Legendary investor Michael Burry has compared Silicon Valley Bank to Enron, an energy firm that collapsed in the early 2000s.
Notably, SVB Financial's stock plunged by 60% on Thursday after its parent company said that it would sell more shares to bridge the roughly $1.8bn in losses it had incurred from a $21 billion sale of its bond portfolio.
Burry likened this situation to Enron. The latter filed for bankruptcy after the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index nosediving by 78% in just two years.
Over the past year, SVB's bond portfolio has been heavily weighed down by higher interest rates. Driven by the Fed's tight monetary policy, the yield on two-year US Treasury notes has topped 5% this week. Thus, bond prices are falling, while yields are up.
SVB Financial is also coming under pressure from its business model of lending to venture capital and private tech firms, which often cash in their equity stakes through initial public offerings.
The year 2022 was rather grim for the company. Its securities traded downwards. Enthusiasm for public listings waned, which led to a decline in SVB Financial's deposits.
By the way, Burry has repeatedly noted that investors should be ready for a dizzying fall in stock prices.
