The hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has always been a master of media access, perhaps even bordering on media manipulation. He knows how to get publicity on CNBC, mostly good over the years, as he’s weaved his way in and around one minefield (Herbalife) after another (Valeant), despite losing billions of dollars along the way. In the past five years, though, his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, is up 195 percent, thanks in part to an ingenious $27 million Covid-themed hedge that generated some $3.6 billion in three weeks in and around March 2020. In the same time period, his hero Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Holdings is only up 58 percent. The S&P 500 is up 47 percent. The publicly traded holding company controlled by his nemesis, Carl Icahn, is down 72 percent. So you have to give Bill his props.