Michael Burry attends “The Big Short” New York screening Ziegfeld Theater on Nov. 23, 2015 in New York City.
Astrid Stawiarz | Getty Images
Michael Burry of “Big Short” fame is warning that the stock market’s fixation on artificial intelligence is beginning to resemble the final stages of the dot-com bubble.
“Absolutely non-stop AI. Nobody is talking about anything else all day,” Burry wrote Friday in a Substack post after listening to financial television and radio coverage during a long drive.
The investor, best known for predicting the U.S. housing crash, said stocks are no longer reacting meaningfully to economic data such as jobs reports or consumer sentiment in a logical way. The S&P 500 rose to a fresh record high Friday as traders focused on a slightly better-than-expected April jobs report rather than a record low reading in consumer sentiment.
“Stocks are not up or down because of jobs or consumer sentiment,” Burry wrote. “They are going straight up because they have been going straight up. On a two letter thesis that everyone thinks they understand. … Feeling like the last months of the 1999-2000 bubble.”
Burry compared the recent trajectory of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) with the run-up that preceded the collapse of technology stocks in March 2000. The index is up more than 10% this week, pushing its 2026 gains to 65%.
SOX in 2026
The comments come as investors have poured into AI-linked shares over the past two years, helping propel major U.S. equity indexes to repeated record highs. Semiconductor companies and megacap technology firms tied to AI infrastructure and software have led the rally, with enthusiasm around generative AI fueling sharp gains in valuations.
Paul Tudor Jones has also drawn parallels between today’s AI-fueled rally and the period leading up to the dot-com bust, though he believes the bull market may still have further to run. Jones told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this week the current environment feels similar to 1999 — roughly a year before technology shares peaked in early 2000 — and estimated the rally could continue for another year or two.
At the same time, Jones cautioned that the eventual correction could be dramatic if valuations continue to expand.
“Just imagine the stock market went up another 40%,” Jones said. “The stock market GDP is going to probably be good lord 300%, 350%. You just know that there’ll be some … breathtaking kind of corrections.”