A fight between Greenlight Capital and a former worker has caught the attention of people in the hedge fund world.
The 29-year-old James Fishback says he was “head of macro” at the New York hedge fund. The company Greenlight Capital says that job never existed.
Fishback was a high school debate champion who dropped out of Georgetown University to start his own hedge fund, Macrovoyant, when he was 21. In February 2021, he was hired to work at Greenlight Capital after having been a consultant for the New York fund.
In the two and a half years he worked at Greenlight Capital, he was promoted twice, first from research analyst to trader and then to head of macro. During that time, he made the New York fund a total of $100 million.
Instead, Greenlight Capital says Fishback was never hired as head of macro and that the job title has “never existed” at the New York fund since its founder, billionaire David Einhorn, opened it in 1996.
Fishback is now suing Greenlight Capital for defamation, saying that the company “knowingly lied” about his job to a “preeminent family office” that wanted to invest $10 million in Azoria Partners, the hedge fund he started after leaving Greenlight Capital in August 2023.
Fisherback told MarketWatch about the case, “I’m fighting to show that in America you can compete with anyone, even your ex-billionaire boss.”
He pointed out that he was less powerful than Einhorn by saying that his background as the son of a bus driver and a Colombian immigrant showed this. “I made over $100 million in trading profits in ten years,” Fishback said. “I used to help my dad sell watermelons on the side of the road.”
In his lawsuit, the 29-year-old calls himself a “self-taught investment professional.” He claims that Greenlight Capital “maliciously defamed” him by telling the potential investor who called his old boss for a reference that he had never worked as its head of macro.
Fishback sued Greenlight for slandering him and not letting people know what his real name was. As a result, he had trouble getting investors for his new hedge fund, Azoria Partners. He filed the lawsuit in October 2023.
In his lawsuit, Fishback cites several messages, one of which was written by Greenlight COO Daniel Roitman and calls the 29-year-old the hedge fund’s “head of macro.”
After that, in March 2024, Greenlight Capital filed a countersuit saying that Fishback broke an agreement not to call his old job at the hedge fund anything other than a research analyst.
Greenlight Capital wouldn’t say anything.
Greenlight Capital sued Fishback in March 2024, saying that the 29-year-old “falsely represented” his position to “market himself” to potential investors. The lawsuit says that the supposed “head of macro” title never existed at Greenlight and was not given to Fishback.
Fishback, who has been seen with Donald Trump and on podcasts with former Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, said he quit Greenlight because he didn’t agree with Einhorn on politics or the direction the hedge fund was going.
Einhorn has given money to several Democratic Party politicians in the past. Aufhorn wrote in a 2017 letter to Greenlight’s investors that the hedge fund thought “Mr. Trump doesn’t have any core policy beliefs and is likely to change his mind as he sees fit.”
Following a public fight between Fishback and Einhorn on X (formerly Twitter), the fight has now caught the attention of some of the world’s best investors and hedge fund managers.
In a post on X on May 16, Fishback called on Einhorn to join him on a podcast to debate various topics including Tesla TSLA, -1.25%, which he says Greenlight has previously shorted.
Einhorn responded by questioning Fishback’s credentials. “I am not aware that you have ever spent any time analyzing Tesla or its fundamentals – or really any other equity position for that matter,” the hedge fund founder said.
Fishback hit back at Einhorn with a chicken emoji. “I get it. You don’t want to debate me and have to defend the fact that you’ve lost your investors a fortune betting against @elonmusk,” the 29-year-old said.
Martin Shkreli — the hedge-fund investor who served prison time for securities fraud — posted an image that he says supports Fishback’s claims, which shows an agenda from Citi Equities Conference 2023 in Miami, which refers to Fishback as Greenlight’s head of macro.
Citi did not respond to a message.
Third Point founder Daniel Loeb re-wrote his social-media bio, referring to himself as “Head of Macro at Third Point LLC since 1995,” in what appeared to be a light-hearted reference to the ongoing spat.
