Welcome to The Bear Cave! The last premium articles for paid readers were: “ 5 Education Stocks in AI’s Blast Radius ” and “ Problems at Jackson Financial ($JXN) .” Our next special investigation is scheduled for Thursday, October 1. Subscribe now New Activist Reports J Capital Research published on Hub Group (NASDAQ: HUBG — $2.00 billion), a logistics company whose revenue, profits and operating cash flow have all been sliding in recent years. J Capital argues the accounting misstatements Hub disclosed in February are probably not the whole story: seven months later, the company still has not filed corrected historicals or its 2026 quarterlies. J Capital Research writes: “We believe these disclosures on faulty accounting could worsen, and with continued tough industry conditions, there may be more bad news not factored into Hub Group’s share price.” Grizzly Research published on Raiffeisen Bank International (VIE: RBI — $22.9 billion), the Vienna-listed owner of the largest Weste

Graphic by Daniel DeLorenzo BY: Bethany McLean , Matthew Termine , JD Jean-Jacques EDITOR: Jim Impoco , Vikas Kumar Jackson Financial administers $287 billion worth of retirement savings accounts. As regulators probe Mark Walter’s insurance empire and ask how deep the industry’s problems go, a new report argues that Jackson relies on an opaque captive, an internal installment plan for billions in hedge losses, and optimistic actuarial assumptions to support dividends and stock buybacks. Federal regulators and credit investors have zeroed in on billionaire financier Mark Walter and TWG Global, where life insurance reserves were allegedly funneled into Walter-linked side businesses without proper disclosure. But while Wall Street debates whether Walter was an isolated case of someone playing fast and loose with the rules governing retiree nest eggs, skeptics are asking a far more dangerous question: Does the rot go deeper? A new report by QVT Financial, the investment firm and famil

Welcome to The Bear Cave! The last premium articles for paid readers were: “ Problems at Guggenheim Strategic Opportunities Fund (GOF) ” and “ 5 Education Stocks in AI’s Blast Radius .” Our next special investigation is scheduled for Thursday, September 17. Subscribe now New Activist Reports There were no meaningful activist reports this week, but the Wall Street Journal published an essay that sure read like a short report on Bending Spoons (NASDAQ: BSP — $24.6 billion), the recently listed software roll-up of nostalgic brands like AOL and Vimeo. The lede: “Bending Spoons is a debt-funded serial acquirer that went public in July. Its name is a nod to psychic powers, but the real hocus-pocus is in the company’s numbers.” Spicy stuff from Jonathan Weil! “If ever a company illustrated the pitfalls of ignoring amortization, Bending Spoons is it. Many of its holdings fit the definition of a melting ice cube. Ignoring amortization is akin to pretending the ice cube hasn’t gotten smalle