Michael Burry’s current holdings

[Saluki]

14 hours ago, ValueArb said:

 

What evidence is there that Burry isn't still beating the market like a drum?

 

I don't think there is any evidence one way or another.  Every quarter his 13fs have massive churn, so anything is possible, even that he's day trading and what you see just happens to be what was held on the last day of the period. 

[ValueArb]

1 hour ago, Saluki said:

 

I don't think there is any evidence one way or another.  Every quarter his 13fs have massive churn, so anything is possible, even that he's day trading and what you see just happens to be what was held on the last day of the period. 

 

Right. I just tend to believe in inertia, that investors usually continue to do the same things that made them successful. Typically just a bit less successfully as their portfolios grow it makes it harder to outperform.

 

Burry is an interesting case because he fired his clients and went back to investing similar amounts as when he was outperforming by 28% per year in the years before the big short. So theoretically he might have been able to maintain that performance, and there are some investments we know were very successful (Gamestop) as per the Burry of old. But maybe the big short caused style drift and he's spent too much time on macro and options bets and isn't the same guy. 

[bizaro86]

19 hours ago, ValueArb said:

 

What evidence is there that Burry isn't still beating the market like a drum?

 

In neither Prem nor Burry's case did I mean total underperformance. But the macro stuff has, in both cases, detracted from performance rather than enhancing it for the last decade or so. IE. macro trading has caused their record to underperform where it would have been otherwise. Obviously Burry doesn't have a public record except for his quarterly fillings, and with the ~100% turnover he runs I think those are probably of limited utility in estimating his returns. So I agree he could still be beating the market. 

[Stuart D]

On 9/21/2023 at 11:33 PM, Jaygo said:

I truly believe that successful investing is hampered by extremely high intelligence. This stuff is not that complicated to do reasonably well and most very high IQ people need to find esoteric shit to do to feel good about themselves.

 

Ive said before ive got a buddy who is dumb as a bag of hammers and he has time and time again crushed it on simple and inelegant but obvious in hindsight investments. Facebook ipo, lake shore gold, Florida real estate in 2010 or 2011, oil in 2020, 

 

just loads of stuff and im like, huh you did what? ya well im on facebook and everybody i know is so its a got to be good buy. Well i went to Fort Lauderdale once and there's no snow in winter so I bought a 3 bed condo for 60 grand. He still has a damn Hotmail account and he's 8x his money on google. 

 

I just wished my lack of intelligence would translate to some gains lol

 

 

 

I listened to a yet another value podcast that reminded me of this post. Host Andrew was discussing the difference between a good investment idea vs a good podcast idea.

 

The good investment idea can be a 40 seconds pitch, eg. this 50c dollar bill is being liquidated and immediately distributed. While a good podcast idea is often something complicated like Cable, with lots of discussion points, risks, strategies etc.

 

A good reminder to myself to keep things simple.

[Cod Liver Oil]

On 9/21/2023 at 9:33 AM, Jaygo said:

Ive said before ive got a buddy who is dumb as a bag of hammers and he has time and time again crushed it on simple and inelegant but obvious in hindsight investments. Facebook ipo, lake shore gold, Florida real estate in 2010 or 2011, oil in 2020, 

 

just loads of stuff and im like, huh you did what? ya well im on facebook and everybody i know is so its a got to be good buy. Well i went to Fort Lauderdale once and there's no snow in winter so I bought a 3 bed condo for 60 grand. He still has a damn Hotmail account and he's 8x his money on google. 

@Jaygo this comment has made a big impression on me.  It is a mental model closely related to "shooting fish in a barrel after the water has run out."  Nintendo and JOE meet the "dumb as a bag of hammers" test to me. I don't think you need to be pathologically contrarian to appreciate them. I am training myself to appreciate the obvious a little more.

[Jaygo]

Yes simple is often better. But there are also traps that look simple but can be far more complex.  
 

maybe an easy example would be the growth of e-commerce vs the share price of container-board/ cardboard box companies. How have these not been a home run? West rock is one of the big ones and the share price is flat to down for 10 years.

 

oil and war in the Mideast is another one that is just confusing.