Michael Barry attends the New York screening of ‘The Big Short’ at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York on November 23, 2015.
Astrid Stawiarz | Getty Images
Michael Barry said Tuesday that he placed a bearish bet on . caterpillarbelieves that construction equipment manufacturers have become one of the market’s most overvalued beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence investment boom.
The well-known investor said he shorted Caterpillar stock at $1,060.98 and took a new bearish position at the same time. Nvidia, applied materials, tesla He believes the rally in AI stocks will continue to grow and is preparing for the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX).
“A caterpillar jumped out at me,” Barry wrote in a Substack post on Tuesday. “I’ve never shorted Caterpillar. It’s always given me great results on the long side.”
Caterpillar shares just finished the first half of 2026 up 86%, making the construction equipment giant one of the S&P 500’s best-performing stocks this year as investors increasingly embrace Caterpillar as a proxy for global AI infrastructure.
Caterpillar from this year to the present
Berry said Caterpillar’s stock valuation has reached a level that interests him. He shared a graph showing Caterpillar’s stock price soaring to an all-time high at the same time that the company’s price-to-sales ratio rose to its highest level in at least 30 years.
The investor, who famously predicted and profited from the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, also reiterated broader concerns about semiconductor valuations. he said this Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is trading about 65% above its 200-day moving average, a level only reached during the dot-com bubble in 2000, he said.
“The immediate cause of today’s rise is the huge spending announced by South Korea. Well, I see that as the beginning of the end,” Barry said. “It’s only a matter of time.”
