The latest portfolio update of Michael Bury showed that he has closed out his bets against the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 last quarter, however he has opened a new bet against semiconductor stocks.
Scion Asset Management picked up put options on the SPDR S&P 500 and Invesco QQQ in the second quarter betting on their decline, however in his latest Securities and Exchange Commission filing those positions were gone. In their place, Bury picked up 100,000 shares of Blackrock’s iShares Semiconductor ETF with a nominal value of $47 million. Within the exchange traded fund, Nvidia, which has seen its share price roughly triple off the enthusiasm over the potential for artificial intelligence, is the third-largest holding.
Bury consolidates his company’s portfolio in the last quarter, slashing the number of positions it held from 33 to 13, and cutting its total value by more than half, from $111 million to $44 million.
As the head of Scion, Bury normally performs an overhaul of most of his portfolio every three months. As a result, it is unusual he increased stakes in Euronav, Hudson Pacific Properties, Nexstar Media, Safe Bulkers, Star Bulk Carriers, and Stellantis last quarter. His other positions were disposed of, as he cut his bets on Crescent Energy and The Real Real. He also bought Alibaba shares and Booking.com shares and puts.
Bury first gained fame due to a huge bet he made against the housing bubble in the mid-2000’s which was detailed in the book and the movie “The Big Short.” He also was an investor in GameStop prior to its emergence as a meme-stock in early 2021, and he had placed bets against both Tesla and Cathie Wood’s Ark Innovation fund more recently.
He has become known for his pessimistic predictions as well, such as his warning over the “greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things” in 2021, as well as his warning that the buyers of meme stocks and cryptocurrencies were signing themselves up for the “mother of all crashes.”