The LSE Directory / Hedge fund managers
Michael James Burry (born 1971) is a physician-turned-investor who founded Scion Capital in 2000 and achieved a $490% cumulative return from inception to closure in 2008 while the S&P 500 returned approximately 2% over the same period. His most famous trade was identifying the structural fragility of the US subprime mortgage market as early as 2005: he constructed custom credit default swaps (CDS) on mortgage-backed securities, instruments that did not exist in the form he needed and that he had to negotiate directly with Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and others. When the subprime market collapsed in 2007-2008, Scion Capital gained approximately $700 million for investors and $100 million personally for Burry. His trade was documented in Michael Lewis's book 'The Big Short' (2010) and the subsequent Oscar-winning film (2015) in which Burry is played by Christian Bale. Burry closed Scion Capital in 2008 citing exhaustion and investor pressure during the period before the trade paid off, and relaunched as Scion Asset Management in 2013. He remains an active and unconventional investor who regularly makes contrarian macro and equity calls.
