Michael Burry, the investor immortalized in the film The Big Short for his correct predictive wager against the housing market leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, has built a reputation as a contrarian genius.
His ability to spot systemic risks earned him hundreds of millions and turned him into a folk hero among those who distrust Wall Street’s optimism. Yet, in the years following that triumph, Burry’s public pronouncements have often veered into a pattern of repeated warnings about impending doom—warnings that have yet to materialize in the way he anticipated.
Over the past eight years, from early 2017 to late 2023, Burry issued at least a dozen high-profile predictions and trades betting on market collapses, only to watch equities climb higher, assets rally, and his timelines evaporate.
These misfires underscore the risks associated with forecasting in a market characterized by low interest rates, technological disruption, resilient corporate earnings, Federal Reserve money printing, and government bailouts.
What follows is a detailed examination of those 12 instances, drawn from Burry’s tweets, interviews, and regulatory filings, revealing how even a sharp mind can falter when the crowd’s momentum proves unyielding.
1. January 2017: Global Meltdown and World War III Looming
In the first month of 2017, Burry emerged from relative silence with a stark email to investors at his hedge fund, Scion Asset Management. He described a world teetering on the edge of catastrophe, warning that “every bit of my logic is telling me that a global financial meltdown is coming, and that it will be followed by a worldwide political meltdown as well.”
He went further, invoking the specter of World War III as a direct consequence of escalating geopolitical tensions and economic fragility. This was no vague hunch; Burry tied it to overleveraged debt markets and rising protectionism, echoing the subprime warnings that had made him famous.
Investors who heeded his signal might have liquidated positions or shifted to cash, expecting a replay of 2008. Instead, the S&P 500 surged 19% over the next 12 months, fueled by synchronized global growth and tax cuts under the incoming Trump administration. Burry’s fund reportedly navigated the period with selective bets, but his broad alarm proved premature, setting the tone for a string of overlooked uptrends.
2. September 2019: Index Funds as the New CDOs
By September 2019, Burry turned his gaze to the explosion of passive investing. In a lengthy email interview with Bloomberg, he likened the trillions flowing into index funds and exchange-traded funds to the collateralized debt obligations that fueled the housing bubble. “This is very much like the bubble in synthetic asset-backed CDOs before the Great Financial Crisis,” he wrote, arguing that indiscriminate buying distorted stock and bond prices, suppressing true price discovery and building fragility into the system.
When outflows eventually hit, he predicted, the unwind would be chaotic. Burry advocated for small-cap value stocks as a hedge, underweighted in these funds. The market, however, continued to press on. The Federal Reserve’s pivot to rate cuts amid trade war jitters propelled the S&P 500 up another 28% in 2019, and passive strategies continued to dominate, with assets under management hitting record highs. Burry’s critique, prescient in highlighting liquidity risks, landed at a moment when momentum favored the very instruments he decried
3. December 2020: Shorting Tesla’s “Ridiculous” Valuation
December 2020 marked Burry’s boldest single-stock bearish play since the housing crisis: a $530 million short position against Tesla via put options, as revealed in Scion’s regulatory filing. He had tweeted months earlier that Tesla’s reliance on regulatory credits masked underlying weaknesses, calling its market cap—then over $500 billion—”ridiculous” and unsustainable.
Burry advised Elon Musk to issue shares at peak prices to lock in gains, implying an imminent correction of 80% or more. Tesla’s ascent, driven by EV hype and production ramps, had already turned skeptics into believers, but Burry saw echoes of dot-com excess.
Shares doubled in the months following his bet, climbing from around $700 to over $1,200 by early 2021, a 70% gain that inflicted steep losses on his position. Only in late 2022 did Tesla finally crater by 70% from its highs, vindicating Burry in hindsight—but far too late for his 2020 trade, which had highlighted the dangers of timing speculative fervor.
4. January 2021: Tesla’s Imminent Implosion Reiterated
Undeterred by the initial backlash, Burry doubled down in January 2021 with tweets reinforcing his Tesla thesis. “My last Big Short got bigger and bigger and BIGGER too,” he posted, drawing parallels to his housing bet while insisting the EV maker’s valuation would “implode soon.”
At the time, Tesla shares were still doubling every few months, propelled by inclusion in the S&P 500 and record deliveries. Burry’s position, now public knowledge, faced intense scrutiny, with short sellers collectively losing billions. Yet Tesla reached an all-time high above $1,200, split-adjusted, up another 50% from its December close.
Burry eventually exited the trade quietly, but the episode underscored his frustration with a market ignoring fundamentals like negative free cash flow and production bottlenecks. It took a full year for reality to catch up. Still, by then, the damage to his credibility—and wallet—was done.
5. Late January 2021: Dismissing GameStop’s Repeat Rally
As the GameStop mania gripped markets in late January 2021, Burry, who had built a massive long position in the retailer back in 2019, took a contrarian turn. Having profited handsomely from the initial squeeze—turning a $17 million stake into over $250 million—he tweeted that such rallies were unsustainable fads, unlikely to repeat amid regulatory scrutiny. “This will not happen again,” he implied in deleted posts, warning of repercussions for retail traders.
Weeks later, GameStop exploded anew, surging another 1,000% in a second wave of short covering, driven by persistent Reddit enthusiasm. Burry had sold his full position by December 2020, missing the encore. His cautionary note, rooted in concerns over speculation, clashed with the crowd’s defiance, turning a potential win into a missed opportunity and fueling narratives of his fading prescience.
6. February 2021: Stocks Dancing on a Knife’s Edge
February 2021 brought a sweeping indictment from Burry: the entire stock market was “dancing on a knife’s edge.” In a series of tweets, he decried the “greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things,” from meme stocks to EVs, predicting a multiyear recession and crash triggered by overleveraged retail frenzy.
This came amid the post-pandemic rally, with the S&P 500 up 5% for the month alone. Burry’s fund shifted defensively, but the market shrugged off his gloom, climbing another 6% in February and entering a bull phase that would last for years. His warning captured real risks—such as margin debt at record levels—but it arrived as vaccines were being rolled out. Stimulus flowed, extending the party he sought to crash.
7. February 7, 2021: Inflation to Annihilate Bitcoin
That same month, Burry trained his sights on Bitcoin, tweeting that runaway inflation would “destroy” the cryptocurrency as a store of value. He argued central banks’ money printing would erode BTC’s appeal, positioning it as just another speculative tulip amid rising rates.
Bitcoin, trading around $50,000, had already quadrupled in value by the end of 2020. Far from collapsing, it hit new highs above $60,000 by April 2021, up 20% following the tweet, as institutional adoption surged. Burry’s inflation call proved spot-on—CPI peaked at 9.1% later that year—but Bitcoin decoupled, rallying on narratives of scarcity. His bet overlooked crypto’s resilience as an inflation hedge in the eyes of investors.
8. February 8, 2021: Robinhood as a Perilous Casino
Burry didn’t spare trading platforms in his February barrage, labeling Robinhood a “dangerous casino” that preyed on novice gamblers with zero-commission trades and gamified interfaces. He predicted its growth would halt amid backlash from the GameStop saga, envisioning regulatory crackdowns and user exodus.
Robinhood’s stock had debuted at $38 in July 2020; by February 2021, it was trading around $50, despite volatility. The platform added millions of users quarterly, with revenue exploding 200% year-over-year from options trading. Shares eventually soared nearly 1,000% from lows over the next two years before settling. Still, Burry’s dire forecast overlooked the app’s stickiness during a retail boom.
9. March 2021: Bitcoin’s Speculative Bubble Confirmed
In March 2021, as Bitcoin hovered near $60,000, Burry reiterated his bearishness, calling it a “speculative bubble that poses more risk than opportunity.” He highlighted the leverage in the run-up, tweeting that proponents had overlooked the tipping point at which governments might intervene.
BTC had rallied 500% in under a year. Instead of bursting, it climbed another 10% that month, followed by a brief dip, then resumed its upward trajectory, peaking at $69,000 in November. Burry’s concerns about overextension were valid—crypto shed trillions in 2022—but his timing again faltered against hodlers.
10. June 10, 2021: The Mother of All Crashes Approaches
June 2021 saw Burry’s most apocalyptic forecast yet: the “mother of all crashes,” triggered by meme stocks and crypto hype rivaling national GDPs. He liquidated nearly all Scion’s positions, holding just one stock, and tweeted warnings of retail-driven losses on a country-sized scale.
The S&P 500 was up 15% year-to-date. Markets responded with indifference, grinding higher through summer on reopening bets, with the index gaining another 10% by year-end. Burry’s full-cash stance echoed Warren Buffett’s “be fearful when others are greedy.” Still, it meant forgoing gains as the bull market continued.
11. September 2022: Massive Stock Failures Imminent
Amid 2022’s bear market—where the S&P 500 fell 20%—Burry ramped up doomsaying in 2022, forecasting “more failures coming” in stocks and banks, with bottoms far off. He pointed to the depletion of household savings and the resurgence of inflation.
Yet, October marked the lows, and indexes rebounded sharply, finishing the year flat but surging 24% in 2023. Burry’s mid-year call caught the downturn’s depth but missed the pivot, as Fed signaling calmed nerves
12. August 2023: $1.6 Billion Wager on Total Collapse
Burry’s largest bet came in August 2023: $1.6 billion in put options against the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, over 90% of Scion’s portfolio. Following his infamous January “Sell” tweet—which he later admitted was wrong—this was a direct assault on market highs.
He had tweeted “Sell” in January, sparking panic, only to watch a 30% rally. The 2023 positions expired worthless as tech led a 25% advance. Exact losses remain undisclosed, but filings suggest heavy writedowns, capping a streak where Burry’s crash calls repeatedly failed and were caught on the wrong side of a bull market repeatedly.
Conclusion:
Michael Burry’s dozen failed bets from 2017 to 2023 paint a portrait of a brilliant analyst trapped in perpetual misjudgment of the underlying market forces of currency debasement, money printing, government bailouts, and deficit spending.
His warnings—rooted in leverage, speculation, and policy risks—often nailed the vulnerabilities, from inflation’s surge to crypto’s winter. Yet, each time, markets defied his script, powered by innovation, liquidity, and human optimism. Burry’s losing streak underscores a timeless investing truth: spotting the storm is one thing; timing the thunder another.
For retail followers who sold on his signals, the cost was steep—missed gains totaling trillions in market cap. Burry himself has admitted to errors, such as the 2023 “Sell,” and pivoted to new fights, including AI shorts in Palantir and Nvidia in 2025, using put options.
His legacy endures not despite these misses, but because of them: a reminder that even oracles can falter a dozen times, and fortune favors the patient over predictions. In a world of endless rallies, Burry’s cautionary voice persists, waiting for the crash that feels inevitable—whenever it arrives.