Michael Burry, a famous Wall Street investor in the United States who accurately predicted the 2008 global financial crisis and made massive revenue, recently warned that the sharp swings in the KOSPI are "due to short-term trading by institutional investors" and are a "sign of the end times" for stock investing. Burry, the real-life model for the film "The Big Short," stopped running a hedge fund and now works as a global investment expert.
On the 5th (local time), Burry wrote on an online newsletter platform that recent sharp swings in the KOSPI have been heavily influenced by speculative transactions by institutional investors. He wrote, "Behind the increased volatility in the KOSPI over the past month is institutional investors' 'short-term trading,' and this is 'one horse of the apocalypse'—a sign of the end times."
"One horse of the apocalypse" is a phrase from Revelation 6's "four horses of the apocalypse," meaning a sign of calamity or an ominous portent.
Investors interpreted Burry's comments as forecasting the end of the bull market that has persisted. Since last year, global stock markets have been strong on expectations for growth in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, and Korea's market, in particular, has surged. Burry views the widening index swings driven by institutional investors' short-term trading as the "late stage of the bull market."
He said, "Korea's stock market has been a market that's hard to access and has been shunned for years, but it recently gained (upward) momentum," adding, "Over the past month or so, it was institutional investors that pushed up the KOSPI."
After the new administration took office last year, the KOSPI surged, breaking through 4,000 points for the first time ever, then 5,000 and 6,000 this year in succession. The KOSPI has become known recently as the world's best-performing stock index. But after war broke out between the United States and Iran, it plunged for two straight days and then soared within three days, staging an extreme "roller-coaster market."
Burry has maintained a pessimistic view, likening stock gains from the AI boom to the "dot-com bubble." Late last year, he also said "Nvidia is overvalued" and "AI is in a state of oversupply," noting that the current situation shows "signs of a bubble."