On February 1, American investor Michael Berry sent a simple instruction to traders by tweeting one word on Twitter: “Sell”.

It is likely that in those days Berry was a participant in the anxiety that prevailed among market watchers ahead of the Fed’s interest rate decision. But when the time came, traders seemed to hear just the opposite – buy – after Fed Chairman Jerome Powell admitted that the central bank hadadvance in his fight against inflation. The S&P 500 closed the day up more than 1%.

And in general, the first quarter of Wall Street was particularly strong. The S&P 500 rose 7% and the Nasdaq flew close to 17% and closed the best quarter since 2020. The Nasdaq 100 rose 21% and changed status from “bear market” to “bull market”.

The index of small companies, the Russell 2000, did rise last week by 4%, but it settled for a relatively moderate increase of 2.7% since the beginning of the year.

On Friday, just before the last trading day of the week on Wall Street, Berry took to Twitter again, repeating: “I was wrong when I said ‘sell'”. Berry congratulated those who bought on the dip, pushing the stock higher than he expected. “There was no other generation like you,” he said, referring as a general rule to those who buy shares whose value has plummeted.

I was wrong to say sell.

– Cassandra B.C. (@michaeljburry) March 30, 2023

Berry, the well-known American investor and founder of the hedge fund Scion Capital who predicted the global financial crisis in 2008, is known for his esoteric tweets warning of impending doom. Last September Berry warned of another blow to the stock market and said “we haven’t reached the bottom yet”. In the second quarter of last year, his company dumped all but one of its stock holdings. In January, Berry predicted another spike in inflation in response to government stimulus and said the US was in recession “in every sense.”