The Fanniegate Thing

It started with John Hempton's blog. Glen was reading John — who he still follows and considers a genius — and stumbled into the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac shareholder story. The government had placed both enterprises into conservatorship in 2008, and then in 2012 imposed the Net Worth Sweep: every dollar of profit, sent straight to Treasury. Shareholders got nothing.

Around 2014, Glen bought common shares. He read everything he could find. Court filings. Treasury transcripts. Quarterly earnings reports nobody else was reading. By 2016–2017, he'd done enough homework to realize common stock lacked restructuring protection, so he moved into preferreds. That decision came from research, not a tip.

What followed was twelve years of showing up. Not because the trade was easy — it was one of the most brutal holding experiences in modern markets — but because the thesis was right. And when the thesis is right, you do the work.

Through the GSE shareholder community, Glen connected with Tim — the person he admires most in the world. Tim Pagliara: CapWealth CEO, Investors Unite founder, the kind of person who fights for what's right even when the outcome isn't guaranteed. They were texting as recently as 2026.

Investors Unite became the organizational backbone of the shareholder movement. It gave scattered retail and institutional investors a voice, a legal strategy, and political access they never would have had alone. For Glen, it was proof that conviction attracts the right people.

No one does twelve years alone. The GSE shareholder community became something Glen didn't expect: a network of people who actually cared, who showed up year after year, who kept doing the work even when the world told them to stop.

Twenty-plus people, decade-plus of shared conviction. That doesn't happen by accident.

Glen started with common shares around 2014. By 2016–2017, after reading every restructuring proposal, legal brief, and capital framework analysis he could find, the conclusion was clear: common stock carried restructuring risk that preferreds did not.

Preferred shares had contractual protections. In any recapitalization scenario, they would be addressed before common equity. The move was a function of homework, not a change in thesis. The thesis — that the sweep was illegal and shareholders deserved fair treatment — never changed. Only the instrument did.

Glen published his first Seeking Alpha article on the GSEs and never stopped. Over three hundred pieces of analysis, covering earnings reports, legal developments, policy shifts, capital framework proposals, and the slow grind of a thesis playing out across multiple administrations.

These weren't hot takes. They were research. Each one built on the last. Each one was public, timestamped, and open to criticism. That's what conviction looks like when you put it in writing: three hundred receipts.

Most investors who write a book write one. Maybe two. Glen wrote eight in the Fanniegate series. Each one captured a different phase of the fight: the discovery, the legal battles, the political shifts, the moments where it looked like everything was lost, and the moments where the thesis got stronger.

Book number eight came out in 2025. By that point, the story had outlasted three presidential administrations, dozens of court rulings, and the patience of almost everyone who wasn't in the room. Glen was still in the room.

Browse all 8 books →