Forget Nvidia: Michael Burry and Bill Ackman Are Buying These Two Beaten Down Stocks — Should You?

Fahad Saleem

Thu, August 13, 2026 astatine 11:48 AM CDT 4 min read

Let's look it: Nvidia (NVDA) can't turn the mode it already has. The wealth present is successful uncovering the adjacent beaten-down oregon ignored stocks. So let's larn from 2 Wall Street giants who walk their days doing precisely that — Michael Burry and billionaire Bill Ackman.

Ackman's Buy: S&P Global (Down 15% YTD)

Ackman disclosed successful his latest capitalist missive that helium bought S&P Global (NYSE:SPGI). The banal is down much than 20% from its 2025 high, and Ackman thinks the marketplace threw retired a large concern implicit a fearfulness that hardly touches it.

Here's the fear. S&P Global sells fiscal data, and investors interest AI volition marque that information inexpensive and commoditized. The selling picked up aft Anthropic launched its Claude Cowork tool. Ackman's answer: the fearfulness is aimed astatine the incorrect portion of the company.

S&P Global runs 3 benchmark franchises — Ratings, Indices, and the Platts vigor pricing business. Ackman says these businesses nutrient precocious margins. None of them is simply a data-lookup merchandise AI tin copy. Ratings is simply a near-duopoly with Moody's, and the 2 complaint implicit 95% of US firm debt. Companies wage for an S&P standing due to the fact that it saves them astir 3 times the interest successful little borrowing costs, and due to the fact that lenders spot the name. AI can't manufacture that spot oregon the regulatory moat astir it.

What makes the banal agelong term: Debt keeps getting issued, and a partition of pandemic-era borrowing has to beryllium refinanced successful 2027 and 2028. This helps the company's Ratings business. The displacement from progressive funds to passive scale funds feeds Indices. Buybacks unsocial are acceptable to shrink the stock number astir 4% a year, and Ackman expects net to compound successful the low-to-mid teens.

What could interruption it: backstage recognition is the quiescent menace to Ratings. Loans that skip the standing agencies wholly could shrink the interest excavation if that marketplace keeps increasing into investment-grade territory. Ratings gross is besides cyclical; a recession chokes indebtedness issuance.