It's the best day for chipmakers since 2025. Burry is shorting them again.
Amid a rebound in semiconductor stocks, an investor from "Short Game" added to his portfolio of short positions
Despite the rebound, July could be the worst month on the stock market for semiconductor manufacturers since 2008 / Photo: Shutterstock.com
Semiconductor manufacturers had their best day on the stock market since April 2025, according to Bloomberg. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) rose 8.2% on July 30.
Shares of SanDisk, a manufacturer of data storage devices, soared 26%. Shares of Micron Technology, a manufacturer of memory chips, rose 18%. Shares of data storage manufacturers Western Digital and Seagate Technology also posted double-digit gains—15% and 11%, respectively.
Despite today's rebound, semiconductor stocks are on track to end the month with their biggest losses since 2008, according to Bloomberg. Since the beginning of July, the SOX index has fallen by nearly 21%.
What People Are Saying in the Market
Gil Luria, managing director at D.A. Davidson, believes that Microsoft’s “responsible approach” to capital expenditures was the main driver behind the sector’s rebound. The company announced yesterday that it expects positive free cash flow in the new fiscal year. This helped the market take a more relaxed view of the investment cycle in the AI sector, Luria told MarketWatch. The acceleration in Microsoft’s cloud revenue growth refutes “the theory that spending on artificial intelligence undermines revenue growth and cash flow and is therefore unsustainable,” added Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson.
Another piece of good news for investors is that hedge funds and other large investors have most likely have finished selling off shares in tech companies, chipmakers, and memory technology developers—which they had been offloading to reduce their debt burden—wrote JPMorgan analyst Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou in a note reviewed by CNBC. According to the analyst, the rise in leverage among equity-focused hedge funds observed in April and May has now been almost completely offset, which should ease pressure on stock prices.
Nevertheless, everyone believes in the sustainability of the current rally. Investor Michael Burry, who served as the inspiration for the protagonist in “The Big Short,” reported on his blog Cassandra Unchained on July 30 that he had added short positions in the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX), which focuses on the U.S. semiconductor sector, as well as short positions in Micron and put options on Nvidia shares (put options allow investors to profit when prices fall).
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
