Michael Burry of ‘Big Short’ fame deregisters Scion Asset Management

Michael Burry, the investor known for his successful bets against the U.S. housing market in 2008, has deregistered his hedge fund, Scion Asset Management.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s database showed Scion’s registration status as “terminated” as of November 10. Deregistering would imply the fund is not required to file reports with the regulator or any state.

Bets by Scion, which managed $155 million in assets as of March, have long been dissected for hints of looming bubbles and signs of market froth. Investment funds that manage more than $100 million of capital are required to register with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In a post on social media platform X on Wednesday, Burry said, “On to much better things Nov 25th.” Scion Asset Management did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Burry, who was famously featured in the book and movie ‘The Big Short’, 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.

In his post on X, Burry said he spent about $9.2 million buying up about 50,000 put options on Palantir, saying that the options would allow him to sell the stock at $50 apiece in 2027. The put options convey the right to sell shares at a set price in the future and are typically bought to express a bearish or defensive view.

Palantir’s shares were trading at $178.29 on Thursday, giving the company a market value of $422.36 billion.

Last month, Burry posted an image of his character from ‘The Big Short’ movie and warned of bubbles, saying that, “Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.”

“Burry’s decision feels less like ‘calling it quits’ and more like stepping away from a game he believes is fundamentally rigged,” said Bruno Schneller, managing director at Erlen Capital Management.

Burry, who could not be immediately reached for comment, 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 $176 billion, inflating reported profits across the sector, he estimated.

AI-related stocks have accounted for 75% of the S&P 500 index’s returns since November 2022, when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, J.P. Morgan Asset Management wrote in September.

“Don’t count him out, just expect him to operate off the grid for a while. He may simply pivot to a family-office setup and run his own capital,” said Schneller.

The investor’s short position against subprime mortgage securities during the housing market crash was chronicled in Michael Lewis’s 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 $100 million or more have to register with the SEC, and are primarily subject to federal regulation instead of state regulation.

Burry’s Scion ended last year with shares in American Coastal, Bruker, Canada Goose, HCA Healthcare, Magnera, Molina Healthcare, Oscar Health and VF Corp, but the firm ended those bets earlier this year. During the quarter ended June 30, Burry’s Scion Asset Management was more bullish on companies across different sectors and geographies, after betting against Chinese companies previously as the Trump administration considered imposing tariffs.