Michael Burry – a genius and he knows it

Australia runs two or three months behind the rest of the world, and I’ve only recently read the interesting article about Michael Burry in Vanity Fair and become acquainted with his most amazing story. Who is Michael Burry? He is the self-taught investment guru who correctly predicted the 2007 collapse of the subprime mortgage market and made a fortune for himself and the investors in his hedge fund.

I’d never heard of Burry before and I’ve never been a reader of Vanity Fair magazine, but the other day I was shopping at the supermarket in blissful aloneness, and I was loitering around the magazine section of aisle 8 as I do, and out of the corner of my eagle-like eye I spotted the phrase “unknown genius” on the cover of a magazine, and I wondered if that genius might possibly be an autist fit for my list. Sweet serendipity. Why are the words “genius” and “Asperger syndrome” so often found together? Could be because of people like Michael Burry. Dr Burry has already been profiled in two books and has also been interviewed on American 60 Minutes.

Some favourite quotes from the Vanity Fair magazine article excerpt about Michael Burry taken from the recently published book The big short: inside the doomsday machine by Michael Lewis:
“His obsession with personal honesty was a cousin to his obsession with fairness.”

“My nature is not to have friends.”

“He was recognizing patterns no one else was seeing.”

“There is no golf or other hobby to distract me.”

“People who meet me who haven’t read what I wrote – it almost never goes well. Even in high school it was like that – even with teachers.”

“Only someone who has Asperger’s would read a subprime-mortgage-bond prospectus.”
And Burry's explanation for his decision to not disclose his discovery that he has Asperger syndrome to his investors:
"It wasn’t a change. I wasn’t diagnosed with something new. It’s something I’d always had.”
I think it is particularly noteworthy that Mr Burry was professionally misdiagnosed by a psychiatrist, in a situation in which the patient was possibly not there completely of his own choosing, with a faddish but serious mental illness (bipolar) before Burry later found the correct explanation of why he has always been different. This medical misdiagnosis appears to be a case of a shrink failing to tell the difference between a systemizing special interest and mania, an inexcusable blunder in this day and age. And one does have to share Burry’s questioning of how one could be given a diagnosis of bipolar without any presentation of depression. So many psychiatrists are worse than useless.

I believe there is more to be learned about life as an intellectually gifted autist in contemporary society in this book excerpt from a popular magazine (which can be read online - see below) than there is to be found in many books and articles about Asperger syndrome written by clinician experts in the syndrome. It’s all a matter of viewpoint. Clinicians work in clinics, but autistics work everywhere.

About Michael Burry
60 Minutes (2010) Extra: the $8.4 billion bet. 60 Minutes. CBS News.com March 14th 2010. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6298038n&tag=contentMain;contentBody

60 Minutes (2010) Extra: Wall Street misfit. 60 Minutes CBS News.com March 14th 2010. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6298040n&tag=contentMain;contentBody

Burry, Michael (2010) I saw the crisis coming. Why didn’t the fed? New York Times. April 3rd 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04burry.html?scp=2&sq=Michael%20Burry&st=cse

Kroft, Steve, Devine, L. Franklin (producer) and MacDonald, Jennifer (producer) (2010) Inside the collapse. 60 Minutes. CBS News.com March 14th 2010.
video part 1 http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6298082n&tag=contentBody;housing
video part 2 http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6298084n&tag=contentBody;housing
text http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/12/60minutes/main6292458.shtml

Lewis, Michael (2010) Betting on the blind side. Vanity Fair. Number 596 April 2010. p. 76-81, 121-126. http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/04/wall-street-excerpt-201004

Lewis, Michael (2010) The big short: inside the doomsday machine. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.

Pressler, Jessica (2009) Bad news bears: the guys who bet against the bubble and won. New York. November 3rd 2009. http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/11/bad_news_bears_2.html

Wikipedia contributors (accessed 2010) Michael Burry. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michael_Burry&oldid=361272745

Zuckerman, Gregory (2009) The greatest trade ever: the behind-the-scenes story of how John Paulson defied Wall Street and made financial history. Broadway Business, 2009.