Michael Burry Shorts Caterpillar at $1,060.98, Adds Bearish Positions in Nvidia, Tesla, and Semiconductors

Burry Goes Short on CAT After 86% Run

Michael Burry, the investor who predicted the 2008 subprime collapse, disclosed Tuesday that he has shorted Caterpillar shares at $1,060.98 per share. He made the announcement in a Substack post.

Caterpillar finished the first half of 2026 up 86%, making it one of the S&P 500's best-performing stocks. Investors had been buying it as a leveraged bet on global AI infrastructure spending. The logic was that building data centers requires the kind of heavy equipment Caterpillar makes.

Burry is betting that logic has been stretched too far.

"Caterpillar jumped out at me," he wrote. "I have never shorted Caterpillar. It has always done great for me on the long side in the past."

The Valuation Case

Burry's argument is straightforward: the price has run past any reasonable reading of the fundamentals. He published a chart showing Caterpillar's price-to-sales ratio has climbed to its highest level in at least 30 years, coinciding with the stock hitting all-time highs. Price-to-sales is a blunt instrument, but at multi-decade extremes it tends to mean one thing: a lot of future growth is already priced in.

He also flagged the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which he said is trading roughly 65% above its 200-day moving average. According to Burry, that spread has occurred only once before in the past three decades, during the dot-com bubble of 2000.

He paired the Caterpillar short with new bearish positions in Nvidia, Applied Materials, Tesla, and the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX). The cluster of positions suggests Burry isn't making a narrow call on one company. He's making a broader bet that the AI-driven rally across infrastructure and semiconductor names is overextended.

The Catalyst That Worried Him

Burry pointed to a specific near-term trigger. "The proximate cause of today's rally is big spending announced out of Korea," he wrote. "Well, I see that as the beginning of the end. It is only a matter of time now."

He didn't identify the Korean announcement by company or program, but his read is that a headline-driven surge built on a single spending announcement is a sign of exhaustion, not strength.

The Bull Case

The strongest argument against Burry is real. Caterpillar's revenue exposure to data center construction and energy infrastructure is direct and growing. Hyperscaler capital expenditure from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and others has not slowed materially through mid-2026, and the physical buildout of AI compute requires excavation, grading, and materials-handling equipment at scale. Bulls would argue the price-to-sales expansion reflects a genuine re-rating of Caterpillar's long-term addressable market, not irrational exuberance.

Burry has also been early—or wrong—on previous macro calls. He held bearish positions during rallies that continued for months before reversing, and shorting a stock that has already run 86% in a year carries asymmetric risk. The stock can always go higher before it goes lower.

The Record

Burry built his reputation on one of the most celebrated short calls in financial history, but that doesn't make him automatically right here. What he has done is put a specific, documented number on his conviction: $1,060.98. That's a trade with a public entry price.

The comparison to the dot-com bubble carries weight as a data point. Burry noted that the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index's current deviation of roughly 65% above its 200-day moving average was only previously reached during the dot-com bubble in 2000.

Whether the current setup rhymes with 2000 or is genuinely different because of real, sustained AI infrastructure demand is the central unresolved question. Burry has his answer. The market, as of the close of June 2026, disagrees with him.