Gabe Plotkin

Gabe Plotkin trained under Steve Cohen at SAC Capital, where he managed the consumer and media book and reportedly generated exceptional returns. In 2014 he founded Melvin Capital Management in New York, seeded with $200 million from Cohen's SAC Capital. Melvin grew to manage approximately $12.5 billion by late 2020 through strong fundamental long-short equity performance. In late 2020 and early 2021, Melvin held significant short positions in GameStop — a brick-and-mortar video game retailer that Reddit users on the r/WallStreetBets forum collectively identified as a target to squeeze. As GameStop's stock rose from approximately $20 to nearly $500 in January 2021, Melvin's losses mounted catastrophically: the fund lost approximately 53% in January 2021 alone, more than $6 billion in a single month. Citadel and Point72 provided a combined $2.75 billion emergency capital infusion to prevent Melvin from collapsing. The GameStop event became the defining media story about retail vs. institutional investing and drew Congressional scrutiny. Despite recovering partially in subsequent months, the fund never fully recovered its AUM, and Plotkin announced the closure of Melvin Capital in May 2022.