Dave Portnoy lost ‘close to seven figures’ on controversial Remark stock

Brash sports blog owner Dave Portnoy lost a small fortune on the controversial stock that landed him into a bitter spat with a short-seller this week, he told The Post in an exclusive interview. The Barstool Sports founder, who recently boasted that he’s a better investor than Warren Buffett, said his bet on Remark Holdings …

Brash sports blog owner Dave Portnoy lost a small fortune on the controversial stock that landed him into a bitter spat with a short-seller this week, he told The Post in an exclusive interview.

The Barstool Sports founder, who recently boasted that he’s a better investor than Warren Buffett, said his bet on Remark Holdings likely cost him “close to seven figures” — giving him good reason to trash the shares that investor Dan David claims he pumped and dumped.

“There’s nine bazillion stocks that I say ‘buy, buy, buy, always the best.’ He picked the one stock that I’ve been doing the opposite,” Portnoy told The Post in a Wednesday phone interview after his high-profile brawl with David over Remark this week.

Portnoy, who’s recently claimed he’s worth $100 million, didn’t give a specific dollar figure for his losses, but he called Remark one of his “biggest losers.”

As The Post reported earlier this week, David and his firm Wolfpack Research raised red flags about Remark in an online presentation on Tuesday, including alleged ties to a blacklisted Chinese company and a CEO with a pile of gambling debts. David then took the opportunity to knock Portnoy personally for touting Remark’s “less than worthless” shares under his “Davey Day Trader” Twitter moniker, calling him “a menace” to investors.

Portnoy hit back in an online video calling David a “fraud” and a “used car salesman,” and denied that he’s touted the stock since May.

He told The Post that he bought nearly $2 million in Remark shares ahead of the Las Vegas-based tech firm’s May 28 earnings report. His investment apparently caught the attention of Remark CEO Kai-Shing Tao, who talked with Portnoy after he “publicly spoke about his ownership in our shares,” company spokesman Brian Harvey said.

But Remark disclosed a $23 million operating loss and a 50 percent revenue plunge for 2019 in that annual report — sending the stock tumbling 24.5 percent over the next three trading days. It closed at $2.24 on June 2.

“I got murdered,” Portnoy said.

He railed against Remark in his trading broadcast the next day as the stock climbed to a peak of $3.21. It took another nosedive in the following months, closing at $1.60 on Thursday.

“I want to strangle the life out of this company,” Portnoy said on June 3. “It’s up 40 percent and I get nothing.”

Portnoy told The Post he held on to about $400,000 in Remark shares after the earnings report, then sold a little at a time when the stock price got a bump. And he appeared to boast about his decision to stick by the stock in a July 23 video, telling his followers to “never sell” as the stock gained 5.6 percent after a two-week tumble.

In the interview, Portnoy denied he was talking about Remark specifically, saying “never sell” is his general investment philosophy.

He said he ditched his remaining $100,000 in shares on Monday, a day before David’s presentation.

David defended his research as “exhaustive, factual due diligence” based on concrete evidence gathered by his investigators. He also noted that Portnoy has touted two other small-cap stocks — MicroVision and InspireMD — whose share prices went on to tumble.

“Portnoy is like every other narcissistic CEO we have ever busted,” David told The Post in a statement. “They make up arbitrary rules for everyone else that only they do not have to follow.”

Portnoy, meanwhile, blasted David for attempting to make money off his public presentation.

“He basically is trying to move stock prices to make a profit,” Portnoy told The Post. “When he comes out with his research trashing a company and saying that it’s fake, has he already shorted that stock? To me that should be illegal.”

Remark, which has criticized David’s research as “misleading and sloppy,” declined to comment on Portnoy’s purported losses.