News from the Woods

← News from the Woods9 nov 2025 · 18 min

Special: The Man Who Predicted the 2008 Crash, Now Warns About Nvidia and Palantir. And Maybe He's Right.

Special: The Man Who Predicted the 2008 Crash, Now Warns About Nvidia and Palantir. And Maybe He's Right.9 nov 202518 min

Imagine this: You’re sitting in an office, studying numbers that nobody cares about, and gradually discovering that the entire world is going to hell. Everyone around you is making millions, celebrating, buying their third house. And you think the whole system is one massive fraud that’s about to collapse.

But you have to decide: Either stay quiet and go with the flow, or bet everything on being right. And then for two years, everyone tells you you’re an idiot. By the way, if you haven’t seen “The Big Short,” I recommend it.

This was Michael Burry’s life in 2006. And now, in November 2025, the entire story is repeating itself. Except this time he’s not shorting mortgages. He’s shorting artificial intelligence.

One-Eyed Genius Who Saw the Future

Michael Burry isn’t a normal investor. He was born with one eye (the other was removed at age two due to cancer), studied medicine at the prestigious Vanderbilt University, and was preparing to save lives as a neurologist. Instead, he started writing a blog about stocks that caught the attention of a legendary Wall Street investor, and in 2000 he founded a hedge fund with money from his mother and brothers.

Interesting start. But this would just be another story of a successful investor, if 2005 hadn’t arrived.

Burry then began reading mortgage contracts. Not the normal ones – the crazy subprime mortgages that banks were handing out like promotional flyers at “Alberta.” He saw things that would terrify any normal person: People with no income getting loans for millions. Zero down payments. Interest rates that doubled after two years. And half the people taking these mortgages had credit so bad you wouldn’t lend them money for ice cream.

“This can’t work,” he said to himself. “When these interest rates reset, everything will fall.”

And he invested his entire fund in a bet against the mortgage market.

The problem? Absolutely nobody believed him. Actually, worse – they thought he’d gone crazy. His investors were screaming at him. One accused him of “wasting capital.” In 2006, when the entire market was rising and everyone was making money, Burry’s fund dropped 18 percent. Because he was paying millions of dollars monthly for insurance against mortgages that nobody wanted.

The film “The Big Short” (2015, Christian Bale plays him fantastically) captures the scene where Burry sits in his office basement and unwinds by drumming to heavy metal. In reality, it was even worse. Investors threatened him with lawsuits. Some wanted their money back. And Wall Street laughed in his face.

Then came 2007.