The return of the man who saw 2008 coming
To talk about Michael Burry is to travel straight to “The Big Short”. In 2008 he became famous for anticipating the mortgage crisis; today he is back in the headlines with another baffling move: a block of puts on Nvidia valued at $100 million. Ever since artificial intelligence sent the GPU maker soaring, no one would have imagined Burry “betting” against it… or maybe they would.
Quarterly X-ray: from diversified comfort to all-in on puts
Every quarter, managers with more than $100 million under management file a Form 13F with the SEC. The document is barely a snapshot: it shows the notional value of long stocks and options, but leaves out futures, swaps, outright shorts, and even how much the premium on those same options cost.
With that limitation in mind, I first reviewed the December 2024 picture. There, Burry held a dozen fairly classic positions: healthcare (HCA Healthcare), luxury consumer goods (Estée Lauder), insurers, and a good handful of Chinese tech names like Alibaba and JD.com. Nothing alarming; pure value stock-picking.
Fast-forward to March 2025 and the scene changes like day to night. The new filing reveals that almost everything has turned into puts. The hatched lines on the chart —the mark of bearish options— flood the portfolio. The weight falls especially on Nvidia, while Estée Lauder is the only old-school stock Burry chooses to reinforce rather than liquidate.
Reading Burry: the art of reading between the lines
Is it a bearish statement? Maybe not. Burry did something similar in 2023 when he disclosed puts on the SPY and QQQ ETFs: the following quarter he closed them and explained they had been “cheap hedges”. Keep in mind that the 13F does not require disclosing long positions in sector ETFs or calls held in other accounts. He could very well be long AI and hedging against a one-off tumble with these puts.
The missing pieces of the puzzle
The filing reveals neither the strike nor the expiration. They might be dirt-cheap three-month contracts; they might cover a whole year. We also do not know whether he paid $5 million or $20 million in premium: the 13F only requires disclosing the notional value of the underlying. In other words, the “real risk” Burry is taking on could be far smaller than it sounds.
Our radar: earnings, volatility and the next 13F
To decode the move, we will need to watch three things: Nvidia’s earnings, the balance sheets of the Chinese tech names, and, of course, the next 13F. Will he keep the puts or unwind them? In the meantime, I will follow how things evolve in the options chain, analyzing strikes and volatilities with ProRealTime, the platform I use every day to put these pieces in place.
Prudent hedge or two-way play?
In the end, only Burry knows the exact answer. He may just be opening an umbrella before storm season, or perhaps he is looking to repeat the great contrarian coup that made him famous. What we do know is that when this investor makes a move, it is worth looking twice.
