(Bloomberg) A new way to bet against stocks is born. A few hours after Carson Block announced last Thursday that he was shorting St. Jude Medical Inc. stock over hacking risks to the company’s pacemakers and defibrillators, the e-mails started stacking up in Billy Rios’ and Jonathan Butts’ inboxes.
The two are top medical-device cybersecurity consultants, and they were inundated with inquiries from hedge funds, short sellers and other investors trying to make sense of the news — or profit themselves from the trade by Block’s firm, Muddy Waters Capital LLC.
