- Michael Burry predicted a painful sell-off months before the recent stock-market downturn.
- "The Big Short" investor quit Twitter after noting he tried to warn people that stocks would slump.
- Burry sees himself as a "Cassandra", or someone cursed to make correct predictions that go unheeded.
Michael Burry has repeatedly warned a market crash is coming, but many investors have ignored his dire predictions. The fund manager of "The Big Short" fame took solace in his attempts to alert people in a tweet on Friday.
"At least I tried," the Scion Asset Management boss tweeted, shortly before he once again deleted his Twitter account.
The S&P 500 has slumped 11% and the Nasdaq has tumbled 19% this year. Investors have dumped more speculative, aggressively valued stocks in the face of rampant inflation, rising interest rates, and threats to global growth such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a new wave of COVID-19 lockdowns in China.
Burry's display name on Twitter is "Cassandra B.C." — a reference to the Trojan priestess from Greek mythology who was cursed to deliver true prophecies but never to be believed. Warren Buffett, one of Burry's key influences, described him as a "Cassandra" for correctly predicting and profiting from the collapse of the mid-2000s housing bubble.
The Scion chief diagnosed the "greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things" in June 2021, and cautioned retail investors were piling into meme stocks and cryptocurrencies before the "mother of all crashes."
Burry has singled out Tesla, GameStop, bitcoin, dogecoin, Robinhood, and the white-hot US housing market as examples of speculative excess in financial markets. He bet against Tesla stock and one of its best-known holders, Cathie Wood's Ark Innovation fund, last year.
"People say I didn't warn last time," Burry tweeted in February 2021. "I did, but no one listened. So I warn this time. And still, no one listens. But I will have proof I warned."
