Michael Burry has disclosed a new short position against Tesla (TSLA), revealing that he shorted the stock at $416.22 on Tuesday.
The bet is one piece of a broader basket of new shorts the “Big Short” investor placed against what he describes as an inflating AI and semiconductor bubble.
Burry detailed the trades in his paid “Cassandra Unchained” Substack post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” published Tuesday. Rather than a standalone Tesla call, the note reads as a quarter-end sweep against stocks he considers overextended.
In it, he lists a string of new short positions opened the same day: Caterpillar (CAT) at $1,060.98, Nvidia (NVDA) at $198.09, the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) at $642.80, and Applied Materials (AMAT) at $729.40. Tesla comes last.
“And finally I shorted Tesla (TSLA) at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level,” Burry wrote.
That last line matters. Tesla closed the prior session at $379.71 and ran up roughly 10% on Tuesday, so Burry shorted into the rally rather than chasing a falling stock.
Be careful how this one gets reported
Burry did not disclose the size of the Tesla position. Nothing in the post indicates a dollar figure, a share count, or an options structure for the TSLA short specifically.
That’s worth flagging, because his Tesla bets have a long history of being overstated. Unlike his well-documented Nvidia and Palantir positions, which are built from dated put options with specific strikes, Tuesday’s disclosure simply says he shorted the shares.
His most famous Tesla trade is the prime example of the confusion. A Scion Asset Management 13F filing for the first quarter of 2021 showed put options tied to 800,100 Tesla shares, which much of the press reported as a “$534 million” or “half-billion-dollar” bet against Tesla.
But that number is the notional value — 800,100 shares multiplied by Tesla’s $667.93 close — which is simply how regulators require options to be listed on a 13F. It is not the capital Burry actually put at risk, which is the premium paid for the puts, a far smaller figure. He covered that position by November 2021.
Tesla is the side dish, not the main course
The bulk of Tuesday’s note is about semiconductors, not cars. Burry argues the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) is sitting at a historic extreme, trading more than 65% above its 200-day moving average — a stretch he says has only been seen once before, in 2000.
He also points to a price-to-sales ratio above 16x for the index, adding that stripping out Nvidia “barely dents” it. He rolled his SOXX puts from January 2027 to March 2027 and moved up to low-to-mid $400s strikes, while holding QQQ January puts.
“It is only a matter of time now,” he wrote of a semiconductor drawdown.
Tesla still fits Burry’s broader thesis. He has stayed publicly bearish on the stock, slamming what he called Tesla’s “ridiculous” dilution and “ridiculously overvalued” valuation in December, tying it to the $1 trillion Musk pay package shareholders approved last year. Burry shut down his hedge fund in late 2025 and launched the Substack to discuss the AI bubble freely.
Electrek’s Take
The framing here is everything. Burry didn’t write a Tesla manifesto — he wrote a semiconductor-bubble note and tacked Tesla onto the end of a five-name basket. Anyone turning this into “Burry bets big against Tesla” is repeating the exact 2021 mistake of confusing a one-line disclosure for a giant directional wager. We don’t know the size, and he didn’t tell us.
That said, the valuation case isn’t hard to make. Tesla trades around 295 times earnings on declining profits, with dilution running about 3.6% a year and a trillion-dollar pay package layered on top. Those are real numbers, and they’re ugly.
But Burry himself made the key point in his last Tesla note: a sound valuation argument doesn’t automatically make a good short. The market can stay irrational longer than a short seller can stay solvent, and Tesla has punished that trade before.
I do agree with Burry that Tesla is grossly overvalued. It is priced for perfection with some upside if Elon’s Optimus dream, which are vaporware in my opinion, come true.
But I think it’s super risky to short it. It’s all about hype and betting against Tesla’s stock is betting that Elon can’t sell hype to his cult any longer. I think with SpaceX going public, Musk has one more clear carrot to dangle in front of his fans: a merger.
If you’re a Tesla owner, powering your EV with home solar is one of the smartest ways to lock in low fuel costs no matter what the stock does. With electricity rates climbing nearly 10% last year, home solar protects you against future rate increases. And with lease and PPA options, you can go solar with zero upfront cost and start saving immediately. If you want to find the best deal, check out EnergySage. It’s a free service with hundreds of pre-vetted installers competing for your business, so you save 20 to 30% compared to going it alone. No sales calls until you pick an installer. Get your free quotes here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Comments