Well, apparently Carl Icahn has been celebrating the holiday season by going for the jugular and shorting GameStop into oblivion. According to Bloomberg, the longtime billionaire investor has been building a “large bet” against the video game retailer since early 2021, when the stock peaked in value. And he has the capital to play ball. After a year of cascading market corrections, one wonders, is this the denouement of the meme stonk phenomenon?

Icahn, now 86, has proved himself to be an investing force of nature. He rarely gets it wrong, although he certainly has—see his major blunder with TWA back in the day. But mostly Carl has had a series of big wins, including Netflix, TimeWarner and Herbalife, essentially by making contrarian bets that others would never think of making. His GameStop short seems to be yet another example of his impeccable timing to short the stock of the company at its most meme-stocky peak. The irony is, of course, exquisite. Early in the pandemic, shorting the loser stock killed off Gabe Plotkin, the founder of Melvin Capital. Why has Carl been able to cash in on his GameStop short while Plotkin, making a similar trade, went down the tubes?