Michael Burry's Next Big Short Does Not Need to Work

Michael Burry has been betting against the stock market for years.

Not one season. Not one cycle. Years. He is arguably the biggest bear alive, and for most of that stretch the market has made him look foolish for it.

Then his Palantir short actually worked.

So now everyone wants to know the same thing. What is he shorting next?

That is what a student asked me recently. I wrote about him back in April, when he first went after Palantir & Nvidia and everyone wanted to know whether they should be worried.

This time I want to answer a different question. Because something changed in how this man earns a living, and once you see it, his next big short stops mattering the way you think it does.

In October 2025, Burry wrote to his investors and told them he was shutting down Scion Asset Management, the fund that made him famous.

Most people read that as retirement.

It was not. Weeks later he started a Substack blog, and he has not stopped posting since.

Now here is the part that explains why he posts so relentlessly. He also shares every new trade and position he takes.

But.. it’s only for paid subscribers. Yes. You read that right. To find out what the man is betting against, you gotta subscribe to his blog.

To understand why that matters, you have to remember what the housing trade actually cost him.

He spotted the subprime problem in 2006. The crisis did not arrive until 2008. For two years in between, he looked like an idiot. His fund was down around 17%. His investors demanded their money back. He refused and locked the withdrawals, which is about as close to career suicide as a fund manager can get.

Then the bubble burst. He made roughly $725 million for his investors, about $100 million for himself, and got the last laugh.

That is the trade that got a whole movie made about him. The Big Short. Two years of hell, one payday.

Now look at his blog.

He has over 300K subscribers right now. His subscription costs $39 a month, or $379 a year.

That means he’s earning over $100 million every year from his blog.

And he makes this regardless of how his trades turn out. His income no longer depends on being right. It depends on how many people are reading what he writes.

Remember how he shorted Palantir & Nvidia?

So I dug into how much. After all, if he's confident, he should walk the talk and put his money on the line, right?

Well he did.. Around $10 million.

A $10M trade, against his blog bringing in more than $100 million a year.

Even if he loses every single cent, that’s equivalent to (just) a month of subscription revenue for him.

Now put yourself beside that. How much would you stand to lose?

He is risking pocket money, but you might be risking your entire portfolio.

This is why context is important. The same trade has completely different consequences for different people.

Here is where most people go wrong in the other direction.

The easy conclusion from all of this is that Burry is just farming outrage, and none of it is worth reading. That conclusion is lazy, and it will cost you. His Palantir call worked, remember.

So you cannot worship him. And you cannot dismiss him either.

Because this will happen to you. Sooner or later someone publishes a case against a company you hold, and it makes you uncomfortable.

Most people fail it in one of two ways. They panic and sell without ever reading the argument. Or they decide in four seconds that it is baseless, then go looking only for the opinions that agree with them.

Both are the same mistake. One hands your thinking to a stranger. The other hands it to your ego.

And the question underneath is always the same. Are you protecting your money, or are you protecting your ego?

So instead of reacting, run these three questions. They are the same ones I use myself.

1) What is the actual argument? Not the headline. The reasoning. If you cannot find it, or it sits behind a paywall you are not paying for, then you do not have a thesis. You have a rumor with a famous name attached.

2) Can you turn it into a yes or no question? "Micron is overvalued" is an opinion and you will argue about it forever. "Is demand for AI chips falling" is a question. "Did earnings come in below guidance" is a question. Stack up enough of those and you get an answer instead of a feeling.

3) Who benefits if you believe this? Not as an accusation. As a habit. Ask it of the bear, ask it of the bull, and ask it of me too.

One of three things will happen:

All three leave you better off. That is why I would rather read the bear case than the bull case. When everyone agrees with you, nobody is testing you.

He is not the oracle either. He is a man with a strong opinion, a large audience, and a business model that pays him the same either way.

Your job was never to figure out whether he is right.

Your job is to know your own companies well enough that anyone's opinion becomes something you can weigh instead of something you have to obey.

Do not take his word as truth. Do not take mine either.

Use it to check your own.

And as always -

Patience builds wealth,
Bjorn

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