What I find interesting is that they usually only do big shorts when they know something is going to collapse.

https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/wall-streets-naked-swindle-194908/

On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who —made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — “like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets,” according to one financial analyst.

But what’s even crazier is that the bet paid.

The odds of getting this lucky are impossible. The only way someone went this in on shorting Bear Stearns is they knew what was about to happen.

It was the same story when Soros broke the Bank of England through shorting.

Soros was critical of the Bank of England's actions, but he wasn't alone in betting against the pound. Although he began betting against the pound quietly at first, accumulating around a $1 billion position, he soon became more outspoken.

Soros used his hedge fund, Quantum Fund, to borrow billions of pounds from various banks and sell them for other currencies, such as German marks or U.S. dollars.

However, these measures weren't enough to counteract the massive selling pressure from Soros and other shorts

These hedge funds don't just randomly place risky bets unless someone in the "know" gave them a heads up. The narrative went that Soros was a marketing "genius" who was just so good at "reading" things.

No, they were tipped off. That's why they made these massive bets.

For them to get caught flat-footed on Gamestop (again) and copper means they thought they got fed bad intel and they fell for it. They were told to go all in like usual and they did, except this time it didn't pay off.

Imagine placing a Bear Sterns style bet that it will collapse only for it to skyrocket.