Michael Burry is an American physician, investor, and hedge fund manager who gained fame by investing heavily in subprime mortgage bonds during the financial crisis of 2008. He famously shorted the US housing market, making a fortune for himself and his investors while many others were losing money.
Burry was born in 1971 in California to Indian parents and grew up with an interest in finance and investments. After graduating from medical school at Vanderbilt University, he worked as a neurologist until 2000 when he founded Scion Capital LLC, a value-oriented investment firm that managed funds for institutional investors such as Yale University’s endowment. During this time he made use of “big data” analysis techniques to identify undervalued stocks or derivatives whose prices had not yet fully reflected their underlying values.
His most famous gamble was on the US housing market which he began shorting (betting against) around 2005/2006 when it became apparent that prices were becoming overinflated due to irresponsible lending practices by banks and lenders. This bet paid off handsomely for Burry when the bubble burst in 2008 causing massive losses for other investors but huge profits for Burry’s firm due largely to his prescience about how toxic these investments really were. His success ultimately resulted in him being featured prominently in Michael Lewis’ 2010 bestseller The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine which documented how several individual investors successfully predicted and profited from one of Wall Street’s greatest disasters ever seen before or since then.
Today Burry continues to manage Scion Asset Management LLC where he makes long term contrarian bets on companies deemed undervalued by Wall Street analysts using methods similar to those employed during his days at Scion Capital LLC. In 2021, Forbes estimated Michael Burry’s net worth at $1 billion dollars – evidence enough that there are still riches out there if you know where look!