Michael Burry: checked claims

Scores by kind of claim

Each kind of claim is scored on its own, out of 100: the share that held up, with the range it likely falls in. Fewer resolved claims give a wider range.

Factual claims

Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

74 67 80

High confidence, 66 factual claims resolved. From 9 documents, 2001 to 2026; 14 documents sampled from 30 candidates found.

Not scored: 46 unresolvable, 40 checkable only against their own records.

See the factual claims
Predictions

Statements about events outside the person's control, checked once they fell due: did they come true?

62 43 81

Low confidence, 6 predictions resolved. From 2 documents, 2006 to 2011; 14 documents sampled from 30 candidates found.

Not scored: 20 unresolvable, 3 checkable only against their own records. 1 more fall due later.
Does not yet allow for how likely each prediction was when made.

See the predictions
Promises

Commitments to the person's or organisation's own future action, with something to deliver: was it delivered?

Insufficient record: 1 promise resolved, 5 needed for a score.

Not scored: 4 unresolvable, 2 not yet due, 2 checkable only against their own records.

See the promises

All types combined: 73 (likely 66 to 79, high confidence), from 72 claims: 66 factual claims, 6 predictions. It mixes kinds of claim in different proportions for different people, so compare people kind by kind.

Michael Burry's claims

73 claims

73 claims, sorted by newest said. Choose a claim to read it in full.
Verdict	Kind	Said	Claim	Topic
Mostly false	Factual	3 Nov 2026	The Superinvestors of Graham & Doddsville all lost money three years in a row during the mid-1970s. Factual · 3 Nov 2026	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	30 Oct 2026	Build-A-Bear (BBW) is heavily shorted, with short interest at 25% of the float and almost 9 days to cover. Factual · 30 Oct 2026	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	30 Oct 2026	Burry made the case the prior week that the October 6, 2026 S&P 500 record close looks more like the March 2000 top than any other record high since 1980. Factual · 30 Oct 2026	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	27 Oct 2026	At the end of Q2 and during Q3 the developer landscape changed substantially, and Anthropic's prospectus does not reflect this. Factual · 27 Oct 2026	AI, the economy and work
Mostly true	Factual	27 Oct 2026	Michael Burry has never said that LLMs would stop improving. Factual · 27 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	24 Oct 2026	Across 982 S&P 500 record closes since 1980, October 6, 2026 and March 2000 are the two most narrow, thin, soft new highs by almost any measure. Factual · 24 Oct 2026	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	13 Oct 2026	Michael Burry swapped common stock for junior preferred shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Factual · 13 Oct 2026	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	11 Oct 2026	Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stocks have retraced essentially all their gains since Trump's election and formed a large head-and-shoulders top. Factual · 11 Oct 2026	Economics and markets
Mostly false	Factual	9 Oct 2026	By early 2000, 70-80% of stocks were in bear markets while the market indices continued to rise. Factual · 9 Oct 2026	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	9 Jul 2026	Intrator told Jim Cramer that his customers are willing to rent GPUs for six to seven years. Factual · 9 Jul 2026	AI compute, hardware and data
Mostly true	Factual	9 Jul 2026	In the same quarter in early 2025, Meta extended its useful server lives to 5.5 years, reducing the depreciation hit to net income by $2.9 billion. Factual · 9 Jul 2026	AI compute, hardware and data
Mixed	Factual	9 Jul 2026	Amazon's shortening of server lives in early 2025 caused additional expense of $677 million across 9 months. Factual · 9 Jul 2026	AI compute, hardware and data
Resolved true	Factual	9 Jul 2026	The biggest buyer and the biggest seller of these chips, including Nvidia's Jensen Huang, both acknowledged that the frontier moves faster than the depreciation schedules used by big hyperscalers and neo-clouds. Factual · 9 Jul 2026	AI compute, hardware and data
Mostly true	Factual	9 Jul 2026	Intrator's consistent message is that Nvidia chips are rented on successive contracts, so depreciation schedules shorter than 5 or 6 years are ignorant. Factual · 9 Jul 2026	AI compute, hardware and data
Resolved true	Factual	9 Jul 2026	H100s were introduced in 2022, so they could not have been coming off five-year contracts. Factual · 9 Jul 2026	AI compute, hardware and data
Mixed	Factual	9 Jul 2026	Intrator said CoreWeave's contracts run five years, its A100s stay fully booked, and a batch of H100s coming off contract was re-leased at 95% of the original price. Factual · 9 Jul 2026	AI compute, hardware and data
Resolved true	Factual	9 Jul 2026	Michael Burry never said that A100 chips would stop functioning. Factual · 9 Jul 2026	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	9 Jul 2026	In early 2025 Amazon shortened the useful life of a subset of its servers from 6 to 5 years, citing the pace of development. Factual · 9 Jul 2026	AI compute, hardware and data
Mostly true	Factual	27 Mar 2026	US home equity is a record $35 trillion, nearly double pre-COVID levels. Factual · 27 Mar 2026	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	27 Mar 2026	In a video posted on arriving at Fannie Mae, Bill Pulte showed that no one was in the Fannie Mae office buildings. Factual · 27 Mar 2026	AI policy and governance
Mostly true	Factual	9 Mar 2026	The Headstrong Project was founded in 2012 by a combat veteran. Factual · 9 Mar 2026	Other
Mixed	Factual	27 Feb 2026	Nvidia is investing $30 billion in OpenAI, and OpenAI is to spend 20+ billion on Nvidia chips. Factual · 27 Feb 2026	AI, the economy and work
Resolved true	Factual	22 Feb 2026	RCA stock fell about 98% peak to trough in the early 1930s, while radio's growth continued for many more decades. Factual · 22 Feb 2026	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	12 Feb 2026	As Palantir prepared to go public in August 2020, its board awarded Alex Karp $1.1 billion worth of stock options. Factual · 12 Feb 2026	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	20 Jan 2026	The US already has the right to place military installations across Greenland. Factual · 20 Jan 2026	AI policy and governance
Mixed	Factual	Dec 2025	Michael Burry has generally stayed away from investing in biomed and medtech. Factual · Dec 2025	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	Dec 2025	Tae wrote the book The Nvidia Way. Factual · Dec 2025	Technology
Mixed	Factual	Dec 2025	Former Stanford colleagues of Michael Burry run Palo Alto Investors, which has focused almost entirely on biomed and medtech for almost three decades. Factual · Dec 2025	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	19 Nov 2025	Michael Burry is still managing his own money and is active in markets. Factual · 19 Nov 2025	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	2025	Scion's agreements with counterparties required daily collateral valuation in both directions. Factual · 2025	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	2025	Michael Burry earned a bachelor's degree in economics at UCLA and then an MD at Vanderbilt School of Medicine. Factual · 2025	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	2025	Blue Ocean Re was set up in late 2005 to take advantage of what Burry called an extraordinary pricing ability in the retrocessional reinsurance space. Factual · 2025	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	2025	Burry's main contact at Goldman Sachs was Veronica, a front-end salesperson. Factual · 2025	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	2025	Scion did not pay $10,000,000 for the credit default swap; that was only its notional value. Factual · 2025	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	5 Apr 2011	Credit derivatives on an underlying asset could be worth multiple orders of magnitude more than the asset because all asset-backed derivatives settled in cash. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	5 Apr 2011	Burry wrote a paper in 1994, as a summer extern at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, on why rehabilitation medicine was doing well. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Prediction	5 Apr 2011	Burry said he expected the US government to attempt to continue easy money policies into the next presidential term. Prediction · 5 Apr 2011	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	5 Apr 2011	Burry decided to short the mortgage market, intending to profit from its collapse. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	5 Apr 2011	Burry left medicine with $145,000 in debt and no assets under management when starting Scion Capital. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	5 Apr 2011	Fed Chairman Bernanke says the Federal Reserve is not printing money. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	5 Apr 2011	Under QE II, the Federal Reserve monetizes roughly $7 to $8 billion of Treasuries each day, according to a daily Fed email. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	5 Apr 2011	Burry ran a website during the latter half of the 1990s on which he posted his thoughts about stocks and markets. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Their own work or organisation
Mostly false	Factual	5 Apr 2011	AIG was nationalized a few years after 2005 and the nationalization cost taxpayers some $180 billion. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	5 Apr 2011	Two trillion seconds equals about 64,000 years. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Other
Mostly true	Factual	5 Apr 2011	After Burry criticized index funds and hyperlinked to Vanguard on his website, Vanguard's attorneys told him to cease and desist. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Their own work or organisation
Mixed	Factual	5 Apr 2011	Burry's proposed "Milton's Opus" never got off the ground, after his investors met it with scepticism and outside institutions he approached went off to do the idea themselves. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	5 Apr 2011	Of the people at troubled major institutions and relevant government departments whose insight about the crisis matched or exceeded Burry's, none was in the top job. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Economics and markets
Mostly false	Factual	5 Apr 2011	Wall Street firms all used one single risk model in the mid-2000s. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	5 Apr 2011	Secretary Paulson now claims that even had he known what was going to happen, he could not have done anything about it. Factual · 5 Apr 2011	Economics and markets
Mostly false	Prediction	5 Apr 2011	US interest expense on the national debt alone could exceed $1 trillion by 2020. Prediction · 5 Apr 2011	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	6 Apr 2010	After the crisis became clear in early 2007, the Fed chairman, Treasury secretary, president and senior members of Congress repeatedly underestimated its severity. Factual · 6 Apr 2010	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	6 Apr 2010	Michael Burry deliberately avoided Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns as swap counterparties. Factual · 6 Apr 2010	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	6 Apr 2010	Michael Burry shut down Scion Capital in 2008. Factual · 6 Apr 2010	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	6 Apr 2010	Michael Burry's prediction of a mortgage market meltdown was based on his research into the residential mortgage market and mortgage-backed securities. Factual · 6 Apr 2010	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	6 Apr 2010	Michael Burry began worrying about the housing market in 2003, when lenders resurrected interest-only mortgages and loosened credit standards. Factual · 6 Apr 2010	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	6 Apr 2010	By mid-2005 Michael Burry bought credit default swaps on billions of dollars of subprime mortgage-backed securities and bonds of financial companies. Factual · 6 Apr 2010	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	6 Apr 2010	Goldman Sachs and other derivatives dealers did not demand daily collateral settlement from AAA-rated AIG. Factual · 6 Apr 2010	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	6 Apr 2010	Michael Burry demanded daily collateral settlement on his swaps, with cash posted to Scion's account the next day if positions moved in its favor. Factual · 6 Apr 2010	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	6 Apr 2010	Michael Burry used six counterparties for his credit default swaps to limit exposure to any one of them. Factual · 6 Apr 2010	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	6 Apr 2010	By December 2005, subprime mortgages issued six months earlier were already showing atypically high delinquency rates. Factual · 6 Apr 2010	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Prediction	2008	Less leverage and lower returns on assets are now likely for financial institutions. Prediction · 2008	Economics and markets
Mixed	Prediction	2008	Burry said he imagined that shares of most of these financial companies would become very boring before they became attractive again. Prediction · 2008	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Prediction	2007	The S&P 500 could easily finish 2008 with a negative return, dragging down crowded value-oriented investment funds. Prediction · 2007	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	Nov 2006	Servicers may generally advance interest payments to a mortgage pool when a mortgage goes delinquent. Factual · Nov 2006	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Prediction	2006	Rising delinquencies and defaults will continue to push delinquency-to-credit-support ratios higher on the subprime tranches Scion is short. Prediction · 2006	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	2006	Park Place Securities Incorporated (PPSI) is the depositor in the PPSI 2005-WLL1 mortgage deal. Factual · 2006	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	2006	Because home prices rose steadily for a long time, troubled homeowners were able to refinance, take cash out and often reduce monthly payments at the same time, which reduced foreclosure rates. Factual · 2006	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	2006	Burry said the positions "we" are short are now effectively undercollateralized by performing mortgages, pointing to ratios of delinquent, bankrupt, foreclosed and REO loans to total credit support, several of which were above one. Factual · 2006	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	2006	In a securitization, each trust is divided into tranches, each defined and rated by the degree of subordination protecting its principal from loss. Factual · 2006	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	3 Jul 2001	The Scion Value Fund does not generally offer portfolio transparency to its members. Factual · 3 Jul 2001	Their own work or organisation
Mixed	Factual	2001	The cost of employee stock option compensation is borne by shareholders through significant dilution. Factual · 2001	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	2001	Burry earns no income from Scion Capital unless members' annual return exceeds 6% net of expenses. Factual · 2001	Their own work or organisation
Delivered on time	Promise	2001	The Scion Value Fund's minimum initial investment for future investors will be raised to $250,000 as of the July 1, 2001 investment date. Promise · 2001	Their own work or organisation

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Michael Burry

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Factual Economics and markets

“The Superinvestors of Graham & Doddsville all lost money 3 years in a row during the mid-1970s.”

Michael Burry, X post 3 November 2026 Post by @michaeljburry on X, 2026-11-03 (X)

The Superinvestors of Graham & Doddsville all lost money three years in a row during the mid-1970s.

Mostly false False in substance, right in a detail.

The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.

What would count as true or false

Test: whether every investor or fund in Buffett's 1984 essay 'The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville' (as shown in its performance tables or other reliable records of those same funds) had a negative absolute return in each of three consecutive years in the mid-1970s (roughly 1972-1977). True: every featured investor had three consecutive losing years in that window. Mostly true: all but one or two did, or all had three consecutive losing years that run slightly outside the mid-1970s. Mixed: about half did. Mostly false: the claim rests on something real but overstates it. Examples: only a few had three straight losing years; most had only one or two losing years (for example 1973-74); or the 'three years' refers to underperforming the index rather than losing money. False: the records show most or all of them did not have three consecutive years of losses, for example because returns were positive in at least one year of every three-year mid-1970s span.

Evidence

Charlie Munger: the 53% hole inside a 19.8% record Trading Primer · 7 October 2026
“The partnership lost 31.9% in 1973 and 31.5% in 1974.”
Charlie Munger: the 53% hole inside a 19.8% record Trading Primer · 7 October 2026
“Eleven years of gains took $1 to $15.55 by the end of 1972.”
Untitled Outstanding Investor Digest (reprint of Walter & Edwin Schloss Associates annual return table) · 22 April 2025
“1972 +15.5% +19.0%”
[PDF] 10 WAYS TO BEAT AN INDEX Tweedy, Browne Company LLC · 5 June 2026
“Similarly, Windsor Fund’s three straight years of underperformance in the 1971–1973 period produced a cumulative decline of -11.2%, as compared to a cumulative increase of +17.3% for the S&P 500.”
Walter & Edwin Schloss Associates, LP's Walter & Edwin Schloss - Part I Outstanding Investor Digest · 6 March 1989
“1972 +15.5% +19.0%”
Walter & Edwin Schloss Associates, LP's Walter & Edwin Schloss - Part I Outstanding Investor Digest · 6 March 1989
“1975 +52.2% +37.2%”
10 Ways to Beat an Index Tweedy, Browne Company LLC
“Pacific Partners’ Results ( 7.2)% 16.4 17.1 (42.1) (34.4) 31.2”
10 Ways to Beat an Index Tweedy, Browne Company LLC
“The following, Table 2 and Table 3, show the year-by-year investment results of the seven investment managers in The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville:”
The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville: Charlie Munger | Stockopedia Stockopedia · 26 February 2015
“| 1972 | 8.3 | 18.2 |”
The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville: Charlie Munger | Stockopedia Stockopedia · 26 February 2015
“| 1975 | 73.2 | 44.4 |”
Calendar Year Returns - Sequoia ETF Sequoia ETF · 8 July 2026
“| 1972 | 3.01 | 1.09 | 2.48 | 0.23 | -0.88 | -2.83 | -1.51 | 3.96 | -2.25 | -1.77 | 4.87 | -2.46 | 3.61 | 18.98 |”
Calendar Year Returns - Sequoia ETF Sequoia ETF · 8 July 2026
“| 1975 | 20.81 | 9.33 | 9.03 | 5.18 | 4.87 | 6.64 | -3.46 | -3.74 | -2.05 | 4.41 | 2.11 | -1.55 | 61.84 | 37.30 |”

Reasoning

The Munger partnership lost money in 1973 and 1974 (E1). It had gains through 1972 (E2) and positive figures in its 1972 and 1975 table rows (E9, E10), so those losses were two years, not three. The Schloss table shows positive returns in 1972 and 1975 (E3, E5, E6), and the Sequoia table shows positive 1972 and 1975 figures (E11, E12), which rules out a three-year losing run that includes either of those years. Tweedy, Browne describes Windsor's three-year stretch in 1971–1973 as underperforming the index, with a cumulative decline (E4); it does not give the yearly returns, so it does not show whether each of those years was a loss. The 1973–74 losses are real, but the evidence does not support the claim that every featured investor lost money three years in a row.

Cite this claim

Michael Burry, “The Superinvestors of Graham & Doddsville all lost money three years in a row during the mid-1970s.” (said 3 November 2026). Verdict: mostly false. Reliability API, claim c_3393b3b67f88, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_3393b3b67f88

Claims without a verdict

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