Michael Burry, the hedge fund manager who was depicted in the book and film "The Big Short" warned in a series of Tweets over the weekend that investors should be prepared for losses “the size of countries” if cryptocurrency and meme-stocks crash.
"All hype/speculation is doing is drawing in retail before the mother of all crashes," Burry wrote on Twitter before the posts were deleted. "When crypto falls from trillions, or meme stocks fall from tens of billions, #MainStreet losses will approach the size of countries. History ain’t changed."
In 2019, Burry, the head of Scion Asset Management, said that he was long the videogame retailer GameStop, which became the darling of the meme stock crowd.
However, Burry changed his opinion this year, tweeting in January that "what is going on now — there should be legal and regulatory repercussions. This is unnatural, insane, and dangerous."
Earlier in June, GameStop (NYSE:GME) posted a narrower-than-expected fiscal-first-quarter loss. Last month, Burry unveiled another significant bet against electric-vehicle maker Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA).
Burry, who made billions betting against the U.S. housing market before the 2008/09 financial crisis, had expressed concern about the fact that Tesla generates a large portion of its profits from the sale of regulatory credits rather than production of its Model 3 and Model S sedans.
Burry is a medical doctor, but after gaining his M.D. from Vanderbilt University, he was an early adopter of discussing stock trades on online message boards and switched to professional investing.
The 2016 movie "The Big Short" was based on Michael Lewis's book "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning for best adapted screenplay.
