Many people (including Michael Burry) have had this feeling over and over since 2008, and were basically always wrong! Markets are tricky beasts to predict.
To plagiarize Howard Marks, when you try to time the market, you have to be right twice: both on when to get out and when to get back in. Even being right once is incredibly hard.
Or, to quote Peter Lynch: "Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections or trying to anticipate corrections than has been lost in corrections themselves."
Ya I listen to this space a lot. 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2020 were a blur of “I’m cashing out and moving my 401k to money market” on several podcasts because of impending doom
I always wonder if they somewhat right. Using the chart from the article we have large spikes in margin debt at a bunch of years that initially were followed by a crash but now are possibly followed by money printing preventing the crash. So although Burry has the right idea the rules/market has changed and his analysis no longer holds.
That said, I think 2025 is too early for the AI bubble to pop. Even Burry was buying CDS in 2005 [1] so if you're seeing something your convinced is a crack right now it's going to take a few years to actually fracture.
- 2000 -- Followed by a crash
- 2007 -- Followed by a crash
- 2011 -- (ish) USG added a bunch of money into the system
- 2015 -- Counter example?
- 2018 -- Counter example?
- 2021 -- Large crash, USG added a bunch of money into the system
Instead of cash, I hold treasuries. The rest is spread out among low holding cost index funds (watch out for fees... they will kill your profits) and use dividend re-investment. Split things between tax advantaged and non tax advantaged depending on your short and long term goals (ask a certified financial advisor with fiduciary duty for strategies that work for you. It's worth the small fee)
Every time the market takes a crap, I buy. I rarely sell. Keep enough cash or near cash assets in a no penalty account(s) to cover unexpected costs so aren't forced to sell.
A luxurious set up for sure (which took about a decade to get set up) but it's repeatable and fairly stable.
Now, if you have real wealth (like $10s of millions of liquid assets) then look to setting up a MFO or SFO and focus on tax efficiency, etc. That's a whole different set of strategies.
Give it to entrepeneurs/researchers doing intrinsicly cool things like cancer research, without knowing how you will get any of it back right at the start. The problem is NOT lack of productive investments, its that Uber rich people think its not fair if they ever lose.
Military manufacturers are a reasonably safe haven these days as Europe is desperately trying to re-arm itself following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Middle East is in flames once again and there's a ton of uncertainty and small scale hostilities around China/India/Pakistan.
Urban residential real estate is also a safe haven assuming you still are allowed to invest there. Demand is not going to shrink any time soon (as most Western governments are running rural areas to the ground for them being too expensive to bring on modern standards and expectations in infrastructure), and supply is so scarce that even large developments and re-zoning will hardly make a dent in demand.
It is not that the markets are tricky. Predicting what the Fed will do with interest rates is tricky. By lowering rates they feed more money into the market. Take a look at the last 15 years and you will realize the only thing that gave us a minor recession was COVID, adn that was becasue intrest rates were zero.
> But they can't do this for much longer, inflation is the first sign, which is why Trump is raising tariffs.
Trump is raising tariffs because he thinks they are a good idea and has since the 1980s:
> “The fact is, you don’t have free trade. We think of it as free trade, but you right now don’t have free trade,” Trump said in a 1987 episode of Larry King Live that’s excerpted in Trump’s Trade War. “A lot of people are tired of watching the other countries ripping off the United States. This is a great country.”
Meanwhile, in the real world, commerce is often non-zero-sum (both parties get something of value, i.e., "win-win"), and you play multiple rounds with each trading partner and reputation matters (rather than one-off, where burning your bridges could be an actual strategy).
I question this bit. (That may be why he's raising tariffs; I question whether it will work.)
When tariffs go up, prices go up (delusions that "other countries will pay" notwithstanding). That shows up in inflation statistics, which in turn will (probably) show up in T Bill rates, but as a higher rate, not a lower one.
Except... tariffs might be a one-off increase. They may not compound the way "regular" inflation does. So maybe it will work in the medium term?
I am all in cash outside of startup shares. I think it makes sense to be in the market, but compared to 2008, there is way more government fiscal issues, way more concentration of profit growth (e.g. only the top 10 companies have had profit growth in the last 3 years). Way more risk is in the system.
There are a number of "Chief Analysts" who are saying "A Correction is Coming" in ~2-3 years.
Soooo, yes there will always be future recessions, annnnd "professional experts" are saying it's coming sooner rather than later based upon the amount of over-inflated investments in less-well-run companies as they chase the profitability of the more-well-run companies.
The question is how deep will the crash be. If the S&P goes up those 500 points and then crashes by 300 you are better off staying in. OTOH, if the S&P goes up those 500 points and then crashes by 5000 (I didn't bother looking up the value, so I don't know if that is possible) you are not out much by getting out today.
The Federal Reserve will lower interest rates to keep that big, beautiful bubble. Donald Trump thinks interests should be 1%. There are 2 FRB governors (jockeying for a new chair) that have publicly called for lower interest rates. One FRB member (Adriana Kugler) unexpectedly resigned a couple weeks ago and will be replaced by the WH economist.
Just yesterday, the guy who was found liable in court for financial fraud demanded an FRB (Lisa Cook) resign after being accused of mortgage fraud. Do you suppose somebody in the WH is digging up dirt?
And of course, weekly rants, accusations of fraud, and musings of firing JPo.
A risk free rate of 4% really isn't that bad for cash (which is why there are trillions sitting in money market funds right now). If you have Tbills with a bit of duration you're also long economic weakness due to having locked in yields, which offsets the inflation spike risk to some degree (or more than compensates for it from another perspective).
What if we just stopped being so greedy and just bought/invested in what we actually need instead of playing silly games ? Find a plot of land, build a house, &c. a safe space for your kids and their kids.
I know people stressing 24/7 about their money, diversifying their crypto shitcoins into pokemon card collections, buying watches or old apple computers in the hope they'll be able to sell them for more to the next sucker, buying and selling defense company stocks secretly hoping more poor souls will get annihilated in Ukraine or Gaza because it's good for their $$$. They're loaded like never before but I've never seen them so tired and miserable, I bet they don't even know why they want more money, hairless apes seem to like when numbers are getting bigger
And on top of that if shit truly hits the fan the vast majority of these will be completely useless.
There are many options to hedge the known market risks today (as for hedging black swans, tail hedging is also an option, although more explicitly negative value adding long-term).
I'm assuming you are talking longer term.
A permanent allocation to gold is one option. These days it can also be done via overlays so that equity exposure can stay the same.
TIPS work as inflation protection. Move some bond exposure to TIPS.
CTA/trend following is a great addition to a portfolio when it comes to protecting against stagflationary scenarios. Again, this is fairly easy to access via ETFs these days.
How about international diversification? This is something even super conservative voices like Bogle would recommend. Again, easy to access via ETFs.
Another good idea if hedging is on the mind is stepping away from the market cap weighted indexes to some degree. Add some small-cap value for example.
There are other options as well that can be done on a portfolio level, but it can get more advanced from there.
The most important thing is to have a consistent framework that one can stick with for decades. Especially when it comes to having a truly diversified portfolio, it tends to be that unfortunately some people have a hard time handling it. If you are truly diversified you should always have assets in a portfolio that are performing poorly, and performance may be bad for entire decade-long market cycle or two. Ex: if trend is performing badly during a strong equity boom, it was protecting against lines that didn't happen to play out, but that doesn't mean that the realized situation nullifies the holistic diversification benefits.
Also, it gets more difficult if part of the equation is matching or exceeding S&P returns on an absolute basis. S&P has high returns but sees high drawdowns up to 50%, well more diversified approaches maybe less volatile and see more mild drawdowns. Because of that, usually most people would be better off with some mild leverage if they take a more diversified approach that switches out equity for less volatile assets like gold. Ex: 60/30/20/20/10 (equity/bonds/CTA/Gold/TIPS).
Many people (including Michael Burry) have had this feeling over and over since 2008, and were basically always wrong! Markets are tricky beasts to predict.
To plagiarize Howard Marks, when you try to time the market, you have to be right twice: both on when to get out and when to get back in. Even being right once is incredibly hard.
Or, to quote Peter Lynch: "Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections or trying to anticipate corrections than has been lost in corrections themselves."
Ya I listen to this space a lot. 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2020 were a blur of “I’m cashing out and moving my 401k to money market” on several podcasts because of impending doom
It sucks because eventually they're right (and the rest of us were still laughing at the earlier podcasts).
1 reply →
I always wonder if they somewhat right. Using the chart from the article we have large spikes in margin debt at a bunch of years that initially were followed by a crash but now are possibly followed by money printing preventing the crash. So although Burry has the right idea the rules/market has changed and his analysis no longer holds.
That said, I think 2025 is too early for the AI bubble to pop. Even Burry was buying CDS in 2005 [1] so if you're seeing something your convinced is a crack right now it's going to take a few years to actually fracture.
- 2000 -- Followed by a crash
- 2007 -- Followed by a crash
- 2011 -- (ish) USG added a bunch of money into the system
- 2015 -- Counter example?
- 2018 -- Counter example?
- 2021 -- Large crash, USG added a bunch of money into the system
- 2025q1 -- Tariff crash
- 2025q3 -- Too early to tell
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scion_Asset_Management
The problem is Tina!
There Is No Alternative
- Gold? Dead asset
- Cash? Good luck with inflation
- Bitcoin? My ass…
So what else can you do as a rational investor than to invest most of your cash into an S&P500 or World fund?
Instead of cash, I hold treasuries. The rest is spread out among low holding cost index funds (watch out for fees... they will kill your profits) and use dividend re-investment. Split things between tax advantaged and non tax advantaged depending on your short and long term goals (ask a certified financial advisor with fiduciary duty for strategies that work for you. It's worth the small fee)
Every time the market takes a crap, I buy. I rarely sell. Keep enough cash or near cash assets in a no penalty account(s) to cover unexpected costs so aren't forced to sell.
A luxurious set up for sure (which took about a decade to get set up) but it's repeatable and fairly stable.
Now, if you have real wealth (like $10s of millions of liquid assets) then look to setting up a MFO or SFO and focus on tax efficiency, etc. That's a whole different set of strategies.
2 replies →
Give it to entrepeneurs/researchers doing intrinsicly cool things like cancer research, without knowing how you will get any of it back right at the start. The problem is NOT lack of productive investments, its that Uber rich people think its not fair if they ever lose.
Military manufacturers are a reasonably safe haven these days as Europe is desperately trying to re-arm itself following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Middle East is in flames once again and there's a ton of uncertainty and small scale hostilities around China/India/Pakistan.
Urban residential real estate is also a safe haven assuming you still are allowed to invest there. Demand is not going to shrink any time soon (as most Western governments are running rural areas to the ground for them being too expensive to bring on modern standards and expectations in infrastructure), and supply is so scarce that even large developments and re-zoning will hardly make a dent in demand.
Invest in a fund which underweights bubble stocks by tracking a suitable alternative index:
https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Alternative_indices
Dividend weighted indexes are the classic option, and fundamental weighted index are a newer one.
Maybe unfashionable equities? Utility stocks, Japan/S Korea, BRKB etc?
Golds been rallying really aggressively recently
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Yeah, frankly I think there is no truly safe place for investments at this point.
We might as well just enjoy the ride knowing at least when it hits the bottom, we'll all of us be in the same tough spot.
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> Gold? Dead asset
What? Gold is at a record high, and with inflation it will only go higher.
https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-...
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It is not that the markets are tricky. Predicting what the Fed will do with interest rates is tricky. By lowering rates they feed more money into the market. Take a look at the last 15 years and you will realize the only thing that gave us a minor recession was COVID, adn that was becasue intrest rates were zero.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS
But they can't do this for much longer, inflation is the first sign, which is why Trump is raising tariffs.
You can see Bond prices going up. Trumps tarrifs are aimed and lowering T Bill rates:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS10
> But they can't do this for much longer, inflation is the first sign, which is why Trump is raising tariffs.
Trump is raising tariffs because he thinks they are a good idea and has since the 1980s:
> “The fact is, you don’t have free trade. We think of it as free trade, but you right now don’t have free trade,” Trump said in a 1987 episode of Larry King Live that’s excerpted in Trump’s Trade War. “A lot of people are tired of watching the other countries ripping off the United States. This is a great country.”
* https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trumps-tariff-str...
Trump's mindset is a 1980s NYC real estate guy (zero-sum, one-off games), which when applied to global trade, is basically mercantilist:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism
Meanwhile, in the real world, commerce is often non-zero-sum (both parties get something of value, i.e., "win-win"), and you play multiple rounds with each trading partner and reputation matters (rather than one-off, where burning your bridges could be an actual strategy).
2 replies →
> which is why Trump is raising tariffs.
I question this bit. (That may be why he's raising tariffs; I question whether it will work.)
When tariffs go up, prices go up (delusions that "other countries will pay" notwithstanding). That shows up in inflation statistics, which in turn will (probably) show up in T Bill rates, but as a higher rate, not a lower one.
Except... tariffs might be a one-off increase. They may not compound the way "regular" inflation does. So maybe it will work in the medium term?
2 replies →
The market can be irrational longer then you can be solvent.
Sure, if you bet against the crowd with leverage or a tight funding leash.
Global equity index ETF have reliably yielded 5% returns over 12-15 year periods for ~75 years.
> My Michael Burry senses are 'go to cash and don't come back' at this point.
And when do you get back in?
Sitting in cash, waiting for the dip, is a losing strategy (even if you knew when the dip will occur, which you don't):
* https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-co...
Simply put in a little from every pay cheque.
If you think things are too wild, invest in an ("all-in-one") asset allocation fund that is not 100% stocks (e.g., fixed 80/20, 60/40):
* https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-fun...
* https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239729/ishares-aggressiv...
* https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-fun...
* https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investments/vanguard-life...
* https://www.vanguard.ca/en/product/etf/asset-allocation/9579...
* https://www.blackrock.com/ca/investors/en/products/239447/is...
or a target date fund (which increases bonds as you approach your retirement date).
I am all in cash outside of startup shares. I think it makes sense to be in the market, but compared to 2008, there is way more government fiscal issues, way more concentration of profit growth (e.g. only the top 10 companies have had profit growth in the last 3 years). Way more risk is in the system.
> I am all in cash outside of startup shares.
Completely (retirement and 'regular' brokerage)? What criteria (if any) will you use to get out of cash and start buying again?
Michael Burry is selection bias. Everyone who predicted a massive crash when a crash didn't happen did not become famous.
Yeah, and it's the worst dealing with these people. My dad is like this, he's heavily in bonds because "a recession is coming" for the last 5 years.
When it does happen, he will be "right" even though the opportunity cost for holding this belief is huge.
There are a number of "Chief Analysts" who are saying "A Correction is Coming" in ~2-3 years.
Soooo, yes there will always be future recessions, annnnd "professional experts" are saying it's coming sooner rather than later based upon the amount of over-inflated investments in less-well-run companies as they chase the profitability of the more-well-run companies.
But according to the chart there could be 500 or more S&P points before the top. you're leaving money on the table!
The question is how deep will the crash be. If the S&P goes up those 500 points and then crashes by 300 you are better off staying in. OTOH, if the S&P goes up those 500 points and then crashes by 5000 (I didn't bother looking up the value, so I don't know if that is possible) you are not out much by getting out today.
Or the old adage "If your grandma is asking how to setup a margin account, you've already missed the bubble, get out".
Grandma wants AI stocks, taxi drivers rave about crypto, and Warren Buffett has been selling more than ever.
But “this time it’s different” because… AGI…?
The Federal Reserve will lower interest rates to keep that big, beautiful bubble. Donald Trump thinks interests should be 1%. There are 2 FRB governors (jockeying for a new chair) that have publicly called for lower interest rates. One FRB member (Adriana Kugler) unexpectedly resigned a couple weeks ago and will be replaced by the WH economist.
Just yesterday, the guy who was found liable in court for financial fraud demanded an FRB (Lisa Cook) resign after being accused of mortgage fraud. Do you suppose somebody in the WH is digging up dirt?
And of course, weekly rants, accusations of fraud, and musings of firing JPo.
What in particular about margin makes you want to go into cash?
Thank god there is no inflation or, you know, your cash would start to wither as well.
Perhaps investments in undeveloped real estate....
A risk free rate of 4% really isn't that bad for cash (which is why there are trillions sitting in money market funds right now). If you have Tbills with a bit of duration you're also long economic weakness due to having locked in yields, which offsets the inflation spike risk to some degree (or more than compensates for it from another perspective).
> you're also long economic weakness due to having locked in yield
You’re more precisely short rates.
Though maybe avoid USD or USD bonds while the gov is trying to get rid of Fed independence.
At this point I have no idea what would be proper hedge bet... Certainly not crypto. Maybe gold is least insane, but I somewhat doubt even that.
What if we just stopped being so greedy and just bought/invested in what we actually need instead of playing silly games ? Find a plot of land, build a house, &c. a safe space for your kids and their kids.
I know people stressing 24/7 about their money, diversifying their crypto shitcoins into pokemon card collections, buying watches or old apple computers in the hope they'll be able to sell them for more to the next sucker, buying and selling defense company stocks secretly hoping more poor souls will get annihilated in Ukraine or Gaza because it's good for their $$$. They're loaded like never before but I've never seen them so tired and miserable, I bet they don't even know why they want more money, hairless apes seem to like when numbers are getting bigger
And on top of that if shit truly hits the fan the vast majority of these will be completely useless.
5 replies →
There are many options to hedge the known market risks today (as for hedging black swans, tail hedging is also an option, although more explicitly negative value adding long-term).
I'm assuming you are talking longer term.
A permanent allocation to gold is one option. These days it can also be done via overlays so that equity exposure can stay the same.
TIPS work as inflation protection. Move some bond exposure to TIPS.
CTA/trend following is a great addition to a portfolio when it comes to protecting against stagflationary scenarios. Again, this is fairly easy to access via ETFs these days.
How about international diversification? This is something even super conservative voices like Bogle would recommend. Again, easy to access via ETFs.
Another good idea if hedging is on the mind is stepping away from the market cap weighted indexes to some degree. Add some small-cap value for example.
There are other options as well that can be done on a portfolio level, but it can get more advanced from there.
The most important thing is to have a consistent framework that one can stick with for decades. Especially when it comes to having a truly diversified portfolio, it tends to be that unfortunately some people have a hard time handling it. If you are truly diversified you should always have assets in a portfolio that are performing poorly, and performance may be bad for entire decade-long market cycle or two. Ex: if trend is performing badly during a strong equity boom, it was protecting against lines that didn't happen to play out, but that doesn't mean that the realized situation nullifies the holistic diversification benefits.
Also, it gets more difficult if part of the equation is matching or exceeding S&P returns on an absolute basis. S&P has high returns but sees high drawdowns up to 50%, well more diversified approaches maybe less volatile and see more mild drawdowns. Because of that, usually most people would be better off with some mild leverage if they take a more diversified approach that switches out equity for less volatile assets like gold. Ex: 60/30/20/20/10 (equity/bonds/CTA/Gold/TIPS).
Chinese Yuan. Have a better idea?
3 replies →
gold is overvalued too!