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Investor and physician Dr Michael Burry built his fortune by beating the market when the market was beating everyone else. Burry is a fearless investor known for speeding down the road less travelled when every other investor is stuck in traffic on the same slow, congested highway.
Beginning in the early 2000s, Burry saw a string of successes as the manager of Scion Capital, a now-defunct hedge fund. Thanks to his gift for short selling, he made enormous profits during the dot-com bubble and the collapse of the subprime mortgage market.
His reputation for generous impressive returns during market downturns made Michael Burry famous for short selling. So famous, in fact, that Burry served as the inspiration for the 2015 film The Big Short, in which he was played by actor Christian Bale. Oh, yeah, he also happens to be a licensed medical doctor.
Given Dr Michael Burry’s incredible credentials, many people wonder: what is Michael Burry’s net worth? To get to the bottom of the matter, we decided to investigate Michael Burry’s net worth by looking at his investing history, as well as his reported assets and liabilities.
 | Dr. Michael James Burry |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | June 19, 1971 |
| Nationality | American |
| Title | Hedge fund manager, Physician |
| Companies Founded | Scion Capital, Scion Asset Management |
| Best Known For | Shorting the dot-com and subprime mortgage markets, portrayed in 2015 film The Big Short |
| Net Worth (USD) | $300 million |
What Is Michael Burry’s Net Worth?
Investor Dr Michael Burry has a personal net worth of about $300 million. Since Michael Burry’s investing history is largely disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, we can conclude with a high degree of confidence that his true net worth is close to this mark.
Credible publications, such as Yahoo Finance, have previously reported Michael Burry’s net worth as $300M. Given that Scion Asset Management, his highly exclusive hedge fund, had $2 billion in assets under management as of Q2 2021. It’s certainly not a stretch that Burry’s net worth could be in the $300M range, if not higher.
However, given the turbulence of today’s financial markets, it’s important to note that Mr. Burry’s net worth likely varies widely according to the market cycle. In a bull market, Burry’s net worth is likely significantly higher than it is during a sustained downturn.
Dr Michael Burry Biography
Michael J. Burry was born June 19, 1971, in San Jose, California. After studying economics and pre-medical sciences at UCLA, he went on to obtain his M.D. from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. While completing his residencies at the Stanford Hospital in neurology and pathology, he moonlighted as a financial investor in his spare time.
Using fundamental analysis techniques learned from Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, Dr. Burry was able to identify stocks that were overpriced relative to their intrinsic value. At the height of the dot-com bubble, Burry successfully shorted many stocks that he deemed were overvalued by speculative investors.
By the early 2000s, Burry was able to leave his residency position to become a hedge fund manager full-time. After founding Scion Capital, he managed the assets of high-profile clients such as Vanguard, Joel Greenblatt, and White Mountains Insurance Group. He generated returns of 55% in his first full year, 2001, at a time when the S&P 500 fell nearly 12%.
Michael Burry’s contrarian investing strategy proved successful throughout the first decade of the 2000s, as he capitalized on the instability of internet companies and the subprime lending market. Most notably, Burry’s firm purchased credit default swaps from Goldman Sachs that were positioned against subprime mortgage deals. When the housing market collapsed in late 2007, his move proved to be extremely profitable, generating $825M for himself and his investors.
How Did Dr Michael Burry Build His Wealth?
As stated above, Michael Burry is a talented stock picker who routinely bets against the momentum in the market. If everyone else is going left, he goes right. Where others are taking out long positions, he buys put options and starts shorting assets he deems over-hyped.
Mr. Burry is a contrarian investor at heart, meaning he tends to invest in the opposite direction of the market. Although it encompasses risk, Mr. Burry’s investing strategy also yields high potential rewards, which is how Michael Burry’s net worth was amassed over the years.
Unlike many other successful investors, Dr Michael Burry is not a public personality. He has few strong social connections, and he isn’t a media darling. He has never held a role on a television show, nor has he authored any books. As somewhat of a reclusive persona, Dr. Burry has built his net worth simply by investing wisely, rather than making a spectacle of himself.
Does Michael Burry Invest in Alternative Assets?
By all accounts, Dr. Michael Burry is skeptical of cryptocurrency’s inherent value but nonetheless embraces the technology as an investment. According to an October 2021 report, Dr. Burry has a long position open in at least two cryptocurrencies that he views as having strong fundamentals.
Beyond digital currencies, Michael Burry invests in farmland, real estate, and gold according to a 2010 interview with Bloomberg. These assets are important elements in the investor’s diversification strategy and play a key role in his investing success and risk management practices.
How Is Michael Burry’s Net Worth Calculated?
Michael Burry’s net worth is calculated by taking his declared assets and subtracting his known liabilities. Since not all of his assets, debts, and liabilities are public knowledge, his net worth must be estimated rather than precisely calculated. Truthfully, only Dr. Burry himself knows his precise net worth; the rest of us have to rely on rough estimates.
The lion’s share of Michael Burry’s wealth derives from the SEC filings of Scion Asset Management, the investment firm that he owns. It’s also public knowledge that Michael Burry owns puts on at least 800,000 Tesla (TSLA) shares, which alone are worth approximately $530M. However, the value of these options and shares are not owned by him alone, but rather by him and the other controlling partners at Scion.
Who Else Invests Like Dr Michael Burry?
Not all investors have the same investing style. To compare investors like Michael Burry check out some of the profiles listed below.
Want to Invest Like Michael Burry?
By his own admission, Michael Burry’s success as an investor is largely thanks to his knowledge of the “margin of safety”—that is, the difference between the intrinsic value of an asset and its market price. The multimillionaire investors of tomorrow will do the same, by finding value in emerging assets where others are afraid to go.
If you want to invest like Michael Burry, you need to take chances and capitalize on opportunities as they emerge in the market. Today, cryptocurrencies pose some of the greatest upside potentials of any asset class.
Although not without their risks, digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum may hold a tremendous instrumental value that isn’t yet reflected in their market prices. Savvy investors would be wise to get in now, before institutional capital piles in in the years to come. To invest in cryptocurrencies in a tax-advantaged account, check out our list of the best Bitcoin IRA companies today.
