Michael Burry is warning that an unusually long period of calm in the U.S. stock market could be another sign that investors are underestimating the risk of a sharp reversal, pointing to a technical indicator that has reached an extreme not seen in at least three decades.
Burry, the investor made famous by “The Big Short,” highlighted research from BTIG technical strategist Jonathan Krinsky showing that Wednesday marked the 182nd consecutive trading session without a day when at least 80% of New York Stock Exchange trading volume declined.
According to Krinsky, the streak is the longest in at least 30 years, exceeding the previous records by almost 50 trading sessions.
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Burry acknowledged that the indicator alone could be easy for investors to dismiss, but argued that it fits with broader concerns he has raised about the sustainability of the current market cycle.
“That sort of technical factor on its own is easy to ignore,” Burry wrote in a Substack post Wednesday. “However, I have been writing about fundamental reasons for something like this to happen since November of 2025.”
The indicator tracks the breadth of selling across the NYSE. An 80% downside-volume session occurs when at least 80% of trading volume is concentrated in stocks that decline. Such sessions are often associated with periods of broad-based market stress because selling is occurring across a large portion of the market rather than being concentrated in a handful of stocks.
The absence of such a session for 182 consecutive trading days indicates an unusually sustained period without a broad, market-wide selling event.
Krinsky said the streak would reach another milestone if it continues through the end of the year. The U.S. stock market would record its first calendar year in at least three decades without an 80%-or-more downside-volume session.
Every calendar year during the past 30 years has recorded at least five such sessions, according to Krinsky’s research.
For Burry, the unusual market behavior adds to a broader thesis that the current rally may be masking risks that could take considerable time to emerge.
The investor has become one of Wall Street’s most prominent skeptics of the artificial intelligence boom. He has questioned whether the enormous spending on AI infrastructure and technology can ultimately be supported by sufficient demand and returns, while taking positions against some major beneficiaries of the AI investment cycle.
His latest warning is also less about predicting an immediate market collapse than about the difficulty of timing major market cycles.
Burry said significant market shifts can take months or years to develop, creating particular risks for investors who use borrowed money to maintain positions while waiting for a predicted reversal.
“If something revolutionary is going to happen, it will happen,” Burry wrote. “And it will play out over a long enough time period for everyone to be right and for almost everyone to go bankrupt.”
The warning distinguishes between being correct about a market thesis and being able to profit from it. An investor can correctly anticipate a downturn but still suffer substantial losses if the market continues rising for an extended period and leveraged positions become too costly to maintain.
Burry therefore urged investors to avoid leverage while waiting for the market cycle to unfold.
“The trick is to avoid stepping into someone else’s folly along the way,” he wrote. “Avoid the leverage, and one is more likely to avoid the folly.”
His comments come as investors continue to assess whether the strength of U.S. equities can be sustained amid high valuations, heavy investment in AI and strong concentration in technology stocks.
The record absence of broad-based selling does not, by itself, establish that a market decline is imminent. A long streak without an 80% downside-volume session can describe market conditions without identifying when or whether a major reversal will occur.
That uncertainty is central to Burry’s warning. His argument is not that the market must fall immediately, but that investors can face serious risks when they use leverage to anticipate a reversal whose timing remains unknown.
For investors following Burry’s increasingly bearish view, the message is therefore less a call to predict the exact moment of a downturn than a warning about positioning for one. A market can remain unusually calm for longer than expected, and the cost of maintaining a bearish or leveraged position can accumulate well before the underlying thesis is proven right.
The 182-session streak gives Burry another data point for his argument that the market’s apparent stability may be masking vulnerabilities. However, it is uncertain if it ultimately precedes the reversal he expects.