Big short: How Carl Icahn made $1.3 bn as malls closed down due to Covid-19

There is something discomfiting about the idea of getting fantastically rich off someone else's misfortune, which is what happens when a "short" trade - or bet against a stock or industry - succeeds

Catie McKee was nervous. It was last October, and the 31-year-old hedge fund analyst, who had been scrutinising the mortgages on the nation’s malls, was convinced that some of those malls would default on their loans. She and her colleagues had even bet a substantial amount of money on that likelihood.

Ms. McKee was about to make her case to Carl Icahn, one of the country’s best-known investors, who had made a similar wager and invited her team to discuss the trade. Nothing would bolster her confidence — and the prospects for her trade — more than if the billionaire