(Bloomberg) — Michael Burry’s investment firm bailed on its wager against high-flying semiconductor companies like Nvidia Corp., and instead snapped up shares across industries, according to a regulatory filing Wednesday.
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Scion Asset Management nearly doubled its holdings to 25 positions after closing a bet against the iShares Semiconductor exchange-traded fund (ticker SOXX), according to the 13-F filing which disclosed the firm’s positions through the end of 2023. The money manager made famous by the book The Big Short — who bet against the the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes last year — didn’t have a single bearish position in his portfolio, the filing shows.
In a separate filing in November, Scion reported ownership of 100,000 put options tied to the iShares Semiconductor ETF. It had notional value of $47.4 million, based on the fund’s closing price at the end of September. The actual value of the options position would have been far less, and depends on the exact contracts that were bought.
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Sometime in the final three months of the year, Scion dropped that position, according to the most recent filing. Meanwhile, SOXX climbed 22% in the fourth quarter as chipmakers extended gains amid the ongoing euphoria over artificial intelligence.
As part of Scion’s portfolio shakeup it built new positions across a smattering of industries including health care, tech and financials. New stakes in HCA Healthcare Inc., Oracle Corp., Citigroup Inc. and CVS Health Corp. were each worth more than $5 million. The firm also boosted positions in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and JD.com Inc. to make them its top holdings after bailing on the Chinese companies’ US-listed shares in the second quarter of 2023.
Wednesday is the deadline for institutional investors, including hedge funds and pension funds, to report certain US equity holdings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Since the data tracks holdings through the end of December, funds could have changed positions in the past month and a half.
–With assistance from David Marino and Bre Bradham.
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