Michael Burry. Jim Spellman/Getty Images
Michael Burry warned of excessive stimulus and mass speculation as well as a possible crash.
In a 2010 interview, "The Big Short" investor voiced many of the same concerns.
Burry also spoke out about his career, and the bet against housing bubble.
Michael Burry has been raising alarm about rampant speculation in the markets, runaway government spending and investors' failures to learn from past crashes and bubbles. In a Bloomberg interview, he raised similar concerns in 2010.
The Scion Asset Management boss also spoke out about his famous bet against mid-2000s housing bubble. This was immortalized in both the book and movie "The Big Short." He also discussed his motivations for investing and touched on Warren Buffett.
These are 14 of Burry's best quotes, which were lightly edited and condensed to make them more readable.
1. "I was faced with some social problems when I was younger. I was attracted to the idea of being a rock star, an actor, or a money manager. They are performance-based. It doesn't really matter how nice you are as a man. It doesn't really matter how you style your hair. You only need to perform if you are doing it well. Since I was a child, I was interested in meritocracy and ranking people according to their talents and effort. Running money was something I could do if I put in the effort.
2. "I have had some interests that have been very intense throughout my life. Music and markets are two of my most intense interests. Every once in awhile, there is something that catches my attention for a moment, but it always returns to the two main things.
3. "My natural state of being is outsider. No matter where I live or what group I belong to, I always feel like I'm not part of the group. I've always been an analyst of the group." Reflecting on his assessment of the dotcom and housing bubbles.
4. "I'm in the book, 'The Big Short', but I'm no big short. I don't go looking for shorts. My time is spent looking for longs. I was forced to short mortgages. This trade required every bit of logic that I had.
5. "Home-price appreciation was built in to the mortgage market. The credit would be pulled out once home prices stopped rising and home prices would fall. This is what I saw in 2005 and why it was the biggest investment of my entire life.
6. "My main concern is the total abdication of personal accountability in our society. I don't believe anyone is taking responsibility for the problems they caused. Blaming a small group of people is the worst thing we can do as countries. We must not look at ourselves and see what each one of us did that contributed to this mess.
7. "I am 100% certain that the economic theories and policies that led us to this mess will not prevent the next one. We are dooming ourself to repeat the same mistakes if we don't learn the lessons that we need to. It's as simple as that.
8. "All the bailouts, all of the stimulus, all that money we're printing, this isn’t really hitting us yet. It's almost like we were a teenager with depression and our parents gave us a credit card to help us. It is not clear that we must pay this back.
9. It's a huge gamble to leverage our future, our children's futures and their futures in order to escape this. Although it is difficult to predict which direction it will go, I do not believe it is a wise gamble.
10. "We have become a nation full of bubbleheads. After the huge bubble burst, everyone has their own ideas about what the next bubble will be and how it will blow up. It's easy to identify a bubble. The hard part is predicting when it will burst.
11. "I need an investment thesis I haven’t seen or heard of." I am looking for an original thesis. Burry finally found the original thesis at GameStop. In 2019, he invested in the video-game retailer and sent several letters to its directors asking them to purchase back more than 80 percent of GameStop’s outstanding shares.
12. "I am very interested in small tech companies. I am interested in companies that have a secular growth profile or a secular past that is not dependent on government actions. Good products, great management, a strong market position and competitive dynamics are what I am looking for.
13. "There is only one Warren Buffett. It's futile to try to be Buffett. Burry stated that Buffett inspired him to be a money manager at Berkshire Hathaway and that his early career was modeled after Buffett.
14. Wall Street believes stocks are too expensive. It would be horrible to live in New York, and hear this 10 times per day.
Continue reading: A Michael Burry subreddit founder explains why 'The Big Short Investor' is so appealing - and shares the stocks he tweets about.
