Burry to Treasury: cancel the Fannie/Freddie preferred stock, please

On June 19 at 5:48 p.m. ET, Michael Burry (founder and portfolio manager of Scion Asset Management, best known for his 2005–2008 short on subprime mortgage securities) posted six words on X — repeated six times — and then one more:

The post drew 148,000 views over the Juneteenth long weekend — more than double the engagement of his second tweet the same evening. That second tweet, posted one minute earlier at 5:47 p.m. ET, was a four-word rebuttal to Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok's claim that all S&P 500 gains since January had come from AI and energy stocks alone. 2

Burry's reply — "Did not feel like that at all." — drew 68,000 views and referenced the Apollo Daily Spark analysis. 3 Equal-weight S&P 500 ETF (RSP) was up 9.67% year-to-date as of June 10, versus 8.38% for the cap-weighted SPY — consistent with Burry's read that broader market participation was real. 4

Burry is not known for understatement on either front, and the SPS repetition is the sharper signal of the two: the Senior Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements (SPSs) are the single unresolved legal instrument blocking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from leaving government conservatorship, and he has run out of patience.

The SPS is the legal architecture the U.S. Treasury constructed during the 2008 financial crisis to take Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FMCC) into conservatorship. Under the agreement, Treasury injected capital into both companies in exchange for senior preferred stock representing 79.9% of each entity — plus warrants to acquire that stake at effectively zero cost. 5

The warrants are the investor community's sharpest anxiety. If Treasury exercises them — converting its paper claim into actual shares — the dilution to existing common shareholders would be massive, wiping out most of the value Burry and others are sitting on. Those warrants have a stated expiration of September 2028, which means the clock is now running.

Treasury has already been repaid many times over. Figures widely cited in the investor community put the cumulative U.S. government dividend receipts from Fannie and Freddie since 2008 at roughly $301 billion — well above the original bailout total, though that figure has not been independently verified against official Treasury disclosures. 1 The SPS and the warrants remain on the books regardless.

Three days before the tweet, BTIG analyst Doug Harter downgraded both FNMA and FMCC from Buy to Neutral. 6 The stated reason: capital standards and "the government's preferred stake remain unresolved." Harter said he expected volatility around conservatorship-exit expectations to persist, with no visible timeline.

Both stocks trade over the counter at approximately $10.73 (FNMA) and $10.14 (FMCC). 5

The privatization effort has lost its operational champion. In early June, CNN reported that FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Agency) Director Bill Pulte had been simultaneously appointed acting Director of National Intelligence — while keeping the FHFA role. 5 TD Cowen policy analyst Jaret Seiberg wrote: "It already was going to be operationally and politically difficult to end the conservatorships. We do not see how one could surmount those obstacles if the FHFA director is devoting most of his time to national security issues." 5 Wharton professor Susan Wachter, who tracks housing finance policy, put it more flatly: "I did see steps moving forward, but it appears to me that those efforts have stalled." 5

President Trump, when asked on Air Force One whether a Fannie/Freddie IPO was coming, said he didn't rule it out but added: "It's not a rush." 5

The community replies to Burry's tweet converged quickly on the specific actions shareholders want. User @T_Castelluccio wrote: "1) SPS amendment 2) road map to exit — without those two things there is no value for treasury or shareholders." 1 User @Invest_wPurpose laid out the math: Treasury has already been paid back via dividends, and the 79.9% warrants should either be cancelled or exercised at a price that doesn't hollow out common stockholders. 1

The tension Burry is pointing at is structural. As long as the SPS and the warrants exist without a stated resolution, no institutional buyer can confidently model FNMA or FMCC's per-share terminal value. The stock's ceiling is unknowable. That uncertainty is what turned a BTIG Buy into a Neutral three days before Burry's tweet — and it is the same uncertainty that has suppressed both stocks since early 2026.

One reply from @ScientificSaaS captured the mood on Burry's side of the trade: "If this dude is asking for clarity, we are truly in the endgame lol." 1 Burry is not known for making direct public demands of regulators. The WBD fable he posted the previous day — holding a detached stock from $10 to $5 before it found its way to $30 — is an almost explicit map of what he believes is happening in FNMA/FMCC.

Burry is not alone in this trade, and that matters for how to read the tweet's intent.

Bill Ackman (Pershing Square) said in December 2025 that Fannie and Freddie "remains our best idea for 2026," and has been publicly advocating for conservatorship exit. 5 The two investors — who almost never agree on anything — are on the same side here. The community replies to Burry's tweet repeatedly tagged both @BillAckman and @pulte, trying to pull both into the same thread.

When two investors of that caliber are publicly aligned on a single government-dependent trade and posting about it in the same week, it functions as a signal: someone in Washington is going to notice, or the investors are trying to make sure someone does.

The hard constraint is the warrant clock. Treasury's warrants on 79.9% of both companies expire in September 2028. Between now and then, there are three scenarios that matter to shareholders:

FNMA and FMCC are not conventional investment candidates — they are policy instruments wearing stock tickers. Burry's "Please?" on June 19 is the most direct public version yet of the frustration building among a handful of concentrated long holders who have watched the trade flatline for the better part of a year.