A short-seller's report can spell disaster for a stock, especially when it is first released. Questions and doubts can arise about the underlying business, and whether it's a safe stock to own. In many cases, investors head for the exits and sell rather than hold on and wait to see if the claims are true.

Hindenburg Research is a notable short-seller and it recently released a scathing report on Super Micro Computer. (Short-sellers make money when a stock falls, so investors reading their reports always need to keep that bias in mind.) The company provides businesses with servers and crucial IT infrastructure that has been in hot demand in recent quarters amid the growing excitement surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). And that has allowed its stock to generate significant returns along the way. Unfortunately, the short report has created a cloud of uncertainty around the business and has made investors think twice about buying shares of the tech company.

Short-seller reports can, however, be biased and misleading, and making hasty decisions based on them can prove costly for investors. This is by no means the first time Hindenburg has targeted a high-profile stock. Below, I'll look at some of the more notable reports it has issued in the past couple of years, and see how the stocks have performed since then.

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Source Fool.com