Michael Burry attends the New York screening of “The Big Short” at the Ziegfeld Theater on November 23, 2015 in New York City.
Astrid Stovierz | getty images
Michael Burry of “Big Short” fame is warning that the stock market’s fixation on artificial intelligence is starting to resemble the final stages of the dot-com bubble.
“Absolutely non-stop AI. No one is talking about anything else all day,” Bury wrote in a Substack post on Friday after listening to financial television and radio coverage during a long drive.
The investor, known for predicting a U.S. housing crash, said stocks are no longer reacting meaningfully in a logical way to economic data such as the jobs report or consumer sentiment. The S&P 500 hit a new record high on Friday as traders focused on a slightly better-than-expected April jobs report rather than the record low reading in consumer sentiment.
“Stocks don’t go up or down because of jobs or consumer sentiment,” Bury wrote. “They’re going straight up because they’re going straight up. On a two-letter thesis that everyone thinks they understand. … Feeling like the last months of the 1999-2000 bubble.”
Barry compared the recent trajectory of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) to the rally that preceded the collapse of technology stocks in March 2000. The index has risen more than 10% this week, taking its 2026 gain to 65%.
SOX in 2026
The comments come as investors have flocked to AI-linked stocks over the past two years, helping drive major US equity indexes to repeated record highs. Semiconductor companies and mega-cap technology firms involved in AI infrastructure and software have led the rally, with enthusiasm for generative AI leading to sharp valuation gains.
Paul Tudor Jones has also drawn parallels between today’s AI-fueled rally and the period leading up to the dot-com meltdown, though he believes the bull market may still have further to go. Jones told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this week that the current environment feels like 1999 — about a year before technology stocks peaked in the early 2000s — and predicted the rally could continue for the next year or two.
At the same time, Jones cautioned that the ultimate correction could be dramatic if valuations continue to expand.
“Just imagine the stock market went up another 40%,” Jones said. “The stock market’s GDP is probably going to be a good 300%, 350%. You just know there’s going to be some … exciting kinds of improvements.”
