Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ fame is known for his deft handling of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, which netted him $100 million and his clients seven times as much. However, he hasn’t been resting on his laurels — through his firm, Scion Asset Management, Burry remains quite an active investor.
Each 13-F filing made by Scion is keenly awaited and tracked by investors seeking to emulate Burry’s investments in hopes of securing outsized gains. The last filing was made public on November 14, and revealed that the renowned investor’s bullish thesis for Chinese stocks hasn’t waned one iota — on the contrary, it appears to have grown even stronger.
However, it’s always good to be mindful as to whether or not the analysis one is doing is skin-deep. While Burry’s bullishness on big-name tech companies in East Asia like Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), JD.Com (NASDAQ: JD), and Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) is interesting, a closer look at this filing, and the ones preceding it, reveals a less talked about opportunity that has mostly slipped under the radar.
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One of Burry’s long-term holdings is a relatively low-profile online marketplace called The RealReal Inc (NASDAQ: REAL) — and it has netted him significant returns.
Michael Burry has been holding REAL stock since Q1 2023
The expert first invested in Real stock early in 2023, having purchased 684,442 REAL shares. At the time, the stock was trading at around $1.26. In this Q2 2023 13-F filing, Burry reported holding 1,500,000 REAL stocks.
Following that, Q3 of 2023 saw a reduction in the position — down to 750,000 shares. By the end of the year, Burry had sold an additional 95,194 RealReal shares, bringing his stake down to 654,806 stocks.
After that, he upped his stake to 1,412,692 shares — since then, he has steadily been reducing his exposure to REAL — Scion Capital Management’s latest report, covering Q3 2024, revealed that only 500,000 REAL shares are still in the portfolio.
While there is no way to tell exactly when Burry executed his sales, the stock has seen prices increase from approximately $1.26 at the time of his initial purchase to $5.27 at press time — a 318.25% increase.
On a year-to-date (YTD) basis, REAL stock has seen prices go up by 167.26% — and Burry has doubtlessly captured a significant portion of those returns, to the tune of millions of dollars.
Featured image via Shutterstock
