The page one story in The Wall Street Journal told of the final surrender of short seller James Chanos, who is shutting down his hedge fund after losing a fortune betting against stocks instead of investing in them.

This marks an ignominious end for one of the one of smarter, cockier and more self-righteous short sellers ever to practice the dark art of betting on destruction. Chanos, as part of the job, trafficked in aspersions, rumors, and, at times, assertions of chicanery where none existed.

In the end, Chanos became a short seller's Ahab, and his Moby Dick turned out to be Tesla, a company he had insisted was a fraud. He had likened it to Enron, one of the greatest corporate financial collapses in history, on which he made a prescient call 20 years before.

In 2018, he went on CNBC's "Squawk Box" and alleged that Elon Musk "may be misleading investors." He called Tesla "a walking insolvency," and declared: "I think Elon Musk has crossed the Rubicon in terms of making statements to investors that he might rue later."

Perhaps this statement applies better to Chanos himself.

From Tesla's IPO in 2010 up to 2018, the shorts lost $12 billion betting against Tesla. In 2019 they lost $3 billion more; and a stunning $40 billion in 2020 as the stock climbed almost eight-fold; and another $10.3 billion in losses in 2021, as Tesla shares rose another 50%.

Short sellers were able to recapture $16 billion in profits for the full-year 2022 on a combined bet of almost $20 billion, but, by mid-2023, they were down another $13 billion.

Chanos at one point had bet $100 million on Tesla's tumble, 5% of his total fund at the time, and he covered and took a beating by year-end 2020. As he told a Bloomberg reporter: “It’s been painful, clearly.” If he were to meet Elon Musk personally, he said then, he would tell the man: “Job well done, so far.”

But he couldn't let it go. Two months ago on Bloomberg, Chanos took another swipe at Tesla when an anchor asked him, "You are still short Telsa?"

"We are, we're short the stock, and we just think it's ridiculously overvalued."

Anchor: "But, betting against Tesla hasn't worked out yet."

Chanos, dryly: "I've noticed."

Hours after the news broke on Friday that Chanos was shutting down his short-selling operations, someone on X posted a clip of that exchange on Bloomberg, and Elon Musk responded to it at 1:48 a.m. eastern on Saturday:

"I did warn the shorts that this would happen."

This triggered Chanos's rancor the next afternoon. On X, where he maintains an account (@WallStCynic), he tweeted:

"...at this point, if you are a Cult Member that believes rockets exploding are a 'success', a convicted securities fraudster, and/or a "short-seller" that blew up his short fund in the fall of 2008, please sit down and STFU. Your ignorance and resentment is [sic] tiresome."

Again, that last line might better apply to Chanos himself.

I take zero pleasure in his retreat. Jim Chanos did me a favor a long time ago when I was a new reporter at The Wall Street Journal, and I have always appreciated it. At my request, he inspected the balance sheet of a hot computer stock, and instantly spotted a flaw: intercompany transfers overseas aimed at inflating inventory costs to reduce the tax bill,.

Chanos's firm, known as Kynikos Associates (Greek for "skeptic") until he renamed it Chanos Cos. in 2022, peaked at $6 billion in assets in 2008 and fell to $2 billion in the next decade. It has declined by 90% in the five years since on bad bets and client withdrawals, down to $200 million. And, now, it will dwindle to nothing.

A broader lesson looms in all of this. Selling stocks short, betting on doom, is antithetical to investing in capitalism. Capitalism is optimism monetized. Investment requires hope, and hope is a decision.

You have far better chances of getting rich by betting on the upside.

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Dennis Kneale is an award-winning journalist, media strategist, crisis advisor, writer, and host of the podcast "What's Bugging Me" on @Ricochet.