“Big Short” hedge fund boss Michael Burry admitted he was “wrong” after delivering an ominous warning urging investors to dump their stocks earlier this year.
“I was wrong to say sell,” Burry tweeted Thursday.
The Scion Asset Management founder’s tweet came shortly after the tech-focused Nasdaq 100 Index entered a bull market.
The index has surged by more than 21% from its Dec. 28 low.
A bull market is defined as an increase of more than 20% or more from a recent low.
“There has been no BTFD generation like you,” Burry added in a follow-up tweet. The acronym BTFD stands for ‘buy the f—king dip.”
Burry caused some alarm on Jan. 31 after tweeting a single word, “Sell,” ahead of the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting the following day.
At the time, Burry’s tweet appeared to indicate his belief that Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues would unsettle the market by continuing to hike benchmark interest rates.
Instead, tech stocks have rallied this year, despite a pair of quarter percentage point Fed rate hikes that have made debt more expensive for companies and banks alike.
The rally occurred even as turmoil at mid-sized banks following the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank of New York, as well as uncertainty about the Federal Reserve’s policy path, fueled anxiety among traders.
Through Friday, the broad-based S&P 500 is up nearly 6% since January and was trending toward its best weekly performance in two months, according to Bloomberg. Elsewhere, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down by less than 1%.
Burry has issued repeated warnings for more than a year about the state of the US economy.
It’s unclear if Burry’s tweets were a true admission of fault or a tongue-in-cheek jab at traders who have bought the dip.
Burry was sharply critical of Silicon Valley Bank executives earlier this month when the lender’s failure prompted fears of systemic banking sector meltdown.
“2000, 2008, 2023. It is always the same,” Burry tweeted at the time. “People full of hubris and greed take stupid risks, and fail. Money is then printed. Because it works so well.”
