The Big Antagonist by Bradley

The Big Antagonist by Bradley - April 2014 Scholarship Essay

Many people have never heard of Dr. Michael Burry. However unfortunate this may be it comes as no surprise. What this man did, although extraordinary, was so contrary to the popular belief of many big names that his opinions were put aside. Many people considered him to be foolish and so out of his mind that even people who had trusted and believed in him initially, later tried to take legal action against him. What Michael Burry did was predicted the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008.

Many people today can remember the financial crisis of 2008 and all the people, on and off Wall Street, who lost a tremendous amount of money as a result. Michael Burry was not one of those people. In The Big Short by Michael Lewis, Michael Burry is analyzed as somewhat of a misfit. He had a lazy eye and was later diagnosed as having Asperger syndrome. He struggled with people throughout school and started his residency in neurology at Stanford. It was during this residency that he found his fascination for financial markets. What started out as an obsession, which kept him from sleeping during his residency, turned into a career when he started his own hedge fund.

Micahel Burry consistently found stocks that were undervalued and invested in them to receive enormously large returns even during times such as the dot-com bubble. And, as early as 2005 he found that the subprime mortgage bonds were garbage and started figuring out a way he could short them. That year he developed a credit default swap industry that previously did not exist that essentially allowed him to short, or bet against, these sub-prime mortgage bonds. He stuck to his position through the three years that ensued and while the stock market was rising he was angering his investors by pumping money into these CDSs that were losing value. In late 2008 Michael Burry had the last words and made the very people who were attacking him rich while many of the other firms were losing money, going bankrupt, or being bought or bailed out.

The story of Michael Burry has shown me that just because I’m going against popular opinion doesn't mean I’m taking the wrong path. I have found that this applies to school, drugs, debt and sex. The popular path for high school students to take seems to be to spend less time doing school work and more time becoming popular. They tell their friends that drugs are a lot of fun and make it the new social norm. They popularize the idea of material wealth, and can make people feel inferior for not having these possessions even though it is financially unwise for them to waste money on these purchases. Lastly, sex is made out to be the ultimate achievement for every male and the ultimate pleasure for students even though there is the rampant problem with STDs and teen child birth.

Michael Burry has inspired me to be different from these so called role models taking my own, ultimately more desirable, path.