'Big Short' investor Michael Burry cut 2 China tech bets before the DeepSeek rally — and piled into Temu's owner
Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images
- Michael Burry of "The Big Short" fame pared two of his three bets on Chinese tech stocks last quarter.
- He invested in Temu-owner PDD before DeepSeek's release sparked a market rebound last month.
- Alibaba, Baidu, JD.com, and PDD made up 53% of Burry's portfolio going into 2025.
Michael Burry trimmed two of his three big wagers on Chinese technology in the quarter ending December 31, before DeepSeek's release in January sparked a massive rally in the country's stock market.
The investor of "The Big Short" fame also bet on a fourth Chinese tech titan last quarter, leaving him well-placed to capitalize on the excitement around the cut-price AI model.
Burry's Scion Asset Management pared its stake in Alibaba by 25% to 150,000 shares, and its JD.com position by 40% to 300,000 shares, in the final three months of 2024, a regulatory filing on Friday indicated.
The fund manager, who predicted and profited from the collapse of the mid-2000s US housing bubble, had quadrupled his stakes in both Alibaba and JD.com during the 12 months ending September 30.
Burry left his 125,000 Baidu shares intact last quarter, and there was no sign of the bearish put options he'd held against the three tech stocks at the end of September.
Moreover, he bought 75,000 shares of PDD, the e-commerce group behind Temu and Pinduoduo. That position was worth $7.3 million at December's close.
Burry's four China bets were worth nearly $41 million combined, or about 53% of the total value of Scion's US stock portfolio, on December 31. His previous three wagers were worth substantially more at $54 million or about 65% of the portfolio (excluding options) at the end of September.
The DeepSeek frenzy has fueled a 28% surge in Pinduoduo stock, a 47% gain for Alibaba, a 16% rise for Baidu, and a 19% increase for JD.com this year — great news for Burry if he's retained those stocks.
Burry made other striking changes to his portfolio last quarter. He exited Olaplex, Shift4Payments, and TheRealReal. In contrast, he bought into Canada Goose, Estee Lauder, Vans-owner VF Corp., Bruker, HCA Healthcare, Magnera, and Oscar Health.
The upshot was Scion's number of positions rose from 11 to 13, even as its portfolio's overall value dropped from $83 million to $77 million, excluding options.
Chinese stocks were under pressure before DeepSeek's release as investors fretted about regulation, slowing economic growth, a real estate crisis, mounting geopolitical tensions, and broad skepticism of the government's stimulus plans.
It's worth noting that Burry may have exited his China bets in the new year. Quarterly portfolio updates only provide a snapshot of a firm's holdings on a single day roughly six weeks earlier. They also exclude shares sold short, investments in private companies, foreign-listed assets, and non-stock assets such as bonds and real estate.
Besides his starring role in "The Big Short" book and movie adaptation, Burry is also known for issuing grim predictions of market crashes and recessions, investing in GameStop long before it became a meme stock, and betting against everything from Tesla and Apple to a microchip fund containing Nvidia and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes.
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