December 14, 2011

Michael Burry long gold and farmland

Burry believes that agricultural land, productive agricultural land with water on site, will be very valuable in the future. And I've put a good amount of money into that. So I'm investing in alternative investments as well as stocks.

Given his past bet against the housing market, it was interesting to hear Burry's thoughts on real estate this time around. He thinks it's an "artificial market" and that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are essentially withholding properties from sale and not forcing foreclosures. He feels it would be best if the government exited the mortgage market. On the topic of investing in real estate, he says:

I think there is some value in real estate. You have to buy it right. It's not in general, that's the problem. I think that there are an awful lot of people out there looking to buy these distressed properties out there and so you need to find special situations. That is how i've invested from the beginning. I'm looking for these special situations, these unique ideas and that's true in real estate too ... In my situation I'd rather go long on housing itself, real estate itself. Depending on how you structure it, in the real market, in the physical market, you can get some pretty good deals and I've done some of that too.

Finally, Burry has also caught the gold bug and likes the precious metal as well. Embedded below are two videos from Burry's interview (email readers will need to come to the site to watch them):

Michael Burry is a long time bearish on the USD.

Michael Burry is founder of the Scion Capital LLC hedge fund, which he ran from 2000 until 2008, when he closed the fund to focus on his own personal investments. Author Michael Lewis profiled him in his 2010 book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.