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Michael Burry of ‘Big Short’ fame goes short on Tesla and Musk, betting on EV maker’s stock to fall
- Michael Burry’s Scion Asset Management owned bearish puts against 800,100 shares of the electric-car maker as of March 31, according to a filing
- The filing said the position was worth US$534 million
Michael Burry, the investor who rose to fame for making billions off bets against mortgage securities during the financial crisis, has placed a sizable wager against Elon Musk’s Tesla.
Tesla shares closed at an all-time high of US$883.09 on January 26, after a yearlong rally jolted the stock higher by almost 700 per cent. It had lost a quarter of its value by the end of March, and is down 35 per cent from its peak as of the close Monday.
![Actor Christian Bale, playing the character of Michael Burry in The Big Short from Paramount Pictures and Regency Enterprises. Photo: Paramount Pictures](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/methode/2021/05/18/d3644ec4-b792-11eb-9461-e80e43f535ad_972x_124810.jpeg)
It’s impossible to know when Burry’s Scion made the bets against Tesla, at what price the puts are in the money and how much the firm paid for them.
The filing, a quarterly rundown of holdings required of hedge funds of a certain size, said the position was worth US$534 million - an amount likely derived by multiplying Tesla’s share price on March 31 by the number of shares Scion bet against.
“Tesla is down 14 per cent since the end of the first quarter, so on balance, these puts have been profitable, though it’s impossible to know for sure,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers. “He’s expressing the type of scepticism that many have on Tesla. I would have to believe that he accumulated various Tesla options at various strikes, and some of them probably have expired.”
Burry was played by Christian Bale in the film version of Michael Lewis’s best-selling account of the 2008 financial crisis, The Big Short.
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