Also called the ‘Big Short’ investor, Michael Burry is a hedge fund manager, trader, and entrepreneur renowned for his unconventional money-making mechanisms. He is best known for being among the first investors to predict and profit from the subprime mortgage crisis between 2007 and 2010.
Since then, Burry has been associated with making calculated market predictions, including betting against top mortgage companies. These activities have established Burry amongst the world’s richest men on earth, netting him at $300 million.
Michael Burry’s actions as an entrepreneur and crypto investor are also major contributors to his net worth. The American who established Scion Capital (2000-2008) is well versed in crypto trading, holding major crypto assets in several wallets. Before revealing how much Michael Burry’s net worth is, let’s take a quick look at his background and childhood.
Who is Michael Burry?
Michael James Burry (@burrytracker) was born on June 19, 1971, in San Jose, California, where he lived for a large chunk of his childhood and youth. At age 2, Burry was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, which affected his left eye. This caused him to lose the eye and he has had a prosthetic left eye ever since. Growing up in San Jose, Michael Burry studied at Santa Teresa High School.
Burry enrolled at the University of California in Los Angeles, where he later bagged a bachelor’s degree in Economics. At the same university, he completed his pre-med program, which allowed him access to press higher in the sphere of medical sciences. At the end of the program, he furthered his studies at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where he earned an MD degree. He also started but didn’t complete his residency in pathology at Stanford University Medical Center.
As fate would have it, however, Michael Burry didn’t pursue a career relating to medical science which he invested much time studying. Instead, his career was hinged upon the knowledge he garnered as an Economics student. Reports claim that Burry ‘secretly’ practiced financial investments at night while he was in medical school. Nonetheless, Michael Burry has kept his license as a physician active with the Medical Board of California, including continuing education requirements.
After school, Burry demonstrated his knowledge of stock picking and value investing and started his own hedge fund in no time. He became famous for using the concept of ‘margin of safety’ while stock picking, attracting interested companies, including Vanguard and White Mountains Insurance Group. Today, Burry is a renowned investor, entrepreneur, and crypto guru with an astounding net worth—that we will discuss next.
Michael Burry’s Personal Life
Michael James Burry is married and has two adult sons. He has lived with his second wife in Saratoga, California, since 2010. His house in California, USA, is believed to be worth over $5 million—a small chunk from his $300 million net worth.
One of his sons was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, and in 2006, Burry himself was confirmed to have the same disorder. When he was younger, he noticed that looking people directly in the eye was a hassle, claiming, “If I am looking at you, that’s the one time I know I won’t be listening to you.”
Michael Burry is a fan of heavy metal music, publicly showing love for popular bands such as Obituary, King Diamond, Pantera, Amon Amarth, and Slipknot. Burry was also highly critical of the US lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic.
What is Michael Burry’s Net Worth in 2024?
As we speak, Michael Burry’s net worth is approximately $300 million. Most of Burry’s wealth primarily came from his numerous successful investment strategies. He identifies and trades against overvalued financial markets, sectors, and instruments, usually by short-selling or using derivative securities. He also buys long positions in stocks that he feels are undervalued.
Burry’s most notable investment was his correct prediction of the US real estate bubble collapse in 2007/08. Even when other professional market analysts criticized him concerning his predictions, Burry still went on with the trade. He made over $100 million from that single trade and a profit of over $700 million for his remaining investors. Before and after that trade, Michael Burry continued to invest in several high-ROI stocks to keep strengthening his net worth to $300 million.
How Did Michael Burry Make His Money?
Burry’s career began with his stunt in value investing, which he made public on message boards on Silicon Investor—a popular stock discussion site—starting in 1996. His contributions to stock market discussions on that platform drew the attention of the companies mentioned above, as well as prominent investors like Joel Greenblatt. Michael Burry, however, started receiving top billing only after he started his hedge fund, Scion Capital.
Scion Capital
Established in 2000, Scion Capital was Burry’s first hedge fund, which was funded by an inheritance and loans from his family. The company ran under Michael Burry’s leadership from 2000-2008, before he left to focus on his personal investments. Scion Capital gained prestige for successfully predicting and beating sudden market changes that would’ve left several other investors in great loss.
In its early years, the company focused on stocks existing during the peak of the internet bubble. Scion envisioned and profited from several market shifts, earning Burry over $600 million in assets by the end of 2004.
Starting in 2005, Burry shifted the company’s focus from the internet bubble to the real estate bubble. In his usual prediction-style trading, he claimed that subprime mortgages, especially those with ‘teaser’ rates, would collapse as early as 2007. Receiving credit default swaps from some investment companies, including Goldman Sachs, Burry took a short position against the market. Eventually, this risk paid off, accumulating a cumulative return of 489.34% for Scion Capital by the end of 2008.
According to his website, Burry liquidated his credit default swap short positions by April 2008. Consequently, he didn’t record any profit from the bailouts of 2008 and 2009. He eventually liquidated the entire company in 2008 to focus on his personal investments.
Scion Asset Management
Borrowing from his ideas in Scion Capital, Michael Burry founded another hedge fund, this time naming it Scion Asset Management (est. 2013). He filed reports as an exempt reporting adviser (ERA) working in California and was approved by the US SEC. Scion Asset Management concentrated on investing in gold, water, and farmland.
The company also constantly invested in some of the largest US companies’ stock, including that of Facebook, Alphabet Inc., and Tesla. Burry initiated a short position on Tesla around early December 2020 and added more positions to the trade when Tesla’s market capitalization surpassed Facebook’s.
Again, he predicted that Tesla stock would plummet, taunting Tesla bulls to “enjoy it while it lasts.” However, following a 100% increase in Tesla’s stock value in October 2021, Burry revealed that he was no longer shorting it.
In Q2 of 2021, Burry held a $31 million put position on the ARKK ETF innovation index, managed by Ark Invest. Scion Asset Management also reportedly made a huge bet on the US stock market crash, involving short positions on both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100. At that time, the company’s assets under management reached $237,971,170 in value.
How Much Did Scion Asset Management Make on GameStop?
In 2020, Scion Asset Management and Michael Burry initiated a retail investor-fueled short squeeze for GameStop. However, Burry was rather hasty with the trade, denying himself access to gaining the most from the trade.
In the previous year, Scion Asset Management acquired 5.3% of the video game retailer’s shares, believing it to be undervalued and over-shorted. Burry held a $1.7 million-share position until late 2020 when he exited his position. Had he waited a little longer before exiting the trade, Burry and Scion could’ve gained over $1 billion when the company peaked in early 2021.
GameStop traded stocks at around $10 and $20 per share in Q4 of 2020 when Burry sold his stake. This ensured that he gained about $100 million—a profit that would’ve easily done 10X if he had waited a little longer. This trade had a significant impact on his net worth, helping him reach his current $300 million value.
How Much Did Scion Capital Make During the Dot-com Crash?
Between 1990 and the early 2000s, technological innovations and good economic conditions saw the rise of several stocks to unsustainable highs, in what would later be called the dot-com bubble. The bubble peaked around March 2000, the same year Burry founded Scion Capital LLC. Immediately, Burry began making short bets on market stocks, confident that the high valuations would crash in no time.
Scion Capital, under Burry’s guidance, flourished in its early years, as many of Burry’s predictions were correct. Scion’s value skyrocketed by 55% in 2001, a time when the S&P 500 fell almost 12%. The next year, Scion Capital also went up by another 16%, while S&P suffered a staggering 22% loss.
Conclusion
Apart from his feats in entrepreneurship and investments, Michael Burry is also a well-versed crypto trader. According to multiple reports, the American businessman holds tiny bits of crypto tokens, including Ethereum and several other meme coins. He has also spoken in support of cryptocurrency trading in several public speeches and conferences.
