(Bloomberg) — Michael Burry, whose bullish stance on GameStop Corp. helped lay the foundations for the retail-investor frenzy, said Friday that he had received a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission as a part of an investigation involving the company.
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“With all that’s going on in the world….,” Burry wrote in a tweet, attaching a copy of the SEC letter. Burry, 50, didn’t reply to phone and email messages requesting that he elaborate on the tweet, which appears to have been deleted. The SEC didn’t immediately respond to an email.
Burry, the head of Scion Asset Management who rose to prominence after his winning wager against mortgages ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, took a bullish stance on GameStop in 2019. That helped spur the epic surge in the video-game retailer’s shares during the meme-stock frenzy early this year. In January, he said the rally had gotten out of hand, calling it “unnatural, insane, and dangerous.”
Read More: Michael Burry Calls GameStop Rally ‘Unnatural, Insane’
That volatility, which also involved shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and several other stocks, sparked congressional hearings and SEC scrutiny of practices such as payment for order flow.
In May, GameStop said it received a voluntary request from the regulator asking for information tied to the trading of its securities and the shares of other companies, according to a filing. SEC Chair Gary Gensler said earlier this month that the agency was “pretty close” to releasing a highly anticipated report analyzing the share moves.
Burry’s firm reported owning a 2.4% stake in GameStop as of Sept. 30, 2020.
(Updates with meme-stock frenzy in third paragraph, Gensler in fifth.)
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