Since October 31, 2025, the internet has been on fire after a tweet, 

 

Sometimes, we see bubbles.

Sometimes, there is something to do about it.

Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play.

 

Because this tweet isn't from just anyone.

It comes from the man who saw the 2008 financial crisis coming,

the man behind The Big Short,

the man no one wanted to listen to—but whom everyone still follows today: Michael Burry.

Three sentences.

And a huge impact: millions of views, tens of thousands of likes, and above all... real panic among some investors.

And one question keeps coming up:

how can this man influence an entire market, almost 20 years after his first major prediction?

 

Who is really Michael Burry — and why “Cassandra”?

 

Before becoming a movie character, Michael Burry was simply a Californian doctor.

He was passionate about data, analysis, and anomalies.

He was someone who spent his nights dissecting markets rather than clinical cases.

 

He was born in 1971 in San Jose, and at the age of two, he lost an eye to retinoblastoma, a rare form of retinal cancer. He has worn a glass eye ever since.

This detail often comes up in portraits of him: the man who sees “differently”—both literally and figuratively.

 

 

From medicine... to markets

 

Burry first studied economics and then medicine at UCLA, before obtaining a doctorate in medicine from Vanderbilt University.

He then began a residency in neurology at Stanford.

 

But in the evenings, when he got home, he didn't review his cases.

He read financial reports.

He published his analyses on forums such as Silicon Investor.

 

His posts attracted attention: he was precise, obsessive, a little blunt, but terribly accurate. So much so that some professional investors contacted him.

Among them was Joel Greenblatt, a legend in the field, who invested in his future fund.

Burry already has everything that will make his reputation:

• a very rational way of analyzing,

• an obsession with details,

• and a solitary, almost antisocial temperament.

 

The Birth of Scion Capital

 

In 2000, he left medicine for good to launch his own hedge fund: Scion Capital, financed by his inheritance, family loans, and early investors who believed in him.

 

The name “Scion” was inspired by a fantasy novel (The Scions of Shannara), which says a lot about the man himself: a bit of a geek, very narrative, a far cry from the stereotypical banker in a tie.

 

Between 2000 and 2008, Scion posted an estimated cumulative performance of nearly +490%, while the S&P 500 barely managed a few percent over the same period.

 

The moment that changes everything

 

In the mid-2000s, while reading hundreds of pages of mortgage-backed bond prospectuses, Burry noticed something that didn't add up:

 

• the quality of the loans was deteriorating,
• the financial products were presented as perfect,
• and the models assumed that “real estate never declines.”

 

He understood before anyone else that a catastrophe was coming.

 

Between 2005 and 2007, he began betting against these products using CDS (Credit Default Swaps), a form of insurance that makes money if these bonds explode.

 

His own investors no longer understood him:

 

• his “contrarian” positions were costly before the crisis,
• some wanted to withdraw their money,
• and he faced a virtual revolt within his own fund.

 

 

Then came 2007–2008.

The U.S. real estate market is imploding.

Subprime mortgages are collapsing.

Result:

 

• Burry earned approximately $100 million for himself,
• and nearly $700–725 million for his investors.

This story became a book (Michael Lewis, The Big Short) and then a cult movie, in which Christian Bale played his role.

His image as a solitary visionary became iconic.

 

 

Why “Cassandra”?

 

The nickname comes from Warren Buffett, who compares her to Cassandra, the prophetess from Greek mythology:

the one who sees the future, but whom no one believes.

 

In the myth, Apollo offers her the gift of prophecy. When she rejects him, he curses her:

 

she will continue to correctly predict disasters,
but no one will take her seriously.

The analogy with Burry is obvious:

he warns about subprime mortgages, he is called crazy, then everything explodes.

On X, he eventually adopted this narrative by incorporating it into his public identity:

his account appears under the name “Cassandra Unchained.”  – Cassandra freed.

 

But after 2008, what became Michael Burry?

 

After the crash, Burry did not become a media guru.

He did the opposite: he closed Scion Capital in 2008 and almost completely disappeared from the public eye.

 

In his rare public statements, he mentioned:

 

• the fatigue of years of conflict with his investors,
• the weight of post-crisis media coverage,
• and a series of tax and regulatory audits that pushed him to step back.

 

2013: The Return

It was a short break.

In 2013, he quietly returned with a new fund: Scion Asset Management.

It was no longer the explosive fund of the 2000s, but a more compact, almost family-like structure:

• a more personal mandate,
• a long-term focus,
• investments in water, agricultural land, gold, and a few selected stocks.

He remains discreet, rarely appears in public, tweets occasionally, often deletes his tweets, and communicates mainly through mandatory documents published quarterly, known as 13F filings (regulatory disclosures).

 

He returns with predictions that are not always accurate.

 

Contrary to the myth, Burry does not always get it right.

 

• January 2023: He simply tweets “Sell,” calling for the stock market to be sold at a time when many fear a recession.
• March 2023: After a strong rebound in the indices, he deletes his tweets and admits:

“I was wrong to say sell.”

“Going back to the 1920s, there has been no BTFD generation like you. Congratulations.”

 

In addition, he repeatedly warns of an impending recession, a new crash, or compares recent events to the panic of 1907.

Some of his predictions come true, others do not.

 

His tweets are often deleted, his messages disappear, but everything is archived:

an unofficial X account, @mikeburrysaved, reposts his deleted posts and has become a mini-laboratory for “Burry signals.”

 

And still...

despite these mistakes, despite his unstable and erased side, despite his relative withdrawal:

his voice is still heard.

 

Very much heard.

 

 

But why is he back today, attacking AI?

 

Since the end of COVID, AI has spread rapidly and can now be found everywhere:

in businesses, among the general public, and in budgets.

So much so that investors are talking about a “revolution,” KPIs are skyrocketing, and cloud budgets are exploding.

And at the center of this new world are several key players:

• Nvidia, a key supplier of AI chips;
• Palantir, positioned as “strategic AI software”;
• and the cloud giants (Amazon, Microsoft, Google), which are investing heavily in infrastructure.

As Michael Burry illustrates with this chart, we can see the scale of these major players' networks and Nvidia's significant place in this ultra-concentrated ecosystem.

And amid this euphoria, Burry is beginning to openly target this world.

 

 

Why his bet against Palantir

 

A regulatory filing (13F filings) reveals that Burry has purchased approximately 50,000 contracts betting on Palantir's future decline.

As many people confuse:

→ That doesn't mean he bet 900 million.

→ That means he spent $9.2 million to protect himself if the stock price fell sharply.

In other words:

he is betting, with significant leverage, on the possibility of a sharp future decline in the stock price.

 

When this position is revealed:

 

• Palantir's stock price falls sharply, despite strong results announced the day before.
• CEO Alex Karp responds publicly on television, attacking short sellers,
• and Burry responds on X, explaining that notional value should not be confused with actual capital committed, pointing out that he “spent $9.2 million, not $912 million.”

 

At the same time, Scion also declared a position of puts (sells) on Nvidia, again with a significant notional amount, signaling an overall bearish view on certain AI leaders.

 

 

His criticism of the cloud industry

 

In several posts and charts, Burry highlights:

 

• a slowdown in cloud growth compared to the 2010s,
• an extreme concentration of investment around a few players,
• massive amounts invested in highly specialized infrastructure (GPUs, networks, data centers) that assume sometimes very optimistic future growth.

It reminds him of the dot-com bubble of 1999–2000:

oversized infrastructure, powerful technological narratives, and valuations driven by sometimes fragile expectations. These are very expensive infrastructures, based on a future that must absolutely come to pass for the numbers to add up.

 

 

An accounting controversy

 

Finally, Burry insists on a technical but important point: the depreciation period for AI equipment.

 

In his recent critiques, he criticizes several large companies (Meta, Oracle, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) for extending the accounting life of their AI servers:

 

• instead of amortizing them over ~2–3 years, they are amortizing them over 5–6 years,
• which reduces amortization expenses each year
• and automatically inflates reported profits.

 

He even refers to it as a form of “modern fraud”—in the sense that, while not illegal, this practice distorts economic reality and makes results less transparent.

It is not illegal.

But for Burry, it embellishes reality too much.

 

This point is disputed by some investors, who point out that:

 

• previous-generation GPUs are sometimes used for longer periods of time,
• the amortization period is always a combination of technology, judgment, and strategy.

 

His point is not that “AI will never work.”

His point is:

Perhaps we are telling a story that is too good to be true in order to justify huge valuations.

 

But this debate clearly illustrates Burry's position:

he is not attacking the technology itself,

he is attacking the way it is valued and how its future is told.

 

Everything he puts forward is based on:

 

• public data,
• regulatory documents,
• actual accounting choices.

 

 

Here, we are not validating anything, not giving any financial advice:

we are simply explaining why his criticisms exist.

 

 

Why does a single tweet cause the market to shake?

 

Because Burry is no longer just an investor.

He is a symbol.

 

• The man who was right against an entire system.
• The man portrayed by Christian Bale in a film that left its mark on an entire generation of individual investors.
• The man who speaks little, but whose every appearance is analyzed, reported on, and dissected.

 

On social media, he has become a character.

A little mysterious.

A little unsettling.

Always fascinating.

 

With its community of over 1.5 million people, each of his actions becomes:

 

• an interpretation,
• a theory,
• a possible alert.

 

 

A single tweet says nothing.

But it activates an entire imagination.

 

Add to that:

 

• the fascination with “contrarians,” those who dare to go against the crowd,
• the power of financial storytelling (the “Big Shorter” who returns to a supposed new bubble),
• and a community of more than 1.5 million followers on the lookout for his filings and tweets.

→ and you get an influence that far exceeds the actual size of his fund.

His tweet is not a market order.

It is not a personalized recommendation.

But it is a narrative event, in an already nervous market, that can trigger a series of reactions: profit-taking, analyst videos, press articles, debates on AI... and sometimes, a visible drop on the charts.

 

Why is he still so fascinating?

 

Because Michael Burry concentrates several powerful archetypes in a single person.

 

 

Lone genius

 

He doesn't like interviews.

He avoids the spotlight.

He rarely tweets, often deletes his tweets, and doesn't publish any “masterclasses” or paid newsletters.

 

This silence creates more mystery than any communication campaign could.

 

The one who sees what others miss

 

He never presented himself as a guru.

In 2010, he even wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times that “anyone” could have seen the subprime crisis coming if they had taken the time to study the markets in depth.

 

But the fact remains:

he saw something that most people missed.

And that memory remains.

 

A reflection of an unstable era

 

Whenever there is uncertainty (banking crisis, inflation, tech bubbles, AI mania), his name comes up again.

Because he asks an uncomfortable question:

“What if, once again, we are missing an obvious risk?”

In a market saturated with optimism and stories of a “new era,” Burry plays the opposite role: he reminds us that cycles exist, that bubbles burst, and that excesses always come at a price.

 

Every time the market becomes euphoric, Burry returns.

He asks questions.

He shows graphs.

He breaks the narrative of the moment.

 

For some, it's annoying.

For others, it's reassuring.

But in any case, it leaves a mark.

 

The power of the myth of Cassandra

 

The image of Cassandra fits her story perfectly:

 

the prophetess who speaks the truth but is not believed—until the day it is too late.

 

Burry himself embraces this myth.

And today, every new tweet, every graph, every criticism of AI is interpreted through this lens:

“Is this another warning sign that we refuse to see?”

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

Is Michael Burry about to be right a second time?

Or are we simply witnessing a Cassandra effect, version 2025: a mixture of myth, collective memory, and an already anxious market?

One thing is certain: whether you agree with him or not, when Michael Burry tweets, everyone stops.

Everyone looks.

And everyone asks the same question:

Is he right—or is he wrong?