Zero Hedge
Zero Hedge is a far-right libertarian financial blog and news aggregator. Zero Hedge has a bearish market sentiment in its investment outlook and analysis, often deriving from a strict adherence to the Austrian School of economics and credit cycles. It has been described as a financial "permabear".
Over time, Zero Hedge expanded into non-financial political content, including conspiracy theories and fringe rhetoric, and has advanced radical right, alt-right, and pro-Russia positions. Zero Hedge's non-financial commentary has led to multiple [|site bans] by global social media platforms, although a 2019 Facebook ban and a 2020 Twitter ban were later reversed.
Zero Hedge's in-house content is authored by its owner Daniel Ivandjiiski under the pen name "Tyler Durden". The motto of the site is posted in the masthead of every page: "On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero". The quote is from the book and film Fight Club, which is in turn a paraphrase the quote "In the long run we are all dead" by John Maynard Keynes.
History and authorship
Zero Hedge's first post appeared on 9 January 2009 at 4pm, and the domain was registered on 11 January 2009 under the name Krassimir Ivandjiiski of ABC Media Ltd, the father of Daniel Ivandjiiski, who founded Zero Hedge. According to American City Business Journals in 2012, the website "publishes financial news and opinion, aggregated and original" from several writers "who purportedly hail from within the financial industry."In September 2009, news reports identified Daniel Ivandjiiski, a Bulgarian-born, U.S.-educated, former hedge-fund trader, who was barred from the securities industry in September 2008 for earning US$780 from an insider trade by FINRA, as the founder of the site, and reported that "Tyler Durden" was simply a pen name for Ivandjiiski. FINRA rulings show Ivandjiiski worked for 3 years at New York investment bank, Jefferies & Co., as well several hedge funds, the last of which was Wexford Capital LLC, a fund led by former Goldman Sachs traders. One site contributor, who spoke to New York magazine in an interview arranged by Ivandjiiski, said "up to 40" people could post under the "Tyler Durden" pseudonym. The same New York magazine article, published on 27 September 2009, stated that Ivandjiiski's father was Krassimir Ivandjiiski, a Bulgarian publisher and editor of the pro-Russia right-wing conspiracy theory website Strogo Sekretno, and monthly publication Bulgarian Confidential, since 1994.
The domain
In March 2020, Bulgarian litigation between Krassimir Ivandjiiski and U.S. journalist Seth Hettena revealed further details about the Ivandjiiski family and the site's ownership.
In August 2020, Zero Hedge paid $140,000 to Dow Jones & Company to settle copyright-infringement allegations after Zero Hedge allegedly posted 37 editorials and articles from The Wall Street Journal without permission.
Access to White House press corps
In April 2025, during the 2025 stock market crash, Zero Hedge was admitted to the White House press corps.In May 2025, a reporter from Zero hedge was given the opportunity to ask the first question at a press briefing, in which he asked a question regarding the Clinton body count conspiracy theory.
According to an article:
Site bans
On 12 March 2019, Bloomberg reported that Facebook had banned users from sharing Zero Hedge posts three days earlier. MarketWatch, noting that Zero Hedge is a "frequent critic of Facebook", reported that the ban was lifted later that day with Facebook saying that the ban was a "mistake with our automation to detect spam". Business Insider, describing Zero Hedge as "a favorite of City and Wall Street traders, known for its anti-establishment and bearish slant on financial topics", noted that Donald Trump Jr. and Nigel Farage raised objections to Facebook's censure of Zero Hedge.Australian telecom company Telstra temporarily denied access to Zero Hedge and other websites on 20 March 2019 as a result of the Christchurch mosque shootings.
On 20 January 2020, Zero Hedge's Twitter account, which then had 670,000 followers, was "permanently suspended" from Twitter for violating its platform manipulation policy. Bloomberg News reported that Zero Hedge had been informed by Twitter that the suspension was as a result of an article titled: "Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?", in which they doxed a Chinese virologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. On 12 June 2020, Twitter reinstated the account after an appeal from Zero Hedge and stated that the suspension was an error.
On 17 June 2020, Zero Hedge was banned from the Google Ads platform after Google claimed that Zero Hedge violated its content policy that "explicitly prohibit derogatory content that promotes hatred, intolerance, violence or discrimination based on race from monetizing" on stories related to George Floyd protests. Google lifted the ban in July 2020, after the management of Zero Hedge began moderating comments.
Zero Hedge revealed on 17 June 2020 that PayPal had, like Google, deplatformed the site, and they would only be able to accept cryptocurrency payments in the future.
Manifesto and views
At its creation in January 2009, Zero Hedge published a manifesto on the objectives of the site.Financial views
Zero Hedge promotes the Austrian School, the belief that economic cycles are really credit cycles, and that the quantitative easing by global central banks is a temporary and artificial asset-price support scheme which makes the credit cycle even more extreme. As a result of this view, Zero Hedge supports assets that are outside of the central banking system, including precious metals, and cryptocurrency. The site is strongly against Keynesian economics.Critics of Zero Hedge label the site a "permabear", whose views missed the global recovery since 2013. Zero Hedge maintains financial views/theories which are considered conspiratorial, and/or hard-to-prove or unprovable. Notable views include:
Zero Hedge has published detailed research from Wall Street investment banks and institutions, on securities, which has been picked up by the financial media. Sometimes, the research is about other investment banks. It has also been a source of breaking news in the general capital markets industry. In Zero Hedge's early years, it was associated with exposing the unknown world of High-frequency trading, and the HFT techniques that Zero Hedge claimed amounted to market manipulation.
Political views
The 29 April 2016 "Unmasking Zero Hedge" article by Bloomberg quoted former website staffer Colin Lokey as saying: "I can't be a 24-hour cheerleader for Hezbollah, Moscow, Tehran, Beijing, and Trump anymore. It's wrong. Period. I know it gets you views now, but it will kill your brand over the long run. This isn't a revolution. It's a joke." Lokey told Bloomberg that he was pressured to frame issues in a way he felt was "disingenuous", summarizing its political stances as "Russia=good. Obama=idiot. Bashar al-Assad=benevolent leader. John Kerry=dunce. Vladimir Putin=greatest leader in the history of statecraft." Lokey provided chat transcripts in which Ivandjiiski refers to America's "silent majority" as "beastly", while Backshall acknowledges life in the U.S. is bad "outside of my bubble". Wallace-Wells observed that the site demonstrated a pro-Russia bias, stating the site had a "pointed" Russophilia.In a series of articles in June–July 2017, the Financial Times, covering an event organized by one of the site's bloggers, said that, "It probably didn't help that Zero Hedge was also used as a lead-in for a 2016 New Yorker piece about the alt-right, despite its financial focus and a political bent that is more Drudge than Richard Spencer." In January 2020, when the site was removed from Twitter, BuzzFeed News described Zero Hedge as "pro-Trump" and "far-right", while reporting on the removal, The Washington Post said of Zero Hedge: "In recent years, the blog has amplified right-wing conspiracy theories on a range of topics".
Alleged Russian influence
In March 2020, American journalist Seth Hettena wrote an opinion-piece in The New Republic titled "Is Zero Hedge a Russian Trojan Horse?", and provided details on the links between Krassimir Ivandjiiski, and Soviet-era activities in propaganda, revealed during litigation initiated by the father against Hettena in the Bulgarian courts. Hettena commented that Zero Hedge has become "a forum for the hateful, conspiracy-driven voices of the angry white men of the alt-right. Racists, anti-Semites, extreme right-wingers, and conspiracy nuts were an underserved audience, and, as it turns out, a profitable one."In February 2022, intelligence officials from the United States claimed that Zero Hedge has amplified Russian propaganda by publishing articles written by Russian state-run media.
Reception
Launch to 2014
In August 2009, under the pseudonym Tyler Durden, Ivandjiiski was interviewed on Bloomberg Radio on HFT. Following a series of pieces accusing Goldman Sachs of using high-frequency trading to profit via the New York Stock Exchange, Zero Hedge's readership grew rapidly. In September 2009, journalist Joe Hagan wrote that Zero Hedge's founder was "a zealous believer in a sweeping conspiracy that casts the alumni of Goldman Sachs as a powerful cabal at the helm of U.S. policy." In October 2009, the site was characterized as conspiratorial by financial journalists Justin Fox and Felix Salmon. However, Justin Fox, also described Ivandjiiski as "a wonderfully persistent investigative reporter" and credited him for successfully turning high-frequency trading "into a big political issue," but also termed most of the writing on the website as "half-baked hooey," albeit with some "truth to be gleaned from it."In his book, Griftopia, Matt Taibbi cited Zero Hedge as having accurately assessed the level of corruption in the banking industry. In January 2011, Zero Hedge was quoted in the Columbia Journalism Review regarding a JPMorgan-Ambac lawsuit: "JPM committed fraud through misrepresentation, then wilfully and maliciously traded against the entities it had sold misrepresented securities to."
In March 2011, Time magazine ranked Zero Hedge as 9th, in its 25 Best Financial Blogs, with nominator, Paul Kedrosky of Bloomberg News stating that "So while I don't read Zero Hedge regularly—it's too bearish, too conspiratorial and too much of an intellectual monoculture—I like knowing that it exists. Any time I'm feeling like things might just turn out O.K. on planet Economic Earth, I know where to turn to be disabused of that stupid idea." Susanne Craig of The New York Times described Zero Hedge in October 2011 as "a well-read and controversial financial blog."
In December 2012, Bank of America, which had been criticized by the site in the past, blocked its employees' access to Zero Hedge from BOA servers.