'Big Short' investor Michael Burry defends the SEC from Elon Musk's criticism — and accuses the Tesla CEO of making his own rules
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- Michael Burry defended the SEC after Elon Musk castigated the regulatory agency this week.
- "The Big Short" investor accused the Tesla CEO of making up his own rules.
- Musk defended his "funding secured" tweet this week, and disclosed his Twitter stake 10 days late.
Michael Burry, the investor of "The Big Short" fame, defended the Securities and Exchange Commission, and criticized Tesla CEO Elon Musk for flouting the agency's rules, in a now-deleted tweet on Saturday.
"In defense of the SEC, and particularly the SF office, they were nothing but professional in my dealings with them," Burry wrote. "But I don't have billions, can't make my own rules, and would never."
The Scion Asset Management boss posted a link to a Forbes story about Musk describing the SEC as "bastards" at the TED2022 conference this week. Musk alleged that agency officials knew his infamous "funding secured" tweet in 2018 was accurate, but went ahead with a public investigation anyway, and threatened his company to bully him into settling with them.
The article noted that Musk ostensibly violated his settlement with the regulator by reiterating that he had secured funding.
Moreover, a court filing on Friday showed a district judge recently concluded Musk's infamous tweet was "false and misleading," and ordered the executive to stop saying publicly he had obtained the funding.
Tesla, Scion, and the SEC didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider.
Burry may also have been referring to Musk revealing he had amassed more than 5% of Twitter's outstanding shares on April 4 — 10 days after he was required to make the disclosure. The late filing potentially saved the executive about $150 million, as Twitter's stock price soared after news broke of his stake.
The fund manager has previously tweeted that he drew scrutiny from SEC regulators for his role in the GameStop saga in January 2021. Scion had built a stake in the video-games retailer months earlier, and Burry had pushed for changes at the company by writing three separate letters to its board of directors. His endorsement likely fueled the frenzy among retail investors that propelled the stock skyward.
Burry is best known for his lucrative bet against the mid-2000s housing bubble, and his repeated predictions of epic market crashes. He's also ridiculed Tesla's aggressive valuation and wagered its stock would nosedive. Moreover, he accused Musk of selling Tesla shares last year not to pay more taxes, but to cash in on the company's stock-price surge and pay off personal debts.
"Burry is a broken clock," Musk responded at the time.
Here's a screenshot of Burry's tweet:
@michaeljburry
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