“Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary has warned that Michael Burry‘s bet against the S&P 500 might be a risky move, Business Insider reports.
O’Leary expressed his concerns in a recent interview with Fox News, highlighting the challenges of predicting market movements.
“People that try to live off market timing have a very hard time. You get lucky once as he did with housing syndication in mortgage debt, but this is a whole different kettle of fish he’s playing with,” O’Leary remarked.
O’Leary’s comments come after Burry disclosed his bearish options on ETFs tracking the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100, amounting to a notional value of $1.6 billion against these indexes. O’Leary emphasized the diversified nature of these indexes and the inherent risks in shorting them.
While Burry profited nearly $100 million from the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, O’Leary believes this current bet is different.
“What he’s doing now is completely different. The S&P 500 has 500 mega-cap companies in it in 11 sectors of the economy, real estate only being one of them. You would need every single sector to falter or at least the valuations of every company in the S&P to significantly go down at the same time to win on that bet,” he explained.
O’Leary also pointed out the potential unlimited losses for investors who short stocks, terming it “very risky.”
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