Michael Burry of Big Short fame deregisters Scion Asset Management
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Scion Asset Management’s registration status with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed it was terminated as at Nov 10.
PHOTO: EPA
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Big Short investor Michael Burry, known for his successful bets against the US housing market in 2008, has deregistered his hedge fund, Scion Asset Management.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) database showed Scion’s registration status as “terminated” as at Nov 10.
Deregistering would imply the fund is not required to file reports with the regulator or any state.
Bets by Scion, which managed US$155 million (S$201.6 million) in assets as at March, have long been dissected for hints of looming bubbles and signs of market froth.
On a post on social media platform X on Nov 12, Mr Burry said he would be “on to much better things” from Nov 25.
Scion Asset Management did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Mr Burry has stepped up criticism of technology heavyweights, including Nvidia and Palantir Technologies, in recent weeks, questioning the cloud infrastructure boom and accusing major providers of using aggressive accounting to inflate profits from their massive hardware investments.
Bearish AI bets
“Burry’s decision feels less like ‘calling it quits’ and more like stepping away from a game he believes is fundamentally rigged,” said Mr Bruno Schneller, managing director at Erlen Capital Management.
Mr Burry has argued that as companies such as Microsoft, Alphabet-owned Google, Oracle and Meta pour billions into Nvidia chips and servers, they are also quietly stretching out depreciation schedules to make earnings look smoother.
Between 2026 and 2028, those accounting choices could understate depreciation by about US$176 billion, inflating reported profits across the sector, he estimated.
“Don’t count him out, just expect him to operate off the grid for a while. He may simply pivot to a family-office set-up and run his own capital,” said Mr Schneller.
The investor’s short position against subprime mortgage securities during the housing market crash was chronicled in financial journalist Michael Lewis’ book The Big Short and its film adaptation.
His profile on X, titled Cassandra Unchained, is seen as a nod to the Greek mythological figure cursed by Apollo to deliver true prophecies that no one would believe.
Investment advisers with assets under management of US$100 million or more have to register with the SEC, and are subject primarily to federal regulation instead of state regulation. REUTERS
