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'Big Short' fund manager Burry dumps portfolio, buys prison stock

Mon, August 15, 2022 
By David Randall

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Scion Asset Management fund manager Michael Burry, who rose to fame with timely bets against housing ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, in the last quarter dumped a dozen bullish positions and replaced them with a new stake in prison company Geo Group Inc, according to filings released on Monday.

Shares of Geo Group rose 12% on Monday, the largest one-day rally in the company since June 2021, according to Refinitv data. At current prices, Burry's position is worth approximately $3.9 million. Shares of the company, which has a market value of $852 million, are down 1.6% for the year to date.

Burry, who frequently deletes his tweets, suggested on Twitter on Sunday that the 18% gain in the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index since the start of the third quarter is likely to reverse.

"Can't shake that silly pre-Enron, pre-9/11, pre-WorldCom feeling," he wrote, referring to three events which contributed to an approximately 75% decline in the Nasdaq between February 2000 and September 2002.

Filings known as 13-f are one of the few quarterly disclosures that hedge fund managers make of their long positions -- bets that a stock will rise -- and may not reflect current holdings. Fund managers are not required to disclose short positions, which profit when a company's shares fall.

Among the stocks that Burry sold are a stake in Facebook parent Meta Platforms that was worth $12.9 million at the end of the quarter, a $19.7 million stake in Cigna Corp, and a $23.1 million stake in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

The Nasdaq Composite was recently up 0.43% Monday, leaving it down 16.3% for the year to date.

Michael Burry's Hedge Fund Added One Stock And Dumped All the Rest

Amelia Pollard and Claire Ballentine
Mon, August 15, 2022 a

Michael Burry's Hedge Fund Added One Stock And Dumped All the Rest


(Bloomberg) -- Michael Burry’s Scion Asset Management jettisoned 11 US equities in the second quarter and ended the period with just one.

The hedge fund exited positions including Alphabet Inc. and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc., while adding private-prison operator Geo Group Inc., which was Scion’s only long stock holding as of June 30, according to a regulatory filing Monday.

Scion held 501,360 shares of Boca Raton, Florida-based Geo Group, which surged 11% to $7.60 on Monday, extending its gain since the end of the second quarter to more than 15%.

Scion held as much as $165 million of US stocks at the end of the first quarter.

Burry, 51, who rose to prominence after a winning wager against mortgages in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, has become a cult figure on social media in recent months, with ominous predictions of a looming downturn. In a May tweet, he raised the specter of a crash similar to the one 14 years ago.

He declined to comment on the filing.

The disclosure, required for all money managers overseeing more than $100 million of US equities, only shows holdings in stocks that trade on the nation’s exchanges. It doesn’t reveal non-US traded securities or short positions. Such filings are also historical, providing a snapshot of a fund’s holdings at the end of a quarter, and may not reflect current investments.