On the other hand, their reasoning for the accompany being risky and overpriced sounds pretty strong, if perhaps in way too many un-grouped bullet points.
In my opinion, it's good for the market that something like Hinderburg exists. It keeps companies more honest. And if they're wrong, they'll lose money.
Yes, shorts have some negative incentives that we need to be careful about.
But they’re the only ones in the entire market who don’t have incentives to lie about how well a company is doing. A decently run market with a reasonable number of shorts would not build up to the bubbles we see regularly that collapse and need to be bailed out.
It was the shorts who noticed the housing bubble in the first place. If there’s were more of them they could have popped it much more gradually and less painfully than the crash we had which has been the precursor to a lot of the terrible things we’ve faced since then.
Even the most glowing research piece put out by a big sell-side firm I can guarantee you the sales traders will swear about internally because they feel it should have been more bullish. Even when big wall street firms don’t have a position and aren’t trying to butter up the c-suite in the hope of getting future IB fees, they are structurally long the market because of how commissions work so they want shares in general to go up.
In that context I think short research is healthy. With Hindenburg yes you know he has a (short) position so has an axe to grind, but at least you know exactly what his position is and can interpret the research through that lens. All other research should be read with the same skepticism but you should additionally make sure to identify the author’s bias because they surely have one.
I personally don’t trust any published research and would urge anyone who invests to do their own research. Also absolutely don’t trust any recommendations or “research” you read put out by someone online and least of all random investing “tips” put out by influencers/random people you meet etc. There is a huge amount of astroturfing via forums and the like and if you can’t trust the big wall street firms and specialised research boutiques you certainly can’t trust 2thaM00n1234 on reddit, or that guy you met at the golf club Christmas party, or Jane’s brother’s boyfriend’s cousin who made a bunch of money through crypto or whatever all of which could literally be anyone at all even if you think you know them.
Do the legwork yourself, make money slow. That way there’s no-one to pull the rug out from under you.
To be fair, for a company like Adani, which is very connected to India's politicians, even if they do something illegal, they'll get away with it. Corruption is very high in India and the elites and politicians just do what they want.
It's like when Google sued Oracle.