Michael Burry: Greatest Stock Market Crash Of Our Time Is Coming! - Epic Economist

Experts and insiders are getting really spooked about the imminent threats on Wall Street and have been bracing for a devastating stock market crash as financial and economic conditions dramatically worsen. Several veteran investors are warning that the rampant speculation fueled by the US government and the Federal Reserve can not sustain asset prices forever, and a significant pullback is right ahead.
Amongst them, Scion Asset Management CEO and Big Short investor, Michael Burry, seems to be right about an impending financial disaster once again. The hedge fund manager, who famously bet against the country’s housing market in 2008, highlighted in a recent statement that the bond and stock markets are in a particularly vulnerable position given that they need the constant support of the corrupt US central bank. “Bond & stock markets depend on a Fed stripped of all credibility,” he said.
Burry, had warned at the end of 2020 that the central bank’s policies would spark inflation as we’ve never seen before. “Prepare for inflation,” he tweeted back then. He even noted that we were heading to an environment of hyperinflation similar to what occurred in Germany in the 1920s, outlining that during that time everyone was playing the market and trading volumes were skyrocketing. “Sound familiar?” he asked. Well, if it didn’t in 2020, it certainly does now. That’s to say, with inflation rising almost 7%, the outlook is particularly concerning for volatile stocks such as tech.
That’s why the investor revealed that he had bet against Elon Musk’s Tesla and Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest, two investor favorites leading the tech bubble. It turns out that both of them have faced sizable crashes at the end of December and earlier this month as the tech bubble finally burst. One more hit for Burry’s count. The Scion boss revealed it held bearish put options on about 1.1 million Tesla shares. It also disclosed puts on Cathie Wood’s Ark Innovation ETF, a key Tesla supporter. The experts rang the alarm again in a series of tweets: “Can $TSLA fall 80, 90%? After 2000, many high flyers did,” he wrote.
Tesla has already lost billions after CEO Elon Musk started dumping shares of his own company to allegedly ‘pay for taxes,’ which according to Burry, is just a strategy to cash in money before a steeper decline in share prices. He said Musk was selling shares because he knew the electric-vehicle stock was extremely overvalued. But at the end of the day, “he doesn’t need cash. He just wants to sell $TSLA,” Burry added.
The market veteran has reiterated his previous warning that the market is in a “speculative bubble,” and a historic stock market crash is near. He pointed to today’s soaring prices and ballooning margin debt, and also compared the hype around Bitcoin, electric cars, software-as-a-service companies, and meme stocks to the dot-com and housing bubbles. He alerted that most assets had been “driven by speculative fervor to insane heights from which the fall will be dramatic and painful.”
In Burry’s view, today’s overvaluation is much more worrying than what investors experienced in the 1990s, and that speculation is much higher now than in the 1920s. The investor argues that another troubling factor for financial markets is the rising geopolitical tension around the world. He fears that “we are fast moving towards an economic calamity, and government regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve are taking no action to prevent it”.
All things considered, it’s no wonder why he slashed his US portfolio from more than 20 holdings to only six, cutting its total value from almost $140 million to only $42 million. The founder of r/Burryology, a subreddit for Burry’s close followers, told in a recent interview that the sales were a huge red flag that signaled Burry was preparing for “the mother of all crashes.” Of course, he is far from alone. Many other billionaire investors such are also getting ready for the meltdown that’s coming and have been sharing their forecasts with clients and online followers in recent weeks. 
What makes the situation so alarming is that high valuations are putting the market in the most vulnerable position it’s ever been at a time when strong growth is in question, and liquidity is drying up. In short, this all means that this gigantic stock market bubble is on the verge of a gigantic crash. And those who saw the signs before are seeing them again right now.