Investor Michael Berry, the founder of Scion Asset Management, who was immortalized in the 2015 movie “The Big Short,” unusually admitted Thursday that he was wrong to tell his followers to “sell,” Markets Insider reported.

Investor Michael BerryPhoto: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images/Profimedia

On January 31 of this year, Berry gave a one-word warning to his 1.4 million followers: “Sell.”

At the time, his message was interpreted as a warning to investors not to be misled by the stock market recovery of some technology companies, which suffered sharp declines last year.

Among the companies that spectacularly collapsed in the stock market were so-called “growth” companies, whose value in financial markets is based on expectations of further growth. Elon Musk’s Tesla was one of the most notable examples of this.

Berry, known for his generally pessimistic forecasts, admitted on Thursday that he was wrong with an almost as simple message: “I was wrong to say sell.”

He congratulated even those who ignored his warnings by circulating a Bloomberg chart showing that investors who bought when stock prices temporarily fell this year posted their biggest gains since the 1920s.

Michael Berry, misled by the strange situation in the American stock market

The new comments from the founder of Scion Asset Management came as the tech-focused Nasdaq 100 rose 20% after Wednesday’s close since Dec. 28 of last year.

Paradoxically, the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on March 10 and the shock waves it sent through the US banking sector seem to have encouraged tech investors.

Fears about systemic risks spreading to the banking system and the US economy, which is in recession, appear to have convinced technology investors that the Federal Reserve, the central bank in Washington, will soon cut interest rates, prompting stock companies to will become attractive again.

These expectations about the Fed’s next steps on key interest rates persisted even before the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which led to a strange situation in the US stock market, where investors returned to the rates that led to huge losses last year.