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Hedge fund manager Michael Burry, famous for making millions betting against the mortgage market in 2008, is again counting on a market decline, this time with a focus on chips and China.
Burry, whose risky investments were chronicled in the 2015 film The Big Short, purchased millions of dollars in puts that will turn profitable if stocks including Nvidia Corp. (NVDA), Baidu Inc. (BIDU) and others fall in value, according to an SEC filing made last week. The 13F filing summarizes first-quarter investments of $199.2 million and doesn’t provide dates or details of the purchases.
Burry Hit or Miss
While Burry made more than $800 million for himself and other investors in 2008, according to published reports, recent investments suggest a mixed record of making money. He appears to have sold a Canadian physical gold ETF before gold soared to record prices this year. In 2023, he closed bets he made against the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) and the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) that appeared to have not paid off.
Still, with President Donald Trump's tariff war raging and Moody's Ratings downgrade of U.S. debt, many experts and investors are cautioning markets remain vulnerable to declines that would make Burry's bets pay off.
Besides Nvidia and Baidu, Scion purchases add up to bets against the Chinese internet economy. Burry is short Alibaba Group Holding (BABA), JD.com Inc. (JD), PDD Holdings Inc. (PDD) and Trip.com Group (TCOM). Those stocks appear particularly vulnerable to a downturn amid the tariff war that President Trump is waging against China.
The KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF (KWEB), which holds most of those stocks, has gained 14% over the past month.
His only long bet is 200,000 shares in Estee Lauder Companies Inc. (EL). While that stock is down 13% this year, it’s jumped 20% over the past month.
Scion appears to have last held exchange-traded funds in last year’s second quarter, when the firm held Japan-focused ETFs including the iShares MSCI Japan ETF (EWJ), along with SPY and QQQ puts.