"KOSPI's Wild Swings a Harbinger of Ominous Events"... 'Big Short' Burry Warns of Institutional Speculators' Short-Term Trading
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- 2026-03-06 12:29:58
- Updated
- 2026-03-06 12:29:58
[Financial News] Michael Burry, the renowned short seller who inspired the film "The Big Short," said on May 5 (local time) that the recent extreme volatility in the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) "suggests a harbinger of ominous events."
Burry analyzes it as "short-term speculative capital from foreign institutions"
In a post on the online newsletter platform Substack that day, Burry explained, "The Korean stock market has long been shunned and is not easily accessible to retail investors outside Korea, but it has recently started to gain momentum."
He went on, "Over the past month or so, it was institutional investors that moved the KOSPI," adding, "And that very volatility is the decisive signal that momentum traders have entered the market."
In stock markets, momentum refers to the tendency of share prices to keep moving in a particular direction once a trend has formed. Momentum traders are investors who ride these price trends and engage in short-term, speculative trading.
In other words, Burry is arguing that behind the sharp swings and growing instability in the KOSPI following the armed clashes between the United States of America (U.S.), Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran lies short-term speculative capital from foreign institutional investors.
He invokes the "apocalypse" but does not spell out what crisis he foresees
In his Substack post, Burry asked, "What does it mean when institutions are day trading (buying and selling within the same day) the KOSPI?" and warned, "That is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — a sign of the end times."
However, he did not provide a detailed explanation of exactly what kind of crisis situation he was implying by referring to "one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
Burry previously predicted the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S. in advance and took short positions that bet on a decline in value, earning enormous profits. His investment moves were later dramatized in the 2015 film "The Big Short."
More recently, he has argued that there is an excessive bubble in Artificial Intelligence (AI)-related sectors and has been warning that this bubble will burst before long.
hsg@fnnews.com Han Seung-gon Reporter