NAMM Show in Anaheim, CA, where he took the main stage and shared his experience with an audience of thousands of music industry insiders. He explained how he had made significantly more money from shorting Spotify than the service had paid him, despite his music (most widely known under the alias “The Flashbulb”) having millions of listeners. He humorously remarked that he might never be invited to speak at an industry trade show again.

Jordan’s Spotify trades gained widespread attention among musicians, thanks to viral clips of his speech and his YouTube video titled “Why Spotify Will Ultimately Fail.” However, his other trades are not as widely publicized. Instead, they are detailed in his quarterly portfolio report, “Super Alpha Bear,” available upon request. Among his top earners in 2023 was a bet against Curiosity Stream (CURI), which yielded a nearly 200% return.

In 2021, a TikTok trend emerged where young vloggers showcased how easy it was to get rich through real estate flipping and rental schemes. Allegedly, Jordan sought out appraisal and tax information on the properties acquired by the influencers, reached out to some of them for lender recommendations, followed their leads, and shorted Arbor Realty Trust Inc. (ABR), earning a 26% return in four months. Whatever Benn had discovered may have been more serious than poor judgment in business loans as just last month, Arbor Realty faced a major class action lawsuit for violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Not all of Jordan’s ventures are bearish. Last year, he took an ownership stake in Voice-Swap, a privately-owned company led by DJ Fresh that generates royalties for vocalists and musicians by creating superior sounding models based on consensual data. Since then, he has helped grow the service to nearly 200,000 users and managed to recruit Soundcloud’s Vice President of Strategy, Michael Pelczynski. The company has worked with major labels, maintained a heavy media presence, and has recently been nominated for multiple startup awards despite not yet taking any funding in a time when AI is a white hot commodity for venture capital investors.

This year, Jordan has been more open about his trades on social media. A few days before Tesla’s (TSLA) Robotaxi event, he acknowledged his short position on Elon Musk’s X and Threads and made several jokes after the event as the stock tumbled, quickly going viral in the site’s recommendation algorithms.

According to Jordan, most of his earnings go towards his research and his non-profit organization, Alphabasic, which funds his ambitious video documentaries and supports music education endeavors. Benn’s YouTube channel often features extremely deep and obsessive dives into topics that may shed light on how he manages to confidently bet against  commodities that are bullish investments to most traders. In just the last year the channel has shed light on everything from Tesla’s failure to live up to their promises to drug companies taking advantage of ADHD drug shortage.

Benn had declined an interview but agreed to verify citations.