Investor made famous by ‘The Big Short’ is shorting Nvidia and Palantir.
The Big Short Yet Again?
The Wall Street Journal reports Michael Burry Bets He Isn’t Too Early to Go Against the AI Juggernaut
Michael Burry has seen this movie before.
Take, for instance, the scene in “The Big Short” in which Christian Bale—who is playing Burry—tells investors about his bet against the U.S. housing market. If he is right, the market collapses and the hedge-fund manager will collect a $700 million jackpot on insurancelike contracts. If not, he will be insolvent in a few quarters.
“Watch. It will pay,” the fictional Burry says. “I may have been early, but I’m not wrong.”
“It’s the same thing!” an investor yells back.
Now, Burry (the real one) is trying to convince Wall Street that he can profit off a fall of the artificial-intelligence companies Nvidia NVDA and Palantir Technologies PLTR. The industry has underpinned the market’s rally to new highs throughout the year, but Burry, who has mostly kept a low profile this past decade, has emerged to pronounce there is a bubble that soon enough will pop.
The problem? He isn’t sure when.
“Michael, if he had one failing in the dot-com cycle, it was being early to the process. The housing bubble? It was being early to the process,” said Michael Green, a former hedge-fund manager who is now chief strategist at the active-ETF manager Simplify Asset Management and who, like Burry, has warned against popular trends—in his case, passive investing. “This is a significant issue, right? How quickly does this end?”
Warren Buffett once called him a Cassandra—the mythological Trojan priestess whose grim prophecies were ignored. Since his successful bet against the housing market, Burry has amassed a legion of online fans who pore over his posts in forums including Reddit’s Burryology. He has embraced this persona. On X, he is known as Cassandra Unchained, and he posts screenshots of Bale from the movie version of his life to his million-plus followers.
Many of Burry’s most-dramatic predictions about market crashes have been wrong during the past 15 years. In a gnomic Jan. 31, 2023, post he urged his followers to “SELL.” While Silicon Valley Bank cratered two months later, the S&P 500 index has risen around 70% since then, and he has said that it was the wrong call.
After publication of this article, Burry took to X to defended his record, including his 2023 call.
“Two banks failed, market fell, I corrected myself at the bottom and suggested it was all clear to buy again,” he posted.
Alex Karp, the chief executive of Palantir called Burry “bats—crazy” on CNBC.
On Nov. 3, Burry revealed a bet against Nvidia, the chip maker that is now the world’s most-valuable company, and Palantir, a major AI software business. Together, they account for about $5 trillion in market value. Burry’s bets were relatively small, about $10 million in put options, but could amount to more than $1 billion if those stocks drop significantly.
Is Michael Burry Shutting His Fund Just Before He’s About to Be Proved Right?
On November 18, 2025, Yahoo!Finance asked Is Michael Burry Shutting His Fund Just Before He’s About to Be Proved Right?
Michael Burry, the investor immortalized in “The Big Short” for predicting the 2008 housing crash, recently sent shockwaves through markets again. In his third-quarter filings, his Scion Asset Management revealed massive put options against Nvidia and Palantir Technologies, signaling deep skepticism about artificial intelligence (AI)-driven valuations detached from fundamentals. These bets positioned him to profit if high-flying AI stocks corrected sharply.
Then came a surprising reversal — not by covering his short positions or embracing the AI narrative, but by deregistering Scion Asset Management with the SEC, effectively closing the hedge fund and returning outside capital to investors by year-end.
In a letter to his investors, Burry explained his valuation views have been out of sync with markets for some time, implying it was unwise to manage others’ money amid such divergence. This echoes his 2008 closure of Scion Capital, when client pressure mounted before his housing bet paid off.
The Best Shorts
The best shorts are companies headed to zero, not companies with massive profits like Nvidia.
In the DotCom years, many companies went bankrupt. Global Crossing, Enron, and WorldCom come to mind.
The same happened in the Great Recession with leveraged housing players. Lehman was at the top of the list.
Nvidia is a valuation short. This setup is not the same thing.
That’s not a prediction that Burry will be wrong, it’s a word of caution that it is a hugely risky strategy.
I think the market is hugely overvalued. But valuation plays are not the best shorts.
If he really wanted to short, he could have shorted a few on the fringe but still very overvalued, like CVNA, CRWV etc.
i mean, it depends on how much of a profit he’s looking for, right?
NVDA is volatile, routinely falling 10%-20%. it recently went from ATH of 205 to 160, 22% drop.
if he’s hoping it goes to $20/s, that’s probably not happening in a hurry.
ditto for AVGO and much of the other chip trade.
Burry is supposed to be out of the investment business
Too early and it may cost him a lot more being too early as it did being early with his bets against the housing market.
Burry could have made more money if he waited it out more before essentially shorting the mortgage market.
Scintillating! Just because a recent toy maker whose earnings based on FRAUD underlie a 4 trillion+ market cap, it’s not a good short because God said its stock can NEVER go to zero. That’s Nvidia for you. Palantir has a P/E of 400-500 and produces nothing of value to you and I, or themselves actually. Spyware is not gold, my friend. Anyway,
Our entire financial system, including our currency the (((dollar))) is ILLEGAL according to Article 1, Section 10 of the US Constitution which FORBIDS usage of debt (FRNs) in ALL 50 States of the US.
As long as the (((bankers))) are in power, the stock market will NEVER go down
UNLESS…
(((THey))) already took their profits and now plan to scoop your stock for 10 cents on the dollar. One cent in Nvidia’s case. Yes, it won’t go to zero and Jensen will never go to jail unless wearing a tie.
Then 2026 comes around…
Rare for gurus that make one fantastic correct call do it again. But that one call is always remembered.
The housing bubble taught us the SEC will change rules on a whim to protect companies that made bad decisions. The SEC prevented shorting banks for a few weeks. Share prices rose, and once the short blackout ended, bank share prices fell below the point where the short blackout began. Now to profit in a short position, one must also cover before the SEC changes the rules.
The fewer investors who short, the lower the price will go. Short positions require buying in the future. Less demand means lower share prices.
Correct and the same goes for trading commodities. They increased margin requirements to drive people out of the gold, silver rally over the weekend.
Never short ANYTHING when the Fed is doing QE (balance sheet expansion) – which they are now again doing.
And Mish’s point of not shorting a profitable, growing company like NVDA is also well taken. The stock may be ridiculously overvalued, but that doesn’t mean it will crash. It might just basically tread water for many years afterward – like CSCO, which only recently took out its March 2000 all-time high.
I’d go long on Palantir and short Nvidia because over time software companies keep their value while hardware companies struggle to not become obsolete.
Plus, look at the trillion-dollar market cap companies–they’re all involved with AI and have deep government ties. You know Palantir is going to join that group eventually.
That’s only true if they keep their talent, and right now that’s easy because there is little competition for talent. It won’t always be thus,
But Nvidia is also a software company. It has Cuda.
Just put up with an hour or so of watching the spokesmodels on CNBC and saw no mention of the crushing of the shorts in the silver market. I probably missed it earlier in the day. Rumors are that $17 billion was injected by the Fed last week and $34 billion over the weekend to shore up a TBTF bank(s).
Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
“My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from a guy who knows a kid who’s going with the girl who saw him pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I think it’s serious.”
Funny!
However for all the chatter on this blog over the years regarding gold and silvers importance to the market, there should be someone with some insight as to who was holding the bag on those short contracts?
In January 1980 silver spiked to $38.30, using that high as the peak litmus test and adjusting for inflation, silver should be at $160 right now just on an inflation adjusted basis alone. In April 2011, silver spiked to $44.79, using that as a basis, the inflation adjusted value should be $64.55 today. What the true value of inflation adjusted silver should be lies somewhere between $64.44 and $160.
I’m not sure how much additional silver has been mined from 2011 to offset inflation but moving forward, the cost of labor, fuel, transportation, etc will make mining/processing silver much more expensive so I expect the price to climb from here consistently and may be worth while to keep some in your retirement account but that’s just me.
yeah, it was Beth.
Yeah, the AI bot on youtube, ‘Asian Guy’ has mentioned that, but no confirmation. Also, he mentioned that a somewhat substantial bank collapsed over the weekend. He had timelines on that too. If that was the case, I am sure it would have made headlines by now. Asian Guy has been pretty good with his commentary on silver the past couple of weeks. The videos that feature him seem to be produced with an agenda in mine.
We all know that the AI bubble is inflated with hot air and dreams of its potential. But machine learning has been going on since the first transistor. The advances are moving at a pace directly proportional to our capacity to build higher speed ships and integrated networks that imitate neural networks.
The integrated binary thought process is where AI has its deficits.
It remains task specific just as Watson was and unfortunately is a product reflecting the biases of the owners of the technology.
I get extremely poor answers from the AI engines about 30% of the time. The more complex the question, the worse the answer.
Owners of data are more important to the AI process and that is where Oracle and the TV networks have their advantages. Content is king…
I find it pretty useful for looking up game engine stuff… I get about 80% reliable info. I think that’s because it has a manual, source code, and message forums to draw from.
you never short growing market! esp bubbles
sign of end of market will be M&A ACTIONS w/in industry
we are not even in 4th inning.
The market can remain irrational far longer than you can remain liquid.
bingo
he got lucky once. and he think he is genius
=by ‘The Big Short’ is shorting Nvidia and Palantir.
i really dont understand SUCH PERSONS!
===
obv, guy is well off.. probably has $100 , 200 OR 500+ millions !!
put into t- bills, have 4-5% , 4 mil per each $100 mil, minus taxes
how much money do you need for life????
————
, or just wait for spx/ nasdaq correction, 10*20% and bet half money on!!
m2-m3 is growing.. so eventually market will be up in 6 or 12 months
HE IS GAMBLER, NOT INVESTOR..
He has autism. He thinks outside of the box. Very smart guy. Not saying that he is right. I would say that he is an investor as he puts more effort into his analysis than the majority of the Wall Street gurus. That’s not gambling. That’s making an informed decision. The problem with most predictions is the timing. If they don’t line up, you are on the wrong side of the trade.
#randomwalk
I doubt the ROI on AI will ever materialize. There are what seem to be insurmountable issues with huge data centers. Where will the needed electricity come from, what happens when in 18 months the hardware purchased today is obsolete and in four years nearly valueless? Lots of questions not many serious answers, just hype.
I say this never having invested in any stocks so ……
No stocks, ever? Gold ‘n’ guns, then??
A gun can get you anything you want, or get you killed so you don’t want it anymore.
No guns in 1975 after my army enlistment I sold very gun I had. In the mid 1980’s I bought a 22 cal rifle to teach my son to shoot. Sold that gun a few years later. Only wish I had bought gold a year ago, was thinking about it but a successful friend told me gold was a sucker buy. He had made a ton in Navdia and Amazon and several other stocks. He passed away a last year his relatives were glad he loved to trade stocks and never took time to spend any of the proceeds.
It will materialize but in….China where they have invested heavily in power generation. meanwhile the king clown here is cutting solar, wind and other alternative forms of energy because he’s dumb.
If you think your electric rates are high now, give it a year or two and reap what was sown.
China is progressive and investing in its energy future while the US under the Trump regime is returning to the dark ages coal burning past.
What’s trumps next trick? Banning fuel injection and mandating carburetors to reduce fuel efficiency and increase emissions?
Elections have consequences!
Unfortunately, a war would fix this.
We’d just lose another.
There will definitely be a shake out of AI companies but when is anybody’s guess for now . . . Wall Street always over hype things so a lot of little investors will get hurt down the road . . .
Mish why don’t you do an update on Silver and what shennigans are going on . . .
being a trend FOLLOWER for decades i remember following the dotcom bubble to nose bleed levels and my trailing stops got me out while i was on vacation…………same thing happened in 2007 and 2008 panic………..
why did you not just sell call options on long positions?
either you out at top , or calls expire and you get premium
usually, at top calls are expensive (everyone and uncle want in), so it makes sense to sell calls, , having covered position
too much trouble. i keep it very simple. has served me great for decades of trading FX and equities. read trend following by michael covel.
I wouldn’t short Nvidia but Palantir is at far worse dot com valuations and mostly hype. If Burry makes money it will be on shorting Palantir.
I bet the Nvidia acquisition of Groq has spooked him.
I’m not so sure about Palantir – they are getting embedded in a lot of places that are difficult to be displaced from and that have (literally) “unlimited” cash.
And if democrats take Congress that money can easily be cut off. If I were buying puts on Palantir it would be for after the election.
Grossly misinformed comments against Burry. He is a Value Investor trying to guess the top in a highly speculative 25x Pr/Sales priced company that will surely come back to earth like every silly speculation in the past. One has to be able to tell the difference when growth diluted by the Pr/Sales multiple no longer warrants the price. Burry will prove correct longer-term if he has the stamina to wait out the crazies. I don’t play this game, but Burry does and he is correct in Valuation with precise timing unknown.
long story short!
he is gambler!
trading is gambling
He’s not short – he has puts. His potential losses are fixed, and quite small compared to the possible profits – $10 million versus $1billion….
Yes.