‘Big Short’ Michael Burry’s stock market predictions

Michael Burry is globally recognized for his investment decisions during the financial crisis in 2008, which earned him around $800 million in profits, putting the founder of the Scion Capital LLC hedge fund at the forefront of financial analysis and stock market predictions.

During the crisis, Burry correctly anticipated the collapse of the subprime mortgage bond market, leading him to make substantial investments in credit default swaps against subprime deals he deemed risky.

Interestingly, his prescience led to remarkable gains for his fund when the real estate bubble burst, catapulting Michael Burry as one of the few investors who profited during the downturn. 

Since then, the Scion Capital founder has made several stock market predictions followed by hundreds of thousands of investors eager to collect insights from one of the most recognized minds in the space. However, even Michael Burry has been proved wrong for some of these predictions.

Michael Burry’s stock market predictions

An S&P 500 (SPX) 1-week candles’ historical chart by Piranha Profits — described as one of the world’s leading online schools for investors and traders — shows some of Michael Burry’s stock market predictions in the last 8 years, since “The Big Short” movie was launched.

In December 2015, Burry predicted a market crash would be coming in a few months. Despite seeing a slight drop a few weeks later, the stock market set a new local bottom and corrected right after to start a bull market that lasted more than two years until October 2018.

During this mentioned bull market, the “Big Short” protagonist predicted a “global financial meltdown” was coming in May 2017.

Following the S&P 500 retracement in Q4 2018, the stock market continued its uptrend until the COVID-19 crash in early 2020. On that, Burry had predicted a “bubble in index ETFs” in September 2019 and revealed a massive bearish bet in March 2020 — which was later known to be the crash’s bottom, starting a new massive bull run.

In February 2021, the renowned speculator predicted a market bubble crash was coming. One year later, the SPX reached its all-time high at $4,818.62. 

Additionally, Burry’s “more failures coming,” prediction set another market bottom in September 2022, and an order to “Sell” in January 2023 caused the opposite movement in the stock market. In August 2023, he called for a short against the SPY QQQ.

In this context, it is important to say that these inverted outcomes from Michael Burry’s predictions don’t invalidate his recognized skills and merits as an investor. This just evidences how hard it is to predict the market’s movements, even when based on strong expertise, conviction, and fundamentals.