Michael Burry, the “Big Short” investor famously known for correctly predicting the 2007 U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, has recently begun purchasing shares of MercadoLibre Inc. (MELI), a Latin American e-commerce and fintech giant. The real-life inspiration for the Hollywood film The Big Short and a globally renowned hedge fund manager, Burry stated on his Substack subscription platform that MercadoLibre’s stock price had fallen significantly below the valuation he had targeted, and that he had completed building his position. Burry praised the company as the “Amazon of Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina,” and forecast that its total sales would grow 30% this year to exceed $40 billion. He wrote that over a period of 15 years or more, he expects long-term annualized investment returns to reach at least 15%.
The stock of the Uruguay-based company, headquartered in Montevideo, recently experienced a sharp 12.7% decline in the U.S. stock market, marking its largest single-day drop since November 2024. This came after the company missed Wall Street consensus on net profit for four consecutive quarters, primarily due to its rapid expansion amid intensifying competition in digital financial services across Latin America.
The stock has now fallen more than 30% from the all-time high it reached in June. MercadoLibre is one of the largest online e-commerce and fintech ecosystem companies in Latin America. Its operations include the Mercado Libre marketplace and the Mercado Pago fintech platform, serving hundreds of millions of consumers across 18 countries, including Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. Through its Mercado Envios logistics service, Mercado Credito credit loans, and Mercado Fondo investment products, the company has built a deeply integrated digital ecosystem encompassing “e-commerce marketplace + digital payments + logistics + digital credit.”
Market research platform quartr.com forecasts that the Latin American e-commerce market is expected to grow from $151 billion in 2024 to $270 billion by 2028. MercadoLibre’s penetration rate for e-commerce and fintech services in the region remains in its early stages, positioning the company for strong performance growth in the coming years.
From a fundamental perspective, the company’s revenue growth is extremely robust. For example, in the first quarter of 2026, total revenue grew approximately 49% year-over-year to $8.8 billion, significantly exceeding market expectations. Overall e-commerce penetration in Latin America remains lower than in developed markets, and the penetration rates for digital payments and credit services are in urgent need of improvement, providing a sizable addressable market for MercadoLibre. Burry’s current bullish stance on the company may be based on an investment thesis of “long-term compounding growth + network effects + regional leverage dividends” — that is, sacrificing short-term profits in exchange for market share and user scale, while the explosive growth of the fintech business is expected to contribute higher profit increments in the future.
