"I purchased credit default swaps - a type of insurance - on billions of dollars worth of both subprime mortgage-backed securities and the bonds of many of the financial companies that would be devastated when the real estate bubble burst. In an April 2010 op-ed piece in The New York Times, Michael Burry wrote about how he was able to see the housing market crisis coming and explained what he did to capitalize on the collapse. Read The Big Short by Michael Lewis to learn more about the housing market crisis and how individuals like Michael Burry capitalized on it. Burry eventually left his residency at the age of 29. He was thrown out of the operating room by the surgeon, who was furious. He once fell asleep standing up while observing a complicated surgery, collapsing into the patient's oxygen tent. Consequently, his devotion to medicine began to suffer. He started a blog about it and put what little money he had into undervalued stocks. His interest in investing soon began to take over, consuming his nights and spare time. In 1990, he went to medical school at Vanderbilt and then began his residency at Stanford. The true story behind The Big Short confirms that the real Michael Burry was indeed a doctor. In The Big Short movie, Christian Bale's character emphasizes the fact that he is not only a hedge fund manager, but also a doctor. By high school, Burry was investing real money in the stock market. He looked into American Motors, the company that made the real-life version of the toy jeep that accompanied his little plastic army men. How old was Michael Burry when he learned about the stock market?ĭuring our research into The Big Short true story, we learned that Michael Burry's introduction to the stock market began in approximately the second grade.