Michael Burry, who shot to fame by calling the subprime mortgage crisis, loaded up on bearish bets against Nvidia and Chinese internet stocks in the first quarter. Burry’s hedge fund, Scion Asset Management, owned millions of dollars worth of put contracts against Nvidia , Alibaba , PDD Holdings , JD.com and Baidu , with unknown value, strike price or expiration, according to a new regulatory filing. Investors profit from puts when the underlying securities fall in prices. Without knowing the specifics of these put contracts, it is hard to tell if the positions were profitable even though the stocks suffered a big sell-off in early April when President Donald Trump rolled out enormous increases in U.S. tariffs. Burry became well known on Wall Street by betting against mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 global financial crisis , and was depicted in Michael Lewis’ book ” The Big Short ” and the subsequent Oscar-winning movie of the same name. Also in the first quarter, Burry doubled his stake in beauty retailer Estée Lauder to a bet worth $13.2 million. The cosmetics company is especially sensitive to U.S. trade with the world’s second-largest economy because more of its revenue, about 26.0%, comes from China than the U.S., at 24.9%. Estée Lauder has also faced management succession issues , and the stock has tumbled to a recent $63.67 from more than $370 at the end of 2021.
