Betting on the Blind Side | Business | Vanity Fair
Michael Burry always saw the world differently—due, he believed, to the childhood loss of one eye. So when the 32-year-old investor spotted the huge bubble in the subprime-mortgage bond market, in 2004, then created a way to bet against it, he wasn’t surprised that no one understood what he was doing. In an excerpt from his new book, The Big Short, the author charts Burry’s oddball maneuvers, his almost comical dealings with Goldman Sachs and other banks as the market collapsed, and the true reason for his visionary obsession.

By the middle of 2005, over a period in which the broad stock-market
index had fallen by 6.84 percent, Burry’s fund was up 242 percent, and
he was turning away investors. To his swelling audience, it didn’t seem
to matter whether the stock market rose or fell; Mike Burry found
places to invest money shrewdly. He used no leverage and avoided
shorting stocks. He was doing nothing more promising than buying common
stocks and nothing more complicated than sitting in a room reading
financial statements. Scion Capital’s decision-making apparatus
consisted of one guy in a room, with the door closed and the shades
down, poring over publicly available information and data on 10-K
Wizard. He went looking for court rulings, deal completions, and
government regulatory changes—anything that might change the value of a
company.