New York, August 17 (IANS): Michael Burry, the “Big Short” investor who became famous for correctly predicting the epic collapse of the housing market in 2008, has bet more than $1.6 billion on a Wall Street crash, the media reported.

Burry is making his bearish bets against the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, Cnn reported citing Security Exchange Commission filings as saying.

Burry’s fund, Scion Asset Management, bought $866 million in put options (that’s the right to sell an asset at a particular price) against a fund that tracks the S&P 500 and $739 million in put options against a fund that tracks the Nasdaq 100.

He is using more than 90 per cent of his portfolio to bet on a market downturn, according to the filings.

But Burry appears to have been wavering between bullish and bearish on his stock picks this year, CNN reported.

In January, he tweeted a cryptic message to his 1.4 million followers. “Sell,” he wrote.

But by the end of March, he backtracked. “I was wrong to say sell,” he said

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 have both notched big gains so far this year. They’re up nearly 16 per cent and 38 per cent, respectively.

In the mid-2000s, Burry was famous for placing a wager against the housing market and profited handsomely from the subprime lending crisis and the collapse of numerous major financial entities in 2008, CNN reported.

The event was chronicled by Michael Lewis in his bestseller “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” and later adapted into a film where Burry was played by Christian Bale.