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Buffett & Burry Call It Quits As The Market Falls | The Simple Side
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thesimpleside.substack.com
Thanks to Constant Contact for sponsoring today’s article!
Reminders
- Disclosure is in the email footer
- You can copy trade our potfolios here
- You can get our daily news updates here
- You can see our stock research reports here
- Not all of these stocks make it into our portfolios
Market Wisdom
Michael Burry just disclosed that he would be shutting down his fund Scion Asset Management.
Sometimes, we see bubbles. Sometimes, there is something to do about it. Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play.— Michael Burry (October 31, 2025)
This quote is actually in reference to WarGames — a 1983 movie where a super computer calculates that the only way to win a nuclear war is by not starting one in the first place.
Quite a timely reference since the current race is to generate the most power (through nuclear) to power AI… That is all well and good (and nostalgic), but there are some much much more meaningful references in this quote as well.
Sometimes, we see bubbles.
This part of the quote references two main things:
* The housing market bubble in 2008
* The current AI bubble that Burry has bet against.
Sometimes, there is something to do about it.
This part of the quote of course referencing that in 2008 there was something to do about the bubble (bet against it). What about the current bubble? Well, that leads into the final part of the quote:
Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play.
Where he says that even though he believes that the current “bubble” is real, there isn’t anything he believes he can do about it. It is clear to Burry that there is a bubble but he isn’t sure how or when it will burst. That means there is nothing left to do but not play.
Now, Burry did mention that on Nov. 25th he would be making an announcement or “moving on to better things,” so we will have to pay attention to what he gets himself into next.
Weekly Roundup
Stocks ripped early and faded late…
S&P 500: -.7%Dow: +0.11%Nasdaq: -0.23%
The 10-year hovered near 4.1%, the VIX pushed toward 20, oil stayed around $60, gold eased, and bitcoin slid about 10% after breaking below $100K.
Returns this week were brought to you by AI whiplash, shutdown relief turning into rate-cut doubt, and a market that still lives and dies by a handful of mega caps.
40% — that is how much of the S&P 500 is driven by the top 10 tickers (I say tickers because Google is in there twice).
That’s right, 2% of the companies in S&P 500 drive 40% of the returns… yikes. The good news for us is that we aren’t invested in the SPY, nor are we heavily invested in the top 10 stocks as a whole. The bad news is that when the S&P 500 drops people FOMO sell and let the fear guide them and it ends up causing issues for all stocks in or out of the S&P.
We at The Simple Side have been expecting this sort of drop for a while now which is why we have been riding with a 50% cash portfolio.
Early strength this week came on hopes Congress would wrap the shutdown and on fresh AI deals: a large OpenAI–AWS capacity pact, strong Palantir numbers, and Microsoft winning U.S. licenses to ship tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs to the UAE. Then the mood flipped — SoftBank dumped its Nvidia stake, CoreWeave flagged a data-center delay after touting a giant backlog, and AI leaders sold off midweek as investors questioned lofty multiples.
AMD sketched bigger long-term AI targets, Anthropic laid out a massive U.S. build-out, and Microsoft formed a “superintelligence” group, but the bullish headlines couldn’t offset the valuation nerves.
Fed rhetoric remained split and key October reports may never be fully published because of the data blackout, leaving rate-cut odds for December wobbling around a coin-flip.
Speaking of which, Polymarket is a great resource to use when it comes to watching the rate cuts and the effect that the cuts have on the economy as a whole.
Here you can see the current rate cut odds over the past 3 months. You may notice that over the past few weeks, the rate cut odds have started dropping, and what have we seen in the markets? The same thing, a dropping market.
Current odd of a 25bps rate cut have dropped below 50% for the first time ever and right now that matters more than anything.
Investors are betting big on the low rate environment helping companies grow quicker (justifying valuations sooner). If that happens, then the markets are safe, if not, then we are heavily overvaluing a majority of the market right now.
Of course, there are ways to use these odds to help limit portfolio losses in the case that there is no rate cut, but we will get into that in another article.
Consumer confidence remains soft right now, and the current sentiment around housing got weird: a floated 50-year mortgage drew pushback, and regulators mused about “portable” or assumable loans instead.
Pfizer won the Metsera bidding war (obesity pipeline). Visa and Mastercard advanced a settlement that would trim interchange fees modestly and expand routing options (likely 2026–27). Merck agreed to buy Cidara for its long-acting flu program. Berkshire filled the last “Buffett-Driven report — adding Alphabet while trimming Apple (Greg Abel reaffirmed as successor). Walmart announced a CEO transition for Feb. 1 and Paramount Skydance laid out deeper cost cuts and price hikes while the sale of Warner Bros. Discovery drew suitor chatter.
Target cut grocery prices into the holidays while early Black Friday deals hit Apple gear and more. Starbucks’ “Bearista” merch mania met a Red Cup Day strike; the company said sales still set records. Wendy’s plans to close hundreds of weaker stores to refocus.
I think this is a sign that consumer spending is starting to weaken. Yes Starbucks may have set a record, but everywhere else seems to be slowing down a bit.
Some fun stuff
The U.S. Mint made their last penny… (rounding to the nearest nickel becomes standard for cash), IRS lifted 2026 retirement contribution caps, and an infant-formula recall widened after botulism cases. Crypto spent the week bleeding as ETF outflows and risk-off tone weighed.
Stock Research
Our stock research is meant to be a tool for subscribers that allows them to read new ideas that we see, but we aren’t sacrificing portfolio positions to invest in. These research articles should be used to find potential new investments for your portfolio.
We are keeping track of everything using the thesimpleside.news/stock-research website, and you can follow along there as well.
Recent Articles
The two stocks we posted research about this week were NextEra Energy (NEE) and Western Digital (WDC) — both are strongly connected with the current AI stock bull market and have the potential to generate some serious returns if the market stays green. They both generate cash flow, have income hitting the bottom line and they both have the ability to capitalize on the AI arms race.
Now, alongside these research articles, I am also tracking stocks I call “Berkshire Buy”, which I think are companies that the legendary Warren Buffett and his company Berkshire Hathaway might buy.
Not all of these companies make it into my personal portfolios, but a few have, like OXY, NSSC, and QLYS.
Portfolio Information
Overextended & Oversold Positions
You can copy trade the portoflios by clicking here!
These represent the 3-month average return of all investors who copy my portfolios.
That means these will differ from the portfolios total returns since inception because everyone has different overall price averages, different DCA values and amounts, but these returns take into account all of that.
Remember, that means that the Autopilot app won’t match 1:1 with your returns, but will show The Simple Side shareholder average.
Free subscribers get direct access to all of these portfolios & real-time updates by joining paid here. Or you can directly copy trade by going here: Autopilot.
Behind The Paywall
- Portfolio Weekly Returns
- Portfolio Holdings
- Portfolio Changes, Updates, New Investments
- Weekly Picks
- M&A Stock Picks
- Top Investment Stock Picks
Portfolio Returns, Holdings & Updates
View all episodes
By The Simple SideThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thesimpleside.substack.com
Thanks to Constant Contact for sponsoring today’s article!
Reminders
- Disclosure is in the email footer
- You can copy trade our potfolios here
- You can get our daily news updates here
- You can see our stock research reports here
- Not all of these stocks make it into our portfolios
Market Wisdom
Michael Burry just disclosed that he would be shutting down his fund Scion Asset Management.
Sometimes, we see bubbles. Sometimes, there is something to do about it. Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play.— Michael Burry (October 31, 2025)
This quote is actually in reference to WarGames — a 1983 movie where a super computer calculates that the only way to win a nuclear war is by not starting one in the first place.
Quite a timely reference since the current race is to generate the most power (through nuclear) to power AI… That is all well and good (and nostalgic), but there are some much much more meaningful references in this quote as well.
Sometimes, we see bubbles.
This part of the quote references two main things:
* The housing market bubble in 2008
* The current AI bubble that Burry has bet against.
Sometimes, there is something to do about it.
This part of the quote of course referencing that in 2008 there was something to do about the bubble (bet against it). What about the current bubble? Well, that leads into the final part of the quote:
Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play.
Where he says that even though he believes that the current “bubble” is real, there isn’t anything he believes he can do about it. It is clear to Burry that there is a bubble but he isn’t sure how or when it will burst. That means there is nothing left to do but not play.
Now, Burry did mention that on Nov. 25th he would be making an announcement or “moving on to better things,” so we will have to pay attention to what he gets himself into next.
Weekly Roundup
Stocks ripped early and faded late…
S&P 500: -.7%Dow: +0.11%Nasdaq: -0.23%
The 10-year hovered near 4.1%, the VIX pushed toward 20, oil stayed around $60, gold eased, and bitcoin slid about 10% after breaking below $100K.
Returns this week were brought to you by AI whiplash, shutdown relief turning into rate-cut doubt, and a market that still lives and dies by a handful of mega caps.
40% — that is how much of the S&P 500 is driven by the top 10 tickers (I say tickers because Google is in there twice).
That’s right, 2% of the companies in S&P 500 drive 40% of the returns… yikes. The good news for us is that we aren’t invested in the SPY, nor are we heavily invested in the top 10 stocks as a whole. The bad news is that when the S&P 500 drops people FOMO sell and let the fear guide them and it ends up causing issues for all stocks in or out of the S&P.
We at The Simple Side have been expecting this sort of drop for a while now which is why we have been riding with a 50% cash portfolio.
Early strength this week came on hopes Congress would wrap the shutdown and on fresh AI deals: a large OpenAI–AWS capacity pact, strong Palantir numbers, and Microsoft winning U.S. licenses to ship tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs to the UAE. Then the mood flipped — SoftBank dumped its Nvidia stake, CoreWeave flagged a data-center delay after touting a giant backlog, and AI leaders sold off midweek as investors questioned lofty multiples.
AMD sketched bigger long-term AI targets, Anthropic laid out a massive U.S. build-out, and Microsoft formed a “superintelligence” group, but the bullish headlines couldn’t offset the valuation nerves.
Fed rhetoric remained split and key October reports may never be fully published because of the data blackout, leaving rate-cut odds for December wobbling around a coin-flip.
Speaking of which, Polymarket is a great resource to use when it comes to watching the rate cuts and the effect that the cuts have on the economy as a whole.
Here you can see the current rate cut odds over the past 3 months. You may notice that over the past few weeks, the rate cut odds have started dropping, and what have we seen in the markets? The same thing, a dropping market.
Current odd of a 25bps rate cut have dropped below 50% for the first time ever and right now that matters more than anything.
Investors are betting big on the low rate environment helping companies grow quicker (justifying valuations sooner). If that happens, then the markets are safe, if not, then we are heavily overvaluing a majority of the market right now.
Of course, there are ways to use these odds to help limit portfolio losses in the case that there is no rate cut, but we will get into that in another article.
Consumer confidence remains soft right now, and the current sentiment around housing got weird: a floated 50-year mortgage drew pushback, and regulators mused about “portable” or assumable loans instead.
Pfizer won the Metsera bidding war (obesity pipeline). Visa and Mastercard advanced a settlement that would trim interchange fees modestly and expand routing options (likely 2026–27). Merck agreed to buy Cidara for its long-acting flu program. Berkshire filled the last “Buffett-Driven report — adding Alphabet while trimming Apple (Greg Abel reaffirmed as successor). Walmart announced a CEO transition for Feb. 1 and Paramount Skydance laid out deeper cost cuts and price hikes while the sale of Warner Bros. Discovery drew suitor chatter.
Target cut grocery prices into the holidays while early Black Friday deals hit Apple gear and more. Starbucks’ “Bearista” merch mania met a Red Cup Day strike; the company said sales still set records. Wendy’s plans to close hundreds of weaker stores to refocus.
I think this is a sign that consumer spending is starting to weaken. Yes Starbucks may have set a record, but everywhere else seems to be slowing down a bit.
Some fun stuff
The U.S. Mint made their last penny… (rounding to the nearest nickel becomes standard for cash), IRS lifted 2026 retirement contribution caps, and an infant-formula recall widened after botulism cases. Crypto spent the week bleeding as ETF outflows and risk-off tone weighed.
Stock Research
Our stock research is meant to be a tool for subscribers that allows them to read new ideas that we see, but we aren’t sacrificing portfolio positions to invest in. These research articles should be used to find potential new investments for your portfolio.
We are keeping track of everything using the thesimpleside.news/stock-research website, and you can follow along there as well.
Recent Articles
The two stocks we posted research about this week were NextEra Energy (NEE) and Western Digital (WDC) — both are strongly connected with the current AI stock bull market and have the potential to generate some serious returns if the market stays green. They both generate cash flow, have income hitting the bottom line and they both have the ability to capitalize on the AI arms race.
Now, alongside these research articles, I am also tracking stocks I call “Berkshire Buy”, which I think are companies that the legendary Warren Buffett and his company Berkshire Hathaway might buy.
Not all of these companies make it into my personal portfolios, but a few have, like OXY, NSSC, and QLYS.
Portfolio Information
Overextended & Oversold Positions
You can copy trade the portoflios by clicking here!
These represent the 3-month average return of all investors who copy my portfolios.
That means these will differ from the portfolios total returns since inception because everyone has different overall price averages, different DCA values and amounts, but these returns take into account all of that.
Remember, that means that the Autopilot app won’t match 1:1 with your returns, but will show The Simple Side shareholder average.
Free subscribers get direct access to all of these portfolios & real-time updates by joining paid here. Or you can directly copy trade by going here: Autopilot.
Behind The Paywall
- Portfolio Weekly Returns
- Portfolio Holdings
- Portfolio Changes, Updates, New Investments
- Weekly Picks
- M&A Stock Picks
- Top Investment Stock Picks
Portfolio Returns, Holdings & Updates