“The Big Short” investor Michael Burry had a bet against tech giant Apple in the first quarter, a regulatory filing showed. Burry, one of the first investors to call and profit from the subprime mortgage crisis, owned 2,060 put contracts of Apple at the end of the first quarter, according to the filing. Each options contract is tied to 100 shares of stock, so Burry’s bet was tied to 206,000 shares of Apple stock, which had a notional value of $36 million at the end of March. A put options contract gives the owner the right to sell a security at certain time for a certain price and so it increases in value if the stock declines below the so-called strike price. If Burry held these put options through the current quarter, the bet would be profitable as Apple has dropped 15% in the second quarter so far. To be sure, Burry is a very active trader and he could have exited this position by now. The investor had previously owned put options against Tesla and he told CNBC that it was “just a trade.” Burry didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Other than the Apple bet, the founder of Scion Asset Management added a slew of long positions in the first quarter across different sectors, including Booking Holdings, Alphabet , Cigna , energy name Ovintiv and Nexstar Media Group.
