Ima Short | Wall Street Memes

It’s one thing for an actor to be typecast in a movie, but it’s another thing for a real person to be typecast by a movie. It seems that poor Michael Burry is destined to always be called ‘The Big Short’s Michael Burry,’ accompanied by a photo of him at the movie’s premiere, which is apparently the only picture of him in existence.

Burry’s not helping himself, though, as he seems to have doubled down on the persona, shutting his hedge fund company to go all in on the doomsday predictions with his popular ‘Cassandra Unchained’ substack.

Since then, Burry has predicted the demise of GameStop, Nvidia, Palantir, the AI market, and basically the entire economy multiple times.

Because of this, Michael ‘Christian-Bale-in-the-Big-Short’ Burry admits in his latest Substack post that “I am now a meme for the number of times I have called a crash. I have become the boy who cried wolf.”

And sure, not all of these calls have been on the money, but here’s the thing: a stopped clock might be right twice a day, but a screaming alarm clock only has to be right once.

“Still, I got it right in 2000, got it right in 2007. Got it right in 2019, helped by Covid, and I called the meme stock crash in mid 2021. I called the bank stock run in 2023.”

So with all that in mind, let’s have a listen to Burry’s latest death knell…

“We are witnessing history. In the stock market, that is not a good thing,” Burry writes, likening current events to the “scene of the bloody car crash, minutes before it happens”.

“With what is happening in the market the last week, that I had lived this before suddenly dawned on me… The Nasdaq 100, complete reversal. … I am calling something. The market has jumped the shark.”

“Wall Street may be overstating by more than 50% the earnings at our fastest growing, most highly valued companies.”

“Absolutely non-stop AI. Nobody is talking about anything else all day.”

“Stocks are not up or down because of jobs or consumer sentiment. They are going straight up because they have been going straight up. On a two letter thesis that everyone thinks they understand. … Feeling like the last months of the 1999-2000 bubble.”

…you get the idea.

So yeah, not great news, but maybe Wall Street will get lucky for once, Burry will get unlucky, and then for the sake of the global economy, we can finally stop mentioning him in the same breath as ‘The Big Short’.

We are just a couple of weeks into the OpenAI trial, and already we’ve had Elon Musk saying that AI “Could kill us all.” Surely there can’t be any more revelations, right?

Well, turns out there’s one big mystery that needs solving, and that’s why Sam Altman was ousted from the company for just five days in November 2023, an event so notable it has its own Wikipedia page and an upcoming movie adaptation starring Andrew Garfield (no, really).

Someone who might know is the CEO of Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s largest backers. Satya Nadella, do you have any answers?

No…? Ok then, moving on.

As Nadella tells it, Microsoft was not given a heads-up regarding the coup and was hit with a 3% stock drop following the news. Nadella also says that he was only informed when he was pulled out of a meeting, then never given full “clarity” over Altman’s firing.

The Microsoft CEO claimed the reason he was given was that Sam Altman was not open and communicative with board members. Nadella didn’t think this was justified and speculated that “There may have been some jealousy… coming through.”

But there might be some truth to that weak excuse Nadella got. As OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever explained, he’d said Altman had a “consistent pattern of lying,” creating a toxic environment ill-suited to developing a safe AI.

However, Sutskever also called the firing “rushed” and was one of the many employees and investors who signed the successful petition calling for Altman’s reinstatement.

The plot thickens.

So what actually happened? And how does this affect the ongoing trial? Well, maybe we’ll never know the full details…

OR maybe we’ll find out EVERYTHING when Artificial starring Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman, Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk comes to the big screen in 2027!

Xbox, the one X-themed company not owned by Elon Musk, is in dire straits at the moment, facing declining sales made worse by several crucial business missteps.

Just this year, Microsoft Gaming’s revenue has been down 7%. Content and services: down 5%. And hardware revenue (mostly from Xbox consoles themselves) is down 33%.

But now with new CEO, Asha Sharma, at the helm, Xbox is making some rapid U-turns.

Firstly, she’s dropping development on the wildly unpopular AI gaming assistant ‘Copilot’. This tool was pitched as “your personal gaming sidekick with Xbox.” Oh, cool, I bet there were lots of things it could do, right? “With in-game assistance, get unstuck, pass roadblocks, and level-up your gameplay.” Oh nice, so it can do real-time walk-throughs that’s a cool feature, what else can it do?

“The guide you want, when you want it. Brainstorm strategies and get tips or insights with personalized coaching.” Ah, OK, so it can just do walk-throughs. Gotcha.

Sharma has also shaken up the Xbox leadership, bringing over four colleagues from her former AI division and shuffling around a number of other roles.

Last month Sharma also ended the “This is an Xbox” marketing campaign (presumably because people now know what an Xbox is), she dropped the ‘Microsoft Gaming’ branding, unveiled a new logo, and cut the price of the Xbox Game Pass.

(Just an aside on ‘This is an Xbox’. The whole campaign was designed to say that anything could be an Xbox, your phone, your TV, your laptop, basically saying that you don’t need to buy an Xbox anymore. Just an incredible self-own, guys.)

All smart changes, but will they be enough to right the sinking ship and compete with overachievers like PlayStation and Nintendo?

Good question! Let’s ask Gaming Copilot (Beta)! Hey, Copilot, will Xbox get back on track and become a successful gaming console again?

“Sure, I can offer tips… hints… anything you need.”

Ok, yeah, well, an answer to my question would be great.

“It really depends on your playstyle. If you’re looking for an AOE blast, ‘Weaver’s Bliss’ is the way to go. But if you like attacking from a distance, definitely go with ‘Amflied Rend’.”

…What? What are you talking about? Someone shut this thing down. Oh, you have? OK, great.

Did they really think they could buy eBay?

Michael Burry, the investor made famous in The Big Short, just sold his entire position on GameStop, bringing to an end one of the greatest crossover episodes of all time.

Since 2019, Burry has been involved in the GameStop saga, but after the game retailer’s CEO, Ryan Cohen, suggested they could buy eBay for $56 billion, Burry pulled out and GME’s stock plummeted 10%.

Come on guys, everyone knows you should only make your final bid in the last minute.

Burry’s retreat was announced on his Substack newsletter, ‘Cassandra Unchained,’ in which he explained that GameStop is simply going to be saddled with a lot of debt should the deal go through.

“Wall Street does indeed mistake debt for creativity, and does so constantly,” Burry wrote. “I of all people should have known.”

Burry does, however, “support the effort” to combine the platforms and capitalize on the billion-dollar collectibles market. He just doesn’t think GameStop’s financial structure can take the weight.

And hey, this might all be hypothetical anyway, as eBay will likely “reject GameStop’s offer out of hand” according to Burry.

So what you’re saying is… so you’re saying that this deal is already… dead and Burry-ed?

Alright, alright, I’ll let myself out…

Jimmy-boy Cramer is at it again with his nefarious predictions, and this time he’s turning on AI.

“Lately, we’ve been seeing parabolic moves all over the market,” said our modern prophet, “Those are worrisome.”

He’s specifically talking about the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (aka SOX), which has been up 18 times in a row, jumping 46% in total. The best month in the index’s history, second only to February 2000…

…Does that date sound familiar by any chance?

Well, it does to Jim Cramer, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, who are all warning of a bubble-burst similar to the dot-com crash.

But when was Jim ‘Reverse’ Cramer ever right?

“I don’t want to overreact,” he said, overreacting. “But we’ve been taking some action around the edges.”

He’s trimming some AI positions in his Charitable Trust, although he does still recommend Arm Holdings to people, but that’s because he has shares in Arm Holdings, wait, what?

“Trim some winners…don’t chase the parabolic stuff…and let’s wait to see if we have a more benign pullback from these wild past few weeks.”

‘What goes up must come down,’ basically, and I guess you don’t need to be a prophet to work that one out.

People are very dumb.

Despite only seeing links to this through Instagram, Facebook and X, it looks like, yeah, this is true as navigating through ‘pay.gov’ you eventually come to a page where you can donate ‘Gifts to Reduce the Public Debt’ via “Bank account (ACH), PayPal account, Venmo account, Debit or credit card.”

I mean, why would they say no to free money?

With the US national debt sitting pretty at $39,074,637,550,015 dollars in money, it’s impossible for an average American to even make a dent in that number. Even if you Venmo’d them a million dollars every day it would still take millions of years to pay off the debt.

ON TOP OF THAT, the money is owed to the public anyway. If you willing pay this, you’re paying twice.

Despite that, it hasn’t stopped people from contributing. According to a Grok AI summary, “lifetime totals reach about $67 million.”

People are very dumb.

Do bare in mind though that that’s a lifetime total and this scheme has been running since 1961. It’s only the Venmo/Paypal option that’s new when it was added in 2025.

Wait, so none of this is news? Why the hell am I even reporting on this?

Ngl, I just learned what a capex is…

Tesla’s stock just fell a massive 2.4% as Elon Musk pours more money into spending on AI, robots and chips to snack on when he gets peckish, although shares were back up 4% after the bell so what we even talking about here?

As Elon explained, “We are going to be substantially increasing our investment in the future. You should expect to see very significant increase in capital expenditures that are I think well justified for a substantially increased future revenue stream. Tesla is not alone in this.”

Because that’s the thing, every tech company is building out there data centers right now and the Tesla investors (tesltors if you will) banked on Musk. They voted for him to take the company in the direction of more AI and more robotics. What did they think that wouldn’t cost a bit of money?

And when I say a bit more I do mean more than double but shush shhhh.

So yeah, Elon is all in AI and robots if that wasn’t perfectly clear now.

Where does that leave the EV manufacturing portion of the company? Well, who knows and honestly who cares.

Maybe they’ll combine products and Elon can finally achieve the dream of creating a Cybertruck that’s also actually a Transformer.

…get a job at the White House.

The Big Guy Upstairs: Donald Trump has just been accused of insider trading by the BBC and everyone just let out a collective, “Ya, you think?”

Just to make the point clear we’ve already covered this here:

One Gambler Made $436,000 On Maduro Capture And It’s Looking Like They Knew Something We Didn’t

And here:

This Billion Dollar Bet On Oil Prices Falling Was Placed Just Hours Before Trump’s Ceasefire

And there are numerous other examples of trading spiking just before a big government announcement and every time it looks super shady.

The BBC has collated the top five examples in this handy article but just to run you through it here we’ve got:

March 9 when oil futures spiked just 45 minutes before Trump said that the conflict was “very complete, pretty much.”

March 23 when oil trades jumped minutes before Trump posted about peace talks.

April 9 last year when traders bet on the stock market going up just 18 minutes before Trump paused tariffs and lo and below, the stock market went up.

And then there’s the Maduro capture (we mentioned that) and the February 28 Iran strikes.

I’M JUST SAYING IT’S SUSPICIOUS GUYS.

I mean this is literally illegal but no one has been prosecuted since it was made illegal for lawmakers in 2012. It’s very likely nothing will happen here again.

In the largest DeFi exploit of the year (so far), hackers drained nearly $300 million from the staking platform Kelp DAO.

Simply put, the hackers tricked LayerZero’s bridge designed for blockchains to communicate with each other into believing it had received a valid instruction from another network and to release 116,500 rsETH (restaked Ether and 18% of supply) worth around $293 million.

Fine, that’s just Kelp that was hit, right?

Well, no.

The problem is that rsETH is such a popular staking token, so interwoven with the Ether market and the DeFi market as a whole that the broader ramifications are massive.

For example, Aave, the largest DeFi lending platform froze all rsETH markets to retain the damage, Lido paused deposits and reportedly rsETH was “just three minutes away from losing an additional $100 million,” Meir Dolev, the Cyvers Chief Technology Officer.

But we’re also seeing withdrawals in Solana and other cryptids, sorry, cryptos (can never get the verb ending right). Morpho, Sky and JupLend are all down.

Also there’s whatever this means: “The KelpDAO exploit (~$290M, is NOT a LayerZero protocol bug. It’s a configuration issue and a case study every project with a cross-chain token needs to look at today,” one technical breakdown by cryptogoblin (?) read.

So what, everything’s at risk, or what?

Well, despite what I implied in my title, that’s hopefully the end of this specific exploit, but it’s more the knockon effect. Combined with the massive $285 million Drift attack in April, morale in crypto is at an all time low, with some even saying this is the end of DeFi although.

Who knows the ramifications of this particular hit, but right now, I’m sorry, things aren’t looking so great in the world of crypto, bro.

This story is genuinely insane.

SO let me set the scene:

Changham Kim (AKA Kim Chang-han) is the CEO of a South Korean video game publisher called Krafton. Krafton has put out numerous titles, but their flagship game is PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). Back in 2021, Krafton bought Unknown Worlds Entertainment, the developer behind the insanely successful Subnautica, for $500 million.

Last year the team were ramping up development on the hotly anticipated Subnautica 2 when internal projections predicted the game would hit the needed targets to trigger a massive $250 million earnout for the dev team (as agreed when they first bought the company).

Kim freaked out and turned to his lawyers, seeking to get out of the deal. His lawyers responded saying there was nothing he could do and in fact trying to back out or firing the devs would obviously look bad and might even be illegal.

But Kim ignored them and turned to everyone’s favorite sycophant: ChatGPT.

OpenAI’s LLM pushed back at first but when pressed, suggested Kim form “an internal taskforce, dubbed Project X.”

Following ChatGPT’s advice, Kim locked out the devs from their own Steam page in an effort to delay the game’s release.

Then Kim went full ham and just straight up fired the dev team without cause.

Obviously this triggered a lawsuit in which all of Kim’s ChatGPT logs came out and a Delaware court ruled that the dev team be reinstated and Krafton still has to pay the $250 million earnout.

Oops.

So if there’s a moral to this story it’s maaaayybe don’t lean on ChatGPT for legal advice, especially with a quarter of a trillion and a lawsuit on the line.

It’s unclear though if Changham has learned his lesson as, of the time of writing, it seems that Kim is somehow still the CEO of Krafton… and Subnautica 2 is still delayed.

ChatGPT could not be reached for comment.

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So with all that in mind, let’s have a listen to Burry’s latest death knell…

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