Michael Burry was born in San Jose in 1971 and lost his left eye to retinoblastoma at age two. He studied economics and pre-med at UCLA, earned his medical degree at Vanderbilt in 1997 and began residencies at Stanford, but never practiced, though he still keeps his California license active. During late hospital shifts he posted stock analysis on the Silicon Investor message board, applying Benjamin Graham and David Dodd’s margin of safety. He shorted Amazon in early 2000 before it lost about 80 percent, drew attention from Vanguard, White Mountains and Joel Greenblatt, and launched Scion Capital, named after Terry Brooks’s The Scions of Shannara.

In 2005 Burry read mortgage bond prospectuses from the 2003 and 2004 vintages, saw teaser rates set to reset around 2007, and had Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank write him credit default swaps. As premiums bled his fund, he gated angry investors, then made about $100 million personally and over $700 million for clients before closing Scion in 2008. After his son’s Asperger’s diagnosis he said he believes he has it too. He returned in 2013, bought GameStop long before the 2021 squeeze, and by 2025 and 2026 held put options on Nvidia, Palantir, Micron and Nebius while writing a Substack called Cassandra Unchained.

• He left medicine in late 2000 using trading profits, an inheritance and family loans.
• His first investments after reopening in 2013 focused on water, farmland and gold.
• He sold GameStop before the meme stock squeeze and bought back in by early 2026 on valuation grounds.
• In late 2025 he deregistered his hedge fund and returned outside capital, charging $439 a year for his newsletter.
• He backed a critique calling SpaceX’s addition to the Nasdaq 100 a way to make retirement funds supply exit liquidity.