Michael Burry has placed fresh bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, Nvidia, Applied Materials, and an index of microchip stocks.
The investor of "The Big Short" fame, best known for predicting and profiting from the collapse of the mid-2000s housing bubble, revealed his latest shorts in a Substack post on Tuesday afternoon.
Burry said he refreshed his wager against the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX), purchasing bearish put options expiring in March 2027 instead of January 2027, with strike prices in the low-to-mid $400s rather than the low-to-mid $300s.
If the ETF falls below that price level, Burry's options will be "in the money," meaning he can profit by either selling the puts or exercising them to sell shares of the index at a premium to the market price.
SOXX — which includes Micron, AMD, Nvidia, Broadcom, Intel, and Applied Materials — has roughly quadrupled from its low last April, surging from around $160 to $640. It has doubled in value these past six months as investors have bet the AI boom will keep fueling insatiable demand for microchips.
Burry published a chart showing the index that SOXX tracks, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, is the most extended it's been relative to its 200-day moving average since the dot-com bubble.
"The SOXX itself is a pure form of overvaluation in an index, a form that is rarely seen and never so easily recognized as such," he wrote.
Burry said that he maintained his QQQ puts — wagers against the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 — and shorted Tesla, Caterpillar, Nvidia, and Applied Materials.
None of the companies Burry said he is shorting immediately responded to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Tesla shares have rallied 22% from their April low to around $420. Burry, who's previously shorted Elon Musk's automaker, said he was "happy it jumped back to this level."
Burry said he's never shorted Caterpillar before, and owning shares of the maker of construction and mining equipment has "always done great" for him in the past.
"I am a bit shocked I am short CAT but this is just not anywhere near supported by the actual business," he wrote in a comment on his Substack.
Caterpillar stock jumped by 86% in the first half of this year, and 167% over the past 12 months, partly because the company is seen as a major beneficiary of the AI infrastructure buildout.
Burry poured cold water on Tuesday's rebound in chip stocks, writing in another comment that big spending announcements by Samsung and SK Hynix would catapult the "already parabolic" semiconductor equipment stocks even higher, and his "friends in that space are just shaking their heads and laughing."
He said that thanks to his recent bets, he's increasingly positioned against the market. "I keep outright shorts small, but this has grown now to a substantial size," he wrote.
Burry pivoted from running a hedge fund to writing on Substack about his personal investments late last year. He's warned there's a speculative bubble around AI, and Big Tech companies are overinvesting in microchips from Nvidia and its peers that will quickly become outdated.
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Theron Mohamed is a London-based correspondent on the Trending team at Business Insider. His coverage spans finance, investing, wealth, markets, and the economy.Theron joined BI in 2019 as a reporter at Markets Insider and rose to the rank of correspondent before moving to the Trending team in 2024. He previously covered tech, media, and telecom stocks for Investors Chronicle magazine and had a brief stint on the Financial Times' Data team. He interned at the Wall Street Journal in New York where he primarily wrote for Heard on the Street.Theron has freelanced for The Independent, The Telegraph, WIRED, and several smaller publications. He holds an undergraduate degree in geography from the London School of Economics, and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.Theron often covers Warren Buffett, Michael Burry, Jeremy Grantham and other top-flight investors. He also writes about the world's wealthiest people and shares financial advice from all manner of rich and successful people.Email Theron at [email protected] and follow him on X @theron_mohamed.Expertise
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