'Big Short' investor who predicts market crashes has bet $1.5bn dollars on another

The “Big Short” investor Michael Burry who became famous for correctly predicting the collapse of the housing market in 2008, has bet more than $1.6 billion on a Wall Street crash.

Bury made the correct prediction in the 2000s, and it was such a good call the event was chronicled by Michael Lewis in his bestseller “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” and later adapted into a film starring Christian Bale.

Now, some 15 years later, Burry has made another big bet - this time against the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, according to Security Exchange Commission filings released on Monday, and is using more than 90 per cent of his portfolio to bet on a market downturn, according to the filings.

It is not clear why he is taking such negative positions given the S&P 500 is up roughly 17 per cent for the year to date, while the Nasdaq 100 is up almost 39 per cent over the same period.

Nevertheless, Berry has a strong investment record.

Traders following the investments disclosed by Scion’s over the last 3 years (between May of 2020 and May 2023) would have made annualised returns of 56 per cent according to an analysis by Sure Dividend.

Over the same period, the S&P 500 had annualised returns of about 12 per cent.

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