Activist short sellers published 140 reports in the first half of 2026, up 33% from a year earlier and the busiest stretch for the practice in years. The campaigns also worked better. The average target fell 6.1% in the month after publication; a year ago, the average target was higher a month out. The mix shifted too: more small caps, more biotech and asset management, targets in 19 countries, and a crop of first and second-year firms behind many of the half's sharpest declines. The half also produced the industry's most consequential legal moment in years, the June conviction of Citron Research founder Andrew Left on securities fraud charges. What follows is the half by the numbers: volume, performance, sector, market cap, geography, and firm.

Report Volume

Monthly report counts, first half 2026 vs. first half 2025

Volume ran ahead of 2025 in five of six months and trailed only in June. May was the peak at 29 reports. The cadence was steadier, too: 2025 swung between 11 reports in February and 29 in June; 2026 never fell below 19.

Active Investigators by First Half, 2024 to 2026

First Half	Individual Investigators Publishing	Reports Published	Reports per Investigator
H1 2024	33	73	2.2
H1 2025	33	105	3.2
H1 2026	38	140	3.7

Thirty-eight investigators published in the first half, up from 33 in each of the two prior first halves; 24 were active in both of the last two. The more striking trend is output per firm. The active roster has barely grown over three years, but reports per investigator climbed from 2.2 to 3.7. The volume growth is coming from firms publishing more, not more firms publishing. Full-year rosters run wider, 39 in 2024 and 46 in 2025, because some firms surface only in the second half.

How Targets Traded: 1 Day, 5 Days, 1 Month

Average and median price moves following report publication

Horizon	H1 2026 Avg	H1 2026 Median	H1 2025 Avg	H1 2025 Median
1 Day	-3.8%	-3.3%	-5.3%	-2.4%
5 Days	-4.0%	-2.4%	-5.8%	-2.9%
1 Month	-6.1%	-8.0%	+1.5%	-2.5%

Share of Targets Lower	H1 2026	H1 2025
At 1 Day	61%	65%
At 5 Days	60%	62%
At 1 Month	63%	53%

The half's most important finding sits in this table. Day-one reactions were, if anything, sharper in 2025: the average target fell 5.3% on the first day, against 3.8% this year, and most targets closed lower in both periods. The difference came later. In early 2025, targets on average recovered within a month. In 2026, the declines built. A month after publication, the average target was down 6.1% and the median down 8.0%. The market is not reacting to short reports more violently this year. It is holding the thesis longer.

The distribution tells the same story from another angle. Day one in 2026 produced fewer double-digit declines than 2025, 21% of targets versus 29%, and the 2025 average was dragged lower by a handful of severe first-day reactions. By day five the picture had begun to flip. By one month the gap was unambiguous on every measure. The sharpest single-day moves of the half: Citron's VCX report, down 61.1% on publication day, followed by Fugazi's CAR at 49.2% and CDIO at 45.2%.

Top Performing Campaigns

Largest 1-month price declines following publication

Stocks That Defied the Reports

Largest 1-month price gains following publication

Rebounds concentrated in momentum names. POET, a Canadian semiconductor company, nearly tripled in the month after WolfPack's report as the sector rallied, and semiconductors were the only major target industry to finish the half with a positive average move. A stock rising after publication reflects market conditions as often as the research, and several of these theses remain open.

Sector Focus: 2026 vs. 2025

Most targeted industries by report count

Application software led 2025. In 2026, biotechnology took the top spot outright, nearly tripling from 5 reports to 14, with targets down an average of 21.4% in the month after publication. Asset management, barely present a year ago, drew 10 reports as investigators turned to alternative asset managers and specialty financials. The hardware-heavy 2025 mix, 17 combined reports on computer hardware and infrastructure software, gave way to defense, semiconductors and industrials. Semiconductors were the one major sector that swam against the campaigns, up an average of 17.0% amid a broad rally.

Market Cap Focus: 2026 vs. 2025

Report count and average 1-month price move by market cap tier

Small caps' share of activity rose from 49% to 58%, and small caps were where campaigns cut deepest, down an average of 8.1% at one month. Every tier posted negative averages in 2026; every tier was positive a year earlier. The half also brought the first mega cap targets in this window, a sign investigators will publish on the largest names even where one report is unlikely to move the stock double digits.

Country Focus: 2026 vs. 2025

Where targeted companies are headquartered

The map widened. The US share of reports fell from 83% to 73%, and the number of countries with a targeted company nearly doubled, from 10 to 19. Continental Europe was the notable addition: Sweden, Switzerland and France each drew multiple campaigns after appearing rarely or not at all a year ago, alongside targets in Hong Kong, Japan and Australia. Activist short research remains an overwhelmingly North American practice. The edges of the map are filling in.

Investigator Breakdown

Most active firms of the first half, with average 1-month price moves

Research Firm	Reports	Avg 1M Move
Shortfinder	16	+10.2%
The Equity Dispatch	13	-5.9%
Fugazi Research	12	-35.6%
Red Flag Research	10	-15.6%
Hunterbrook Media	7	-6.7%
Grizzly Research	7	+14.2%
WolfPack Research	7	+24.4%
Culper Research	6	-9.2%
Pelican Way Research	4	-24.1%
White Diamond Research	4	-24.9%
Abelian Analysis	4	-13.3%
Spruce Point Management	4	+3.9%
The Bear Cave	4	-6.1%
Morpheus Research	4	+11.8%

Twenty-four additional firms published 1 to 3 reports each. Shortfinder, a software system that surfaces short targets and publishes reports with human analysts, led the half by count; The Equity Dispatch, the team formerly behind J Capital Research, publishes biweekly. WolfPack's average is driven by the POET campaign's 174% rebound; Grizzly's by SINCH.ST, up 54.5% in a European telecom rally.

Largest Average Declines

Ranked by average 1-month price decline across all campaigns, minimum 3 reports

Shortfinder led on volume at 16 reports, with The Equity Dispatch at 13, but Fugazi Research had the half's most productive slate, pairing 12 reports with the deepest average decline, 35.6%, on campaigns including RIME, ASTC, AKAN and CAR. The leaderboard's range stands out. It includes high-frequency publishers (Fugazi, Red Flag), boutiques with three or four chosen targets (White Diamond, Pelican Way, Ningi), a first-year firm (Abelian Analysis) and one of the oldest names in the business (Citron), whose VCX campaign produced an 80.8% one-month decline.

New Entrants of 2026

Firms that published their first activist short report in the first half of 2026

Four firms published their first activist short report in the half, contributing 8 reports. Abelian Analysis set the tone, arriving with a four-report slate of household names rather than easing in on obscure small caps. Three of the four debuts saw their first target lower a month after publication.

The Sophomore Class

Firms that debuted in 2025: their first year vs. the first half of 2026, on a 1-month basis

Research Firm	2025 Reports	2025 Avg 1M	H1 2026 Reports	H1 2026 Avg 1M
Fugazi Research	8	-55.9%	12	-35.6%
Red Flag Research	18	+12.7%	10	-15.6%
Pelican Way Research	6	+4.6%	4	-24.1%
Morpheus Research	7	-1.4%	4	+11.8%
BMF Reports	17	-15.7%	1	-1.0%
Callisto Research	1	+115.5%	1	-22.0%
Utopia Capital Research	1	+9.0%	1	-89.7%
Manatee Research	1	+7.8%	1	+3.3%
The Captain's Log	1	-21.8%	1	+0.9%

Fifteen firms published their first report in 2025. Nine returned in the first half of 2026, and on the whole the sophomores got better. Pelican Way Research is the clearest case: its debut-year reports averaged a positive one-month move, but every one of its 2026 targets has fallen since publication, and the three with a full month of trading averaged 24.1% lower. Red Flag Research made a similar turn, from a positive 2025 average to a 15.6% average decline. Utopia Capital Research followed a quiet debut with the half's single best campaign, NBY, down 89.7% at one month. Fugazi Research never slumped, following a remarkable 2025 with the deepest-cutting slate of the half, even as its average decline cooled from the debut-year pace.

The other six members of the 2025 class, including Deep Specter, HitHawk Research, Sakura Research and Whitelight Capital, have not published this year. A roughly 60% return rate is a reminder that short publishing has a high barrier to persistence: legal exposure, borrow costs and the difficulty of sourcing a second good idea filter out many first-year firms.

Final Thoughts

The first half of 2026 makes a simple case: activist short selling is scaling up and working better at once. Volume grew 33%. The active roster expanded from 33 to 38 firms. The average target was down 6.1% a month after publication, against a positive move a year earlier. The difference was not the initial reaction, which ran no hotter than 2025's. It was persistence. Declines that faded last year held and built this year.

Beneath the aggregates, the mix shifted toward where the research cuts deepest: small caps, biotechnology and asset management, increasingly published by young firms. First and second-year investigators (Fugazi, Red Flag, Pelican Way, Abelian, Utopia) took an outsized share of the half's best results, while Citron, Viceroy and White Diamond showed the durability of experience. At this pace, 2026 will comfortably exceed 2025's full-year total of 236 tracked reports, with a deeper and more international bench than the space has had in years.

The half closed with the most consequential legal event in the industry's modern history. On June 1, a federal jury in Los Angeles found Citron Research founder Andrew Left guilty on 13 of 17 counts, one count of engaging in a securities fraud scheme and 12 counts of securities fraud, after a 15-day trial in which Left testified in his own defense. Sentencing is set for late August; Left has said he will keep fighting the verdict. The industry enters the second half in a post-conviction world, where the legal boundary between publishing research and trading around it is being redrawn in real time. What that means for report volume, disclosure practices and who is willing to publish at all is the open question of the next six months. We are tracking it closely, as we always do, and we are very interested to see how this world takes shape.