Michael Burry says the market today feels like ‘the last months of the 1999-2000 bubble’
Michael Burry attends the New York screening of “The Big Short” at the Ziegfeld Theater on November 23, 2015 in New York City.
Astrid Stawiarz | Getty Images
Michael Burry of “Big Short” fame warns that the stock market’s obsession with artificial intelligence is starting to resemble the final stages of the dot-com bubble.
“Absolutely non-stop AI. No one talks about anything else all day,” Burry wrote in a Substack post on Friday after listening to financial television and radio broadcasts during a long road trip.
The investor best known for predicting the U.S. housing crash said stocks no longer respond in a logically meaningful way to economic data like jobs reports or consumer sentiment. The S&P 500 rose to a new record high on 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 rising or falling because of employment or consumer sentiment,” Burry wrote. “They’re going straight up because they’re going straight up. With a two-letter thesis that everyone thinks they understand. … It feels like the final months of the 1999-2000 bubble.”
Burry compared the recent run of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) to the rise of tech stocks before the March 2000 crash. The index is up more than 10% this week, taking its 2026 gains to 65%.
SOX in 2026
The comments come as investors have flocked to AI-related stocks over the past two years, helping major US stock indexes hit repeated record highs. Semiconductor companies and mega-cap tech firms tied to AI infrastructure and software led the rally, with excitement around generative AI fueling sharp gains in valuations.
Paul Tudor Jones also drew parallels between today’s AI-fueled rally and the period leading up to the dot-com crash, but believes the bull market needs to go further. Jones told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this week that the current environment is similar to 1999 (about a year before tech stocks peaked in early 2000) and predicted the rally could continue for another year or two.
At the same time, Jones warned that the eventual correction could be dramatic if valuations continue to rise.
“Imagine the stock market going up another 40%,” Jones said. “Stock market GDP will probably be good by 300%, 350%. You just know there’s going to be some…breathtaking type of corrections.”
