David Einhorn’s Ira Sohn Scorecard

Today we have seen reports about David Einhorn’s bearish US Steel (X) call and the stock’s poor performance since the Ira Sohn Conference. We like David Einhorn and believe he is an excellent stock picker, however focusing on one successful call isn’t the right way of evaluating David Einhorn’s true performance. You have to take a look at the performance of all of his calls and also report the performance of the market since then. Let’s take a closer look at David Einhorn’s calls:

1. Long Apple (AAPL): Einhorn was very bullish about the stock. Apple gained 5.9% since May 15th vs. 1.3% gain for the S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY).

2. Neutral Amazon (AMZN): Amazon lost 0.8% since May 15th. Einhorn was neutral about the stock.

3. Short Martin Marietta (MLM): This was Einhorn’s big short call at the event. The stock lost 7.9% since May 15th.

4. Short US Steel (X): The stock lost 23.1% since May 15th. Einhorn should have made this his big short call.

5. Short Dicks Sporting Goods (DKS): DKS is also a poor performer since Einhorn’s presentation, losing 6.5%.

6. Short Facebook (FB): David Einhorn didn’t explicitly say that he will short the stock but criticized its valuation. Facebook lost 17.8% since its IPO.

Overall, Einhorn’s calls have been very successful. A long position in Apple balanced by short position in MLM would have returned almost 14% in a little over a month.