Here’s how much Michael Burry made from this unremarkable stock

Michael Burry of “The Big Short” fame is known for his deft handling of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, which netted him $100 million and his clients seven times as much. However, he’s not resting on his laurels – Burry remains a fairly active investor through his company Scion Asset Management.

Any 13-F filing filed by Scion will be eagerly awaited and watched by investors looking to emulate Burry’s investments in hopes of reaping outsized profits. The latest filing was published on November 14 and found that the renowned investor’s bullish thesis for Chinese stocks has not weakened in the slightest – in fact, it appears to have become even stronger.

However, it is always good to pay attention to whether the analysis you are doing is superficial or not. While Burry’s bullish stance on big-name tech companies in East Asia like Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), JD.Com (NASDAQ: JD) and Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) is interesting, let’s take a closer look at this and the previous filings. It reveals one less discussed opportunity that has largely flown under the radar.

One of Burry’s long-term holdings is a relatively low-profile online marketplace called The RealReal Inc (NASDAQ: REAL) – and it has brought him significant returns.

Michael Burry has held REAL shares since the first quarter of 2023

The expert first invested in Real shares at the beginning of 2023 and bought 684,442 REAL shares. At that time, the stock was trading at around $1.26. In that 13-F filing for the second quarter of 2023, Burry reported holding 1,500,000 REAL shares.

The stock was then reduced in the third quarter of 2023 – to 750,000 shares. By year’s end, Burry had sold an additional 95,194 RealReal shares, reducing his holding to 654,806 shares.

He then increased his stake to 1,412,692 shares – since then he has continuously reduced his exposure to REAL – Scion Capital Management’s latest report for the third quarter of 2024 revealed that there are only 500,000 REAL shares left in the portfolio.

While there’s no way to say exactly when Burry made his sales, the price of the stock has risen from about $1.26 at the time of his initial purchase to $5.27 at press time – an increase of 318.25%.

On a year-to-date (YTD) basis, REAL share prices are up 167.26% – and Burry has undoubtedly reaped a significant portion of those multi-million dollar returns.

Featured image via Shutterstock