Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ dumps all of his previous stock holdings and adds just one name
Famed investor Michael Burry, known for calling the subprime mortgage crisis, dumped all of his existing stock holdings at the end of the second quarter, according to a new regulatory filing. “The Big Short” investor sold out of all of his 11 equity positions last quarter, including Meta, Alphabet , Warner Bros. Discovery , Global Payments and Bristol-Myers Squibb , the filing showed. He also exited his short bet against Apple by the end of June. Burry did add one stock — $3.3 million worth of GEO Group — last quarter, the filing showed. The investor has been in and out of this private prison operator for the past two years. Shares of GEO jumped more than 8% Monday, trimming their 2022 losses to about 5%. Still, the big selling in Burry’s portfolio perhaps conveys just how bearish he is on the market. The investor, now running hedge fund Scion Asset Management, has been expressing his pessimistic views about the markets and the economy on Twitter. Most recently, Burry warned that “addictive” consumer spending is signaling more trouble ahead even as economic data showed signs of improvement. He suggested that consumers were still splurging on goods and services at a time when inflation remained at a multi-decade high. In May, he drew parallels between today’s market environment and that of 2008, saying it’s like “watching a plane crash.” Burry had also sounded alarms on massive earnings compressions. Burry shot to fame by betting against mortgage securities before the 2008 crisis. Burry was depicted in Michael Lewis’ book “The Big Short” and the subsequent Oscar-winning movie of the same name. With the filings only reflecting one holding, it’s unclear if Burry is taking bearish bets in other ways that won’t show up in these quarterly reports. Burry could be applying short positions or the use of sophisticated derivatives.