Michael Burry Quotes

The whole market mechanism and its evolution is something that, I'm kind of of the Buffett School. You know, if I see a derivative, I run the other way.

But my system for over 30 years has been this: When stocks are attractive, you buy them. Sure, they can go lower. I've bought stocks at $12 that went to $2, but then they later went to $30.

We concluded that you cannot rely on delta hedging alone. It sounds simplistic to say that now, but back then, this was the sort of thing people were only just beginning to realize.

Since we try and take a fairly buy-and-hold approach to our newsletter portfolios and don't sell at every whipsaw, we want to have a mix of stocks that will perform at both ends of the oscillation.

There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance.

Low-volatility funds, which tend to smooth out performance, have been especially popular since the financial crisis. The PowerShares S&P 500 Low Volatility Fund is the oldest, begun in 2011.

As a bull market turns into a bear market, the new pros turn into optimists, hoping and praying the bear market will become a bull and save them. But as the market remains bearish, the optimists become pessimists, quit the profession, and return to their day jobs. This is when the real professional investors re-enter the market.

In some industries, we refer to risk taking as 'research and development.' At financial institutions, we often take risk by investing in securities.

The problem with most people who play the market is that they are not flexible.

The world of derivatives is full of holes that very few people are really aware of. It's like hydrogen and oxygen sitting on the corner waiting for a little flame.

In our view, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction carrying dangers that, while latent, are potentially lethal.

I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that's true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality.

I don't think that hedge funds are bad per se. I think they're just one more financial tool. And in that sense, they're useful.

With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.

For us, whether the market is skewed from a bubble perspective or not really is mitigated by staying focused on what we do best.

I have yet to take capital losses on any company. Then again, it's still early.

The starting point of my career in money management in 1973-74 was the time of the only true bear market any living non-Japanese investor has seen in major markets. Equities, real estate, you name it, everyone got run over.

If your investing approach requires that you become Nostradamus to succeed, then you are destined to fail.

In the world of money and investing, you must learn to control your emotions.

Investors have to ask themselves two questions. How much can we grow our investments? And, can we afford our mistakes?

If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock, not selling advice.

More and more investors may be coming into markets everywhere but that doesn't mean that the markets are really getting more and more efficient, even in the United States. It does mean that there is more access for savvy investors who watch the money flows.

It's difficult to make your clients understand that there are certain days that the market will go up or down 2%, and it's basically driven by algorithms talking to algorithms. There's no real rhyme or reason for that. So it's difficult. We just try to preach long-term investing and staying the course.

A financial crisis is a great time for professional investors and a horrible time for average ones.

You have a class of investors and you have a class of speculators. The speculators historically haven't been big enough to cause the investors to doubt the long-term vision of stock.