Michael Burry has been wrong before. He’s been wrong loudly, publicly, and expensively. But his latest bearish bet, a short position against memory chipmaker Micron Technology initiated at roughly $1,051.87 per share, is starting to attract serious attention from people who normally dismiss him as a perma-bear with a good publicist.
Bloomberg columnist Shuli Ren recently argued that despite Burry’s checkered track record on timing, his skepticism toward memory chip producers may be increasingly well-founded. The case boils down to a tension as old as capitalism itself: what happens when everyone rushes to build supply for demand that might not stick around.
The numbers behind the mania
Micron’s stock has surged approximately 241% year-to-date and roughly 697% over the past year, driven almost entirely by insatiable demand for high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI data centers.
Burry disclosed his short position around July 1-2, warning that the current AI-driven semiconductor rally echoes the speculative excesses of the late 1990s dot-com bubble. His specific language was characteristically blunt: he called the current trend the “beginning of the end” of the rally, citing FOMO, overcommitment, and greater-fool dynamics as the primary engines keeping prices elevated.
