'Big Short' investor Michael Burry makes bearish bets against stock market
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Michael Burry, the hedge fund wizard made famous by Michael Lewis’ “The Big Short,” made bearish bets against the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 this week, according to his fund’s most recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The investor, who is credited with predicting the 2008 housing crash, is holding bearish options against the S&P 500, hedging an $886.6 million bet against the index, the filing shows.
The filing also revealed that Burry sold his stocks in Capitol One, First Republic, PacWest Bancorp, Wells Fargo and Western Alliance after taking a bet on them earlier this year in an attempt to cash in on the regional banking crisis.
Burry also sold his stakes in Chinese e-commerce behemoths Alibaba and JD.com.
Additionally, he purchased $738.8 million in put options against the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF — a fund made up of popular companies on the tech-heavy Nasdaq, like big tech firms Apple and Microsoft as well as Nvidia, Tesla and PepsiCo.
With the puts, Burry’s company — Scion Asset Management — is agreeing to sell its assets at a fixed price on or before a certain date, usually meaning the seller has a defensive or pessimistic outlook on the market.
The 13F SEC filing — which is required quarterly by investment managers with at least $100 million in assets under management — does not disclose when Scion will have to sell its options.
The California-based investment firm reportedly has about $107 million in assets under management, according to consulting company Fintel.
Burry’s bets appear total $1.6 billion, meaning the investor has 93% of his portfolio positioned against the market; however, the figure his firm paid for the options could have been much lower as the SEC only reports nominal value, not actual value.
The largest long positions in his portfolio: $10.9 million in Expedia, $9.2 million in telecoms company Charter Communications and $8.2 million in manufacturing company Generac.
Only six positions in the Scion chief’s portfolio survived from Q1 to Q2: Geo Group, Liberty Latin America, New York Community Bancorp, Signet Jewelers, Cigna Group and The RealReal.
Representatives for Scion did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Burry has been sounding the alarm on a market collapse since earlier this year. In January, he simply wrote: “Sell.”
However, by March he acknowledged that he was “wrong to say sell,” and proceeded to go dark on social media.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 have enjoyed a good year so far.
As of Tuesday morning, the S&P 500 was up more than 16% year to date, to $4,447.64, and the Nasdaq 100 increased nearly 40% so far this year, to $15,069.88, buoyed by a better-than-expected mid-year earnings season.
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