'Big Short' investor Michael Burry reveals a bet against Nvidia and other microchip stocks
- Michael Burry ended his bets against the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 last quarter, a new filing shows.
- The "Big Short" investor revealed a wager against Nvidia and other semiconductor stocks.
Michael Burry ended his bets against the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 last quarter, but placed a new wager against semiconductor stocks, his latest portfolio update revealed on Tuesday.
Burry's Scion Asset Management purchased bearish put options on the SPDR S&P 500 and Invesco QQQ in the second quarter, but those positions were gone in his latest Securities and Exchange Commission filing. However, Scion did buy puts on 100,000 shares of Blackrock's iShares Semiconductor ETF with a nominal value of $47 million. The exchange-traded fund counts Nvidia — the graphics-chip specialist whose stock price has roughly tripled this year on the back of AI excitement — as its third-biggest holding.
The value investor consolidated his firm's portfolio last quarter. He slashed its number of positions from 33 to 13, more than halving its total value (excluding options) from $111 million to $44 million.
The Scion chief typically overhauls most of his portfolio every three months, making it unusual that he boosted his stakes in Euronav, Hudson Pacific Properties, Nexstar Media, Safe Bulkers, Star Bulk Carriers, and Stellantis last quarter. He offloaded his other positions and trimmed his bets on Crescent Energy and The Real Real. Notably, he bought Alibaba shares and Booking.com shares and puts.
Burry shot to fame after his huge wager against the mid-2000s housing bubble was chronicled in the book and movie "The Big Short". He's also known for investing in GameStop long before the video-game retailer became a meme stock in early 2021, and for betting against Elon Musk's Tesla and Cathie Wood's Ark Innovation fund in recent years.
The Scion boss is known for his bleak warnings and dire predictions. For example, he sounded the alarm on the "greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things" in the summer of 2021, and warned buyers of meme stocks and cryptocurrencies that they were signing up for the "mother of all crashes."