'Big Short' investor has been wagering against AI trades for months
Michael Burry has reportedly taken out a short position on Micron Technology.
Michael Burry has intensified his bearish stance against the AI trade with a reported bet against Micron Technology, one of the most important plays in the memory space.
The investor portrayed in the "The Big Short" making bets against the housing market during the subprime-mortgage crisis, revealed that move in a Thursday Substack post, widely reported on X accounts and financial publications such as Seeking Alpha.
On July 1, he took out a short position on Micron $(MU)$ at $1,051.87 per share, the Substack reportedly said. Such a trade involves an investor borrowing shares they don't own and selling them, in the hopes of buying those back cheaper later and making a profit.
"Yesterday I shorted one stock even though it was down a good amount because I think I have a pretty good idea how this resolves. I also added to five positions. This time may be different, but not nearly different enough," Burry wrote in a Thursday post.
He reportedly blamed "fear of missing out, greater fool theory, [and] public commitment bias," on Micron's explosive gains - 697% in a year and 241% in 2026 so far. The stock soared to $1,213 per share following blowout earnings on June 25, but closed at $975 on Thursday.
Burry said he added to positions PayPal (PYPL), Sprouts Farmers Market (SFM), Zoetis $(ZTS)$, Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FMCC), those reports said. He alluded to a couple of those in a post on X:
Earlier this week, Burry made bearish bets against Tesla $(TSLA)$, Caterpillar $(CAT)$, Applied Materials $(AMAT)$ and the iShares Semiconductor ETF SOXX. AI data centers have put Caterpillar's power-generation products in demand, with those shares up 68% this year.
In a Substack post on Tuesday, he expressed alarm over Samsung (KR:005930) and SK Hynix's (KR:000660) plans to invest more than $500 billion into a chip hub, The Wall Street Journal reported. "The proximate cause of today's rally is big spending announced out of Korea," he wrote. "Well, I see that as the beginning of the end."
Burry's first doubts over the AI trade were revealed in November, via a quarterly 13-F report for his now-closed hedge funds that showed Palantir Technologies (PLTR) and Nvidia shorts.
Micron shares slid nearly 11% on Wednesday, alongside sharp losses for Sandisk, with some blaming the drop on it and other chip stocks on a report that Meta $(META)$ is considering selling its excess cloud capacity. Also surfacing this week was a report that Apple wants to tap China for its memory shortage.
"China makes up around 15% of Apple's sales and other companies could follow these steps as they also see their profits being squeezed by an unreasonable jump in memory chip prices," said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, in a note on Thursday.
-Barbara Kollmeyer
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 03, 2026 07:16 ET (11:16 GMT)
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