Michael Burry Flags S&P 500 "Bubble Top," Plans to Cut Walmart, Alphabet, Valero Holdings

Michael Burry, the investor depicted in "The Big Short," is weighing sales, trims or donations of long-held winners he considers overvalued, naming Walmart, Alphabet and Valero Energy, according to a post on his Substack column "Cassandra Unchained." Burry capped a study comparing current markets to the March 2000 dot-com peak. Scoring all 982 S&P 500 closes since 1980 on seven market-internals indicators, he found only two tops hit the 95th percentile or weaker on every measure: March 2000 and the October 6 close. Using his adjusted earnings data, Burry puts the S&P 500 at roughly 32 times earnings, in line with 2000's 32 to 34. After the 2000 top, S&P 500 constituents trading within 10% of highs fell a median 33% over the next year and 50% over 18 months, he said. Stocks already down more than 40% he labels "Busted." Burry said he has been buying Lululemon, PayPal and Adobe in deep pullbacks, offset by shorts on AI and semiconductor names. He described the book as "unhedged," designed to profit in a bear market from both directional bets. Proceeds from trimming winners would fund cheaper opportunities, including Australian online retailer Temple & Webster and U.S. small-cap value stocks. Burry said he remains essentially fully invested and did not specify when, or whether, he would act on the three stocks.