At the Sohn Investment Conference in May, hedge fund manager David Einhorn presented his idea, shorting oilfield services firm Core Laboratories. One factor he cited in going against the company was how each year its communications to investors described a new corporate focus: "Canadian oil sands," "deepwater" and "international crude" were all featured in years past.
"Reading Core's annual reports is like opening a time capsule preserving the history of energy market hype. You'd almost expect them to start talking about machine learning," Einhorn said, before showing a slide of just that.