Pushkin. >> I'm Lydia Dean Cot. >> I'm Michael Lewis. >> And surprise, we're here for a extra episode of the Big Short Companion Series. >> One we weren't expecting. That's right. >> Yeah. Because we got the hedge fund manager, Michael Bur, to be on the podcast. We didn't really get him to be on the podcast. It's funny what happened. >> Well, first we should say who Michael Barry is. >> Michael Barry is is one of the three main characters in both the book and the movie of the Big Short. And he was a really important character to me. >> And in the movie he's played by Christian Bale. >> And in the movie he's played by Christian Bale. >> He doesn't do interviews and we've asked him to be on the podcast earlier and he said no. So yeah. So what happened? >> First he said, you know, I'd like to help and then he said I don't I wouldn't like to help. And then what happened was his trading activity got released to the public, which it does. He has to file a 13F form with the SEC saying what his positions are. And as though it's not a perfect picture of what he's doing, it did say that he had put on big short positions against uh Palanteer and Nvidia. So he was betting against the AI bubble. All he did was file what his positions were. He didn't go on, he doesn't do media. He doesn't do interviews. And it exploded like it was on Twitter, on CNBC. People were both attacking him and praising him and his reasoning for not coming on the podcast was he wanted to lay low >> and he and he was trending on Twitter for 48 hours. So it's like what's the point? Like he can't lay low. >> Yeah. >> And as he tells us he says like this only happens to me. But I was really glad to have him on because I felt like we were missing somebody. >> Yeah. No, same. And also because people were asking like I was getting messages being like are you guys going to have Michael Bur? There's something also nice about subjects who don't just who aren't um promiscuous, who just who don't just talk to everybody >> because it makes you feel special or >> it makes you feel special. Makes it makes the audience feel special. So, and the reader feels special. It's like nobody else has this story. >> And one thing I wanted you to explain is he was one of the first people, one of the early people, right, to bet on the subprime mortgage crisis. And when he was trying to do it, there weren't any financial instruments to do that, right? you had to it was it was how to do it in a way where if the madness just kept going and going, you weren't going to be bankrupt quickly. So, you could have done things like bet against mortgage companies in the stock market, you could have shorted their stock, but you know that that's a it's a bet that's hard to hold for a long time. And so, you have to your timing has to be exquisite. Um what he did was basically invent or have Wall Street firms invent for him the credit default swap on subprime mortgage bonds which is essentially an insurance policy on bonds backed by subprime loans. So if the loans go bad and the bonds go bad, you get paid off on this insurance policy. Think of it like I get to buy insurance on your house and if it fire insurance and if it burns down I get paid. So there's something a little goofy about it. I mean there it used to be and o very oddly it used to be that I could go buy life insurance on you and if you died I got paid a bunch of money. This obviously creates a very bad incentive murder. Murder. >> Yes. Yes. Exactly. Uh but but you can do this in the financial markets. You can buy insurance policies on other people's bonds and if it if they the bonds go bad, you get paid. You couldn't, when Michael Barry started to think about this situation, you couldn't buy an insurance policy on a subprime mortgage bond. So, he had to go help Wall Street create it for him. And then all the other characters in the story are then using that thing he creates to make the same bet. >> Um, is there anything else you wanted to say related to Michael Barry? I would say the one other thing that's interesting about him is that he so let me into his life. He just doesn't really do that usually. It it created a uh an intimacy. Like I just really got to know him and really enjoyed like just hearing what he had to say. Like I just learned stuff from him. Even when he doesn't make money on what everybody's making, it's really interesting to hear what he's thinking and just like have that as part of the furniture in your mind. Michael Lewis's conversation with Michael Barry is coming up. It really is a very fun listen. I still remember you handing me your emails and like you had like thousands of p you you had communicated with the world your whole trading life for years through email. And so it was a real time account of your thoughts of Wall Street's response to your thoughts of the how the market moved. It was unbelievably valuable. It was so different from like everybody reminiscing. Do you remember that? >> I remember that. And those emails, I think, were the main reason I didn't get sued by my investors because uh if I had been a skilled orator or a somebody who loved giving conference calls, I would have done conference calls with my investors and then maybe they wouldn't have been recorded and but here I had emails with everybody on everything and so it was very clear where we stood with everybody. You were like for me, you know, people came to the right answer in different ways and you came to the right answer in such a satisfying way because not only did you see that the irresponsibilities in the subprime mortgage market, but you actually had a theory about the timing of it when it was all going to come unraveled. And the problem with these positions like with oh there's a lot of insanity in X or Y is that yeah, you can be right, but you can be wrong for long enough that the market just takes you out of your positions. >> I think that's right. This this is why this is the big short. There's the once in a century uh opportunity to actually say I know when this is going to happen, >> right? >> You know, I've compared this to the the 1990s bubble and the reality is there was no telling when that would end. >> Right? >> In most situations like this, you there's no good way to time it and shorting it is just a a high-risisk endeavor. what we're going to get to today, but I wanted to revisit The Big Short just a little bit. And I'm curious what effect it had on your life. I mean, there was the trade, there was the book, and then there was the movie. You did let Christian Bale come and hang with you for a day, but you you were remarkably chill about the whole thing, and I don't think I've ever felt like I've really recapped with you, like what effect this thing had on you, if any. I think I didn't know. I You're right. I mean, I'm on the autism spectrum, so I'm pretty good in my own head and I'm pretty good at blocking out stuff. And so, even this movie, I saw it at the premiere. I haven't watched it since. The book, I read it when it came out, and I haven't read it since. >> That's how I felt about it. >> Uh, we just I just move on and so kind of took it as it came. I went to the premiere because my whole my family wanted to go to the premiere and I you know as you know I I don't do interviews because I I don't feel I'm good at this and so I you know I haven't done one I think since uh like I haven't talked to anybody since I think the 60 minutes interview >> about the big short about this in an interview format and now it's the 10th anniversary of the film 15th anniversary of the book and yeah I can't believe it's been that long but you know I just kind of go on and and and do my thing and it doesn't really affect me too much. Do you didn't feel it put you in the position of Oracle that all of a sudden people are expecting you to predict the next thing. It was as we mentioned it is a very unique circumstance. It was a once in a century type trade. People say one in you know once in a century flood once in a century this once but and it's not really true. what happens every 10 years. But but this was is that opportunity was very unique and I've basically told everybody I can know ever since that that that's not going to happen again anytime soon. What made it unique? Well, I was basically permitted to buy insurance on these bonds that were incredibly illquid and I was permitted to basically buy insurance and then trade and profit off them without actually having the insured item. And it this was not expensive. Nobody thought this could happen, >> right? I had put on a lot of my position by late 2005 and I got a call from Goldman Sachs saying, "What are you doing? You're the only person who know you're not a mortgage fund. You're not hedging. You're doing something different." It's not something that people were generally aware of and I was. And so I could kind of walk in and and basically uh pull the caper off >> there. There are three things I want to talk about at the back end of the big of your story in the big short and then I want to move on to the present. But the first is you have this terrific win. Your investors make a lot of money and you end up closing your fund. Can you remind me why you closed your fund? My investors were generally mad at me and they were generally mad at me even when things went well. And I didn't feel at the time I had goodwill with anybody. I didn't There was only one investor. I shouldn't say his name, but um love him. He is the only guy that invested with me late. Um that last year and a half or so, nobody came to me. Nobody nobody wanted to invest with me. >> And even when we made the money, it was we don't want to go through that again. Did Did anybody ever call after the book, after the movie, after they got their money back and and a lot more? Did anybody ever call you to apologize? >> No. No. No. No. >> It's kind of an amazing >> I didn't I didn't expect it. >> I know you didn't expect it, but the sort of like at some point when there was cooling off and they looked at they looked at their winnings, I would have thought someone would have called and said, you know, sorry I got so angry at you for doing this trade. >> No, nobody did. Okay. No, I didn't expect it. It was It's Wall Street. >> When did you reopen? >> 2013. >> And since then, how have you done? >> Done. All right. I think uh it's all been the same since. So, I remember when I opened again, I didn't want investors I didn't know. >> Yeah. >> I didn't want to be above the SEC threshold for registering for as an investment advisor. I wanted to keep it small. So, I just went to people I knew and some of my own money and we created a fund. It was probably a situation where if I wanted to, I could have raised billions, but that wasn't my intention. Well, >> you didn't want to relive the experience you'd already had. >> I didn't want to deal with Wall Street. I didn't want to deal with those kinds of investors. I knew who my good investors were from the prior time and those were the only people I wanted to deal with, >> right? And so it was a it's just was a small operation and I kept trying to keep it small and uh I didn't really market it. I didn't market it at all other than just that first group. And what happens with that is that some of those people that were with me in 2000 individual doctors or whatever they get old they actually pass away. Ultimately it just became a something there was a natural attrition in the pool and so it kept us small. >> I have not paid that close attention. All I see is every now and then there's some explosion on Twitter about you and and it's wrong. Every they they they they're all wrong. We're going to take a quick break and when we return I asked Michael Bur about why he placed bets recently against two large tech stocks, Palunteer and Nvidia. So let's talk about this. Explain to me. You have this very small operation with just a handful of investors. What are the filing requirements? What do you have to hand in so that people can see what you're doing? They get to see US securities traded in the US that are stocks. They get to see stocks and they get an incredibly bastardized version of what of of options. >> Okay. And how is it b how is it bastardized? >> Because say I buy 50,000 put options on Palunteer and that's 50,000 times a 100 and so I'm short strike 50 way out of the money. It's like a it's $200 stock now I str but I think it's worth 30 or less. So I I buy them way out of the money two years out. You're betting that Pontto is going to drop by a lot. >> A lot in two years, >> but over a long period of time, >> right? And the press, I'm I'm working out and I see on CNBC, I have a billion dollar short position against Palunteer, it's $10 million. >> I saw this, too. I couldn't believe it. >> So, what they do is they take the underlying shares under those options contracts and they they multiply it out by the current stock price. So we're so I have a I have a actually it was less than $2 option and it was being priced as if I own the $200. So it was two orders of magnitude off, >> right? >> And that happens also with index. So so I would take hedges on my portfolio and people would say, "Oh my gosh, he's shorting a billion and a half of the S&P 500 or he's shorting and there would be these explosions and and it's just wrong. It's notional." What's interesting is that they don't do this for anybody else. So maybe you should give more interviews. I asked you what effect the big short had on your your life. This is an effect the big short had on your life and compliance and my compliance since the financial crisis everything changed and compliance we have a compliance officer inside the firm and he just keeps saying don't talk to anybody don't talk to anybody don't respond to me don't respond to anybody and so I think since the movie came out and this really started happening there was a frustration building in me to want to say something >> and I couldn't And so when COVID came about, I had some strong feelings on that. So I went on Twitter, but I was only allowed to talk about things that weren't stocks. And so that's fine. I mean, but I had to talk about social things. And I got in trouble with that because everybody gets in trouble with that. >> So So I got off Twitter. >> But you got back on. >> I got back on recently because um we dregistered. I don't run that pool of money anymore. I'm just going to run my own money. >> Got you. So, it's your just your money now. So, >> mostly. Yeah. >> Why did you decide to do that? >> I think that we're in a bad situation in the stock market. I think the stock market could be in for a number of bad years. And I think it could be a longer bare market more akin to 2000. But the structure of industries changed. Back then it was hedge funds, mutual funds, uh, separate accounts businesses, but there were people running pools of money and and thinking about stocks and investing in stocks. And so I felt I didn't know I was on the autism spectrum. I felt though that I had an edge there. I could I'm kind of sit outside of all these human psyches and like and figure things out and it worked well. Today it's all passive money and it's a lot. over 50% passive money. There's >> index index funds. >> Less than 10% of money some say is actively managed by managers who actually thinking about the stocks and in any kind of way that's long-term. And so the problem is in the United States I think when the market goes down it's not like in 2000 where there was this other bunch of stocks that were being ignored and they'll come up even if the NASDAQ crashes. Now I think the whole thing is just going to come down. and you it would be very hard to be in a long stocks in the United States and protect yourself. And so that's why I decided to get out of it >> because the fund had to be long in some way. >> Well, I didn't want to go through that with investors again. >> I see. >> And and >> that makes sense. >> Of course, I closed the fund and I got I put on all the positions for myself right away. The same position. >> So, you're still in the position. So, I want to talk about this position. I found it again. I was watching it from a distance. But what? Tell me what I missed. Someone CNBC or whoever gets a hold of your 13F. On this 13F, it says Palanteer position is especially big. It looks big, but it looks big because they're the put options. They're way way out of the money. They're they were struck at 50. So, okay, you had to release this information about your fund. You weren't advertising it to the world in any unusual way. You weren't going out and talking trash about Palunteer. You just this position gets released, >> right? And then the next thing I do I see Alex Karp who runs Palunteer like going after you for owning puts on his stock. And I don't think I I mean during the financial crisis you will remember that the head of uh of Morgan Stanley uh at the time John Max he blamed short sellers for what was happening to him and and they banned short selling of the stocks very I think briefly right >> but it's always a really bad sign when people start going after the short sellers. It's like >> in the United States >> in the United States. And I I was thinking, "Oh my god, I just wouldn't want to be in your shoes." Like, you didn't you just you just made a trade, but he's provoked me. I want to understand your trade. It's a bet that Palunteer goes way way down. >> Way way down in two years. What do you understand about their business that the market doesn't? >> Huh. So my belief is that this is a company that had a a a set of applications that were very expensive to install because you had to hire their consultants like after you bought the software just to install it and learn it, right? And Palanteer had this reputation in government. Government contracts is a nasty business. And I think they've figured out how to do it and and get some contracts. >> How how much of their revenue is government contracts? >> It's fallen off a lot. It was it was almost it was a majority and now it's like more even okay >> because it during this do the AI buildout um they've basically marketed themselves to corporations well corporations have come to them seues of every public corporation have board members CEOs who feel under the gun to AI something >> and so there's this scramble and now they're not the only they keep saying they're the only ones But IBM has does basically the same thing. >> Their business is actually bigger than Palunteers and they are not really all government. Government contracts are not generally that profitable. And so, you know, IBM's got a a really good business inside it, but it doesn't get the credit for a Palunteer valuation on that business, even though it it is growing fast, too. It's growing about as fast as Palanteer or was. And so, let me put it this way. There are, I think, five billionaires that came out of Palunteer because they own Palunteer stock. And the revenue was 4 billion or le basically four billion. So, the billionaires torevenue ratio was greater than one. And I'd never seen that before. >> Was that what attracted your attention in the first place? >> Well, it that was a that's a cute little thing. >> I was like, wow. there's how do they get five billionaires out of that group? Um and so at a a company that has four billion revenue and actually uh stockbased compensation basically would almost all their income. They have to pay their people who are doing all this consulting so much in stock that they just use stockbased compensation. And then what they do is they buy that back and the company would like you to just give them credit for and what Wall Street generally does is they take the earnings per share and then they add back the stockbased compensation because it's non-cash and they add it back to the earnings and I think actually the way GAP accounts for stockbased compensation is skews low versus what it actually costs. the real cost. You can look at the how much our company's buying back to offset that dilution and you can just take that amount and deduct it from cash flow. And and so if you do that with Palunteer, historically they don't make anything. So I basically looked at the company and said you're you're worth this much and you're really don't make anything if it's tiny little bit of revenue and you have all these billionaires. You had an argument back in 2008 for when the subprime mortgage bond market was going to start to unravel, when people are going to start to default. Do you have a timing argument for now with with Palunteer? Well, I think this is the this is the AI the AI consulting thing. So, Palunteer and Nvidia are the two luckiest companies on the planet. Neither produced a product for AI. >> No, I know. >> But they're the two poster children for AI. >> Yes. Nvidia was a good computer graphics chip company. >> Nvidia was a computer graphics chip. I actually knew the CFO. Um we talked in 2015 or 16. I went long the stock and I and I can said, "Hey, you're doing a great job. I love how you're buying back stock. Her kids was uh on my kids' basketball team. I think uh I bought the stock like a year or two later. The stock was up to like it went from 20 to 90 at the time, which is like 40 cents now. After the splits, Nvidia was lucky. They got lucky once with the crypto mining because crypto mining needed GPU. GPUs were the they weren't custom for G for crypto mining. They were just the thing that was there that could be used. And then AI came along and it's the same deal. About a year and a half ago, a year and a half to two years ago, Palanteer was not an AI company. Basically, when chat GPD came out, they basically put an AI cover on their applications that were that they were selling and then selling all this consulting on and they call it AI, but that's what every company is doing now. >> But is there a timing argument for AI then? >> Yeah. So, this gets to what does this bubble look like? This bubble looks an awful lot like the dot bubble, which is not really a.com bubble. It was a data transmission bubble. It was a huge buildout of fiber and a huge uh fiber needed routers and routers needed fiber and and it just blew up. So the market peak was in March 10th of 2000. Cisco grew 55% that year revenues in 2000 and it grew 17% in 2001 because the investment continued. it actually peaked for about a year after the top in the market. And so what you can do is you can look at uh net investment which is capital expenditures less depreciation. All right. >> Over time, and you can put it against GDP to kind of a nominal GDP to to compare it across eras. And you get these nice mounds of of investment mania. And what you see in every prior one was the the relevant stock market peak was before you were even halfway done with the the capital expenditure. uh in the majority cases the capital expenditure hadn't even peaked yet. And so right now we're we're ramping up for capital expenditure and and and what's happened is um we've gotten into this part of a phase where if you announce a dollar of capex on AI, your market cap will go up $3 for every dollar you add. Oracle, we saw that with Oracle, >> giant company was up 40%. Like incredible. Larry Ellison was briefly the richest man >> because they announced this massive multiundred billions of of dollars of basically spending that they would have to well they announced uh bookings but they would have to spend. They're still building it out. >> Where are we then? >> I can't say because it hasn't happened fully yet. We are at levels of prior peaks. We're at the level of the shale revolution relative to GDP. We're at the level near the level the.com where the when the.com the stock the NASDAQ peaked. >> So you felt two year two-year puts were enough? >> I thought two years would be enough. Yes. I think two years would be enough. I think you know if you're going to buy something now buy healthc care stocks they're really out of favor. If you own something that has been gone up a lot you've done really really well in it. It's on a it's shooting straight up and and you know it's think it's kind of overvalued. You should I think that's a something you should sell. I want to ask you one weird question more question about the stock market and that is you own Berkshire Hathaway and Birkshire Hathaway just announced that we just was revealed that it bought a big chunk of Google stock. Did that disappoint you or do you see how they're thinking? >> We don't know that that is Buffett that bought it. >> One, >> right? two, Google is the value investor's favorite in that group. It's the one that >> everybody said, well, it's cheaper than all the others. It's got it's a relative value and it is Google, but I know that since I got chat GPT and Claude, I don't use Google, >> right? And Google search, the magic thing about Google search was how little it cost. >> Yeah. >> Because most requests were not monetizable. So for the 85% of of searches they get that are not nobody's going to buy even looking to buy anything or think it's not product related. It's it's history. You know uh what did Columbus really do? You know it's not monetizable and so they better not lose a lot of money on that. AI changes that AI is expensive. I run queries regularly that I know cost tens of dollars just for my inquiry inquiry. one one inquiry, Google had had those searches down to infinitismal fractions of a cent. So that business is the golden goose and it's really basically all their cash flow. So the other thing about LLMs is that look back to the dot boom that was an amazing telecommunications revolution. If you were alive in the 80s and then you were alive in the 2000, it's nothing the same. It's it changed everybody's life in a dramatic way. And still AOL just disconnected its last dial up just like a year ago this year earlier this year. I mean the penetration was very slow in the United States. It was pretty lightning fast in places like in Singapore, Soul these one city countries type thing or dense urban areas but it was it was a long time by the financial crisis but even after the financial crisis there was a lot of people in the United States who were not online or were on D you know were in not really doing it. So back then as that connectivity came up there was a lot of things people wanted to sell. People wanted to sell goods online. They wanted Amazon grew on that. They wanted to socialize online. They wanted to do these things. With LLMs, most people are getting what they want out of them right now on the on the free level. And they're massively penetrated, right? >> What more are they going to do for the average person? Not that much. The money is going to be in the in the developer space, and there's a lot of money in that space. But this idea that I mean a very small percentage of people want to pay for their LM and they won't ever have to because they're gonna be so this is going to be commoditized. So I think you're getting a sense of how Michael Barry's mind works. When we come back from the break I finally find out why he decided to talk to me for the big short. All right. So, I'm going to let you go in a minute, but there are a couple of other things I want to ask you about because I just want to pick your brain on them. What triggers a debt crisis in this country? Like, do you pay are you paying much attention to our government's finances? And h how do you feel about them and where do you think it's headed? So, predicting this stuff is the problem. I I always kind of put it in terms of, you know, waiting for Castro to die. It's not a strategy. The people live a long time. countries are very powerful and they can do a lot. The United States is the reserve has the reserve currency. Obviously, Trump is bullying around the world right now. So, they're the United States is still a very primary country and um betting that they can't find a way is not something I'd want to do anytime soon. I do think it's ridiculous. I mean, we have what, four and a half trillion in taxes from individuals. We have about 400 billion from corporations. I mean, you could double the taxes on corporations, that's 400 billion. What does that do for you? We have a trillion dollars in interest payments on our debt every year. So um you know when you get that trillion that interest expense is getting up there and then you have all the entitlements we we do not have the social uh cushion that a lot of other developed countries have. But we can't really afford doing much more than we're doing. >> So you think the debt's just going to keep growing and growing and growing, but you wouldn't want to bet when it breaks? No, you you can't because it's the United States. >> How you feel about Fed independence? Do you care? >> Um, I think I have a different I have a kind of a sick view on this that I think that Trump when Trump starts running the Fed, it might become the end of the Fed because if he's running the Fed, then everybody's going to hate it, not just me. So, um, we'll see. I think the Fed is uh has done a lot of damage over the last hundred years or since its inception in 1914 and I feel we don't need the Fed. We don't need it unless the Fed is going to say look like why are they going to drop rates? There's no reason to drop rates now. Inflation's starting to come up a little bit. The economy is muddling along but our neutral rate is not 1% or 0% or where Trump wants it. Our neutral rate is probably around 4% or it's probably around where we are now. And think about when you drop rates, you kill all the savers, all the fixed income people. They suffered for so long. They're actually finally getting a rhythm to their lives again. None of this is costless. And you think you're going to just drop rates. Be careful what you wish for. You might drop rates and because of the debt situation that, you know, the curve can steepen. >> Did you just say we you want to get rid of the Fed? >> Yeah. I I think the Fed doesn't do anything very helpful. I think it's the easiest job in the world. What do you replace it with? >> I think the US Treasury could have a department that just makes these decisions. I mean, the Fed already is monetizing Treasury debt, whatever. I mean, they're they're almost the same department already. your institutional pessimism does it lead you to like I don't know Bitcoin or gold or one of these refuges that people >> I think that Bitcoin at 100,000 is the most ridiculous thing that sane people are sitting on TV talking about Bitcoin they're just casually it's 100,000 it's down now it's 98,000 it's not worth anything Everybody's accepted it. It's the tulip bulb of our time. It's worse than a tulip bulb because this has enabled so much criminal activity to go deep under. So where do you hide with your Do you have gold? I have I've had gold since 2005. >> I'm gonna let you go. But the last question I have, did you I I never asked you this question. You let me into your kitchen in a really um uh you made yourself very vulnerable and you let me tell your story. Do you regret it when you showed up? I knew you from Liars Poker and I didn't know what you were going to write about me because you're I you're a great author. So, I knew you from I knew you from Moneyball and Blind Side, but when you deal with Wall Street, you tend to be very fairly critical. And so, I'm a big hedge manager just shorted your house. So, you're you approached me. Actually, I got a call from a friend. You talked I think one of my friends in New York and he called me and he said, "I just talked with Michael Lewis. Congratulations. You're going to be one of the heroes in his new book." And that was when I really realized, oh, this is going to go okay. So, in a way, I was giving you all that stuff defensively. I didn't want you having a I wanted to make sure you had everything um full disclosure because I I thought I was I didn't do anything wrong and I wanted you to know that. >> Yeah. You know, and and your appeal to me was you were and are a fantastic teacher, like a really good explainer of your own thoughts, and your own thoughts can sometimes be peculiar, like just different than what other people are thinking. and you don't mind holding them, you know, you you don't mind having views that just would embarrass people who were less sure of themselves to articulate. >> Well, being on the spectrum, I'll just move back into my own head and uh move along. So, >> it was great seeing you. I'm sorry you're not out here more. And if you were out here, I wish you just let me know because I'm I am down in your old neck of the woods some and it would be fun to go grab dinner. >> We're still out there a lot. So, I'll I'll look forward to seeing you. All right. Miss you. >> Yeah, miss you too. Thank you, Michael. >> Against the rules. The Big Short Companion is hosted by Michael Lewis. It's produced by me, Ludy Jean Cot, and Catherine Girardo. Our editor is Julia Barton. 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