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‘Big Short’ investor Michael Burry sold all but one of his stocks last quarter — after warning an epic market crash is coming

  • Michael Burry of “The Big Short” sold virtually all of his US stocks last quarter.
  • Burry’s Scion Asset Management held only a $3.3 million stake in Geo Group, a new filing shows.
  • Scion owned $165 million of stocks at the end of March, excluding its Apple put options.

Michael Burry, the investor of “The Big Short” fame, slashed his US stock portfolio to a single holding in the second quarter, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing showed on Monday.

Burry’s Scion Asset Management disclosed just over 500,000 shares of Geo Group, worth $3.3 million. Geo invests in private prisons and mental-health facilities and commands a market capitalization of less than $900 million.

Close followers of Burry are likely to interpret his decision to effectively liquidate his portfolio as a bad omen. The hedge-fund manager diagnosed the “greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things” last summer and said owners of meme stocks and cryptocurrencies were careening toward the “mother of all crashes.”

More recently, he has told investors not to get too excited about the recent rally in stocks, as previous downturns have seen many temporary rebounds before finding a bottom. He also said the “silliness” in markets during the height of the pandemic had returned and tweeted over the weekend that he “can’t shake that silly pre-Enron, pre-9/11, pre-WorldCom feeling,” referring to the euphoria that preceded the dot-com crash.

Scion’s portfolio comprised 11 stocks worth $165 million at the end of March, excluding bearish put options it held against 206,000 Apple shares.

The Scion chief has taken a knife to his portfolio in the past. He pared it from 20 holdings to six in the third quarter of last year, reducing its value from $140 million to $42 million in the space of three months.

Burry rose to fame after his billion-dollar wager against the mid-2000s housing bubble was chronicled in the book and movie “The Big Short.” He’s also known for betting against Elon Musk’s Tesla and Cathie Wood’s Ark Innovation fund last year and for investing in GameStop before it became a meme stock.

Read more: A Michael Burry expert breaks down what makes the ‘Big Short’ investor special. He also revisits Burry’s iconic bet against the housing bubble, and his GameStop, Tesla, and Ark wagers.