While everyone on financial media is celebrating the resilience of the Nasdaq, the actual positioning of deep-value funds paints a much uglier picture.
I’ve been digging into the Q1 filings, and Scion Asset Management isn’t just “cautious”—they are actively betting on a hardware cycle bust. It looks like Burry is heavily fading the AI infrastructure trade (via Puts on Semis) while rotating into hard assets like physical gold trusts and shipping. It’s basically a bet that “real things” will outperform “digital promises” in 2026.
It’s rare to see such a stark divergence between retail sentiment (extremely bullish on Tech) and institutional positioning (defensive/short).
If you want to see the specific instruments he’s using to structure this trade, I was looking at the michael burry current portfolio data here: www.13radar.com/guru/michael-burry
Is anyone else here holding substantial hedges right now, or are you riding the AI wave until it breaks? The VIX creeping up suggests the “easy mode” is over.
sj_zero 1 day ago
I've been in defensive mode for several years now. The markets have been up up up since COVID, and that makes no sense. Doesn't matter who's in power, you can't have a divergence between markets and reality forever.
Eddyzh@lemmy.world 1 day ago
While true the question is not forever but for how long you can hold your short position. And if the government etc keep markets unreal it can stay unreal pretty long.
sj_zero 1 day ago
There's other options than just a short. Defensives have been doing great despite not being in the direct line of fire. Some money market funds have been giving 5% and it's a great place to keep dry powder too. Alternatively, you can use a dumbbell strategy where you take risks with a small part of your funds but lock your profits into low risk things.
So there's lots of options, not just buy or short.