When did Cuban short ShareSleuth subject?

Former BusinessWeek reporter Gary Weiss, who is the author of “Wall Street vs. America,” wants to know on his blog when Mark Cuban, the billionaire who is the majority owner in new investigative business journalism website ShareSleuth.com, shorted the stock of the site’s first story — Xethanol.

That story was placed on the site on Monday, and on Tuesday, Weiss did a little research and noted that the stock price at which Cuban shorted the stock was last reached in May, way before the website was launched. That makes Weiss wonder how many other stocks currently being shorted in Cuban’s investment portfolio will be targets of the ShareSleuth.

Weiss wrote, “Cuban’s disclaimer at the bottom indicates that he’s expecting the stock to fall to zero. He may be right, or wrong, but we do know this: for Mark Cuban this has been an excellent trade. And legal. Hey, his short position was disclosed.

“Makes you wonder how much of the rest of Cuban’s short porfolio is under examination by Sharesleuth at this very moment. All legally!

“This may be a pretty shoddy way of practicing ‘investigative journalism’ — a real blot on the profession, as a matter of fact — but it certainly is going to make a billionaire richer. And as Mark Cuban once put it, it is the ‘right’ thing to do.”

Read more here.