The Big Short: 2008 Dr M Burry before and after closing his fund

I met my wife on match.com my profile said I am a medical student with only one eye an awkward social manner and $145,000 in student loans she wrote back you're just what I've been looking for she meant honest so let me be honest the housing crisis represents the greatest financial opportunity making money is not like I thought it would be this business kills the part of life that is essential the part that has nothing to do with business so let's for the past two years my insides that felt like they're eating themselves all the people I respected won't talk to me anymore except through lawyers people want an authority to tell them how to value things but they choose this Authority not based on facts or results they choose it because it seems authoritative and familiar and I'm not and never have been familiar so so I've come to the sullen realization that I must close down the fund sincerely Michael Jabari MD Michael berry made his name betting against the housing market and he became a bit of a celebrity when Michael Lewis featured him in his book the big short but since shutting down his hedge fund in 2008 berry has been quiet about his investments until now in an exclusive interview with Bloomberg berry says he's buying gold and land John Erlichman spoke with Michael berry and has his story John yeah somewhat simpler stuff you might say than credit default swaps which he's not using these days Eric Berry's view right now is that I don't have to talk a lot about what I'm investing in because I'm no longer running money for investors as you said he shut down his hedge fund he says maybe he'll get back into the investment game for others down the road but he's happy doing what he's doing right now including buying farmland let's see what he had to say I believe that agricultural land productive agricultural land with water on-site is will be very valuable in the future and I've put a good amount of money into that so I've I'm investing in alternative investments as well as stocks but buying just buying the land not some stock type of well I'm about you guys so I want to buy the land I want the raw land and then all that's the way to get it cheapest how much of your portfolio is in land would you say oh I don't want to disclose that but it's a significant amount at this point so we can take away that while you're bearish generally on the housing market that the guy who made this big bearish bet on housing a few years ago is now seeing value in some real estate out there is that what you're saying I think there is some value in real estate yeah I mean you have to buy it right and it's there's certain it's not in general that's the problem I think that there's an awful lot of people out there looking to buy these distressed properties now and and so you need to you need to find special situations it's it's how I've invested from the beginning I'm always look I'm looking for these special situations these unique ideas and and it's true in real estate - okay would you go long some housing stocks today after they've been crushed I brought you know I'm in my situation I'd rather go long housing itself or real estate itself you can depending on how you structure it you can in the real market you can the physical per market you can get some pretty good deals and I've done some of that too okay let's talk about how some of the other players are investing these days if you look inside John Paulson's portfolio you will find that he's the biggest shareholder in a home builder in Beazer Homes his firm is also a big shareholder in a mortgage insurer PMI and he's not the only one there are a lot of hedge funds that own shears in PMI what do you think of that strategy of going along san I had I had the thought when I started to put on the short that when this all plays out we'll all be running so much money and I'll be able to swoop in and buy some of these things really cheap and as it has played out I just don't think that the recovery is gonna be that robust and so I'm not terribly interested so you know Paulson's big in gold and and that's something that is is it is interesting to me and given how how I see the world playing out but other than that you know I'm not you know I'm just saying that other than gold I I haven't really bought into any of the other theses what do you do do you buy do you like buy some people like to buy the physical gold bars some people buy it's tough it's a tough one to play

Channel: Traders Arcade

Views: 985,296

Rating: 4.8624792 out of 5

Keywords: big short, documentary, interview, cnbc, trading, wall street, hedge fund, 2008, 1929, crash, billion, million, trillion, bailout, government

Id: DnrnuJ2F_ik

Length: 6min 45sec (405 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 10 2018