The doctor is out.
Investor Michael Burry may have deleted his entire Twitter account on Tuesday, a move that comes just weeks after the famous short-seller told his followers that his tweets about GameStop Corp. and other market trends had prompted a visit from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The webpage for the @michaeljburry account that used to show Burry’s musings on the dangers of Bitcoin and the bubble around the current retail trading wave now displays a message saying, “This account doesn’t exist.”
Burry, the mercurial former hedge fund manager who shorted the housing market before the 2008 crash and was portrayed by Christian Bale in the 2015 film “The Big Short,” has become a totemic player in the Reddit Rally movement that has seen a wave of retail traders on social media and no-fee trading apps push the prices of so-called “meme stocks” like GameStop and AMC Entertainment.
Burry was early to the GameStop party, taking a sizeable position in the videogame retailer back in 2019 and pushing for changes to jumpstart the moribund company’s finances. To retail traders on social media, that has made Burry — who maintains a medical license in California and prefers to be called “Dr. Burry”– a godfather of what they see as a revolutionary short squeeze against hedge funds who have been rigging the markets.
The outspoken nature of Burry’s account was a natural fit with the outspoken crowd on Reddit, who were quick to adopt the habit of referring to him as “Dr. Burry,” and made a game of reading deeper meanings into everything from the phrasing of Burry’s tweets to the selection of books on his bookshelf in his Twitter photos.
Tuesday’s disappearance did not sit well with Burry’s fanbase on social media who were quick to speculate that Burry was forced off Twitter by the SEC after Burry earlier said the regulator had paid him a visit.
The SEC had no immediate comment Tuesday afternoon.
But while Burry has been a hero to the meme stock set, he has also been very clear that he is short Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA, 2.88% and was outspoken in recent weeks that he sees the retail trading craze as a bubble that reminds him of the mortgage crisis that made him a household name on Wall Street.
That has not dented the ardor for Burry’s iconoclastic place in the retail trading movement though.
“My cat continued to listen very intently to Dr. Burry,” posted another Reddit user, attaching an image of what appears to be her cat watching a YouTube video of burry giving a lecture. “Even if he deletes his Twitter! Meooooow!”
This article originally appeared on MarketWatch.
