Greenbackd

Yesterday I ran a post on Dr. Michael Burry, the value investor who was one of the first, if not the first, to figure out how to short sub-prime mortgage bonds in his fund, Scion Capital. In The Big Short, Michael Lewis discusses Burry’s entry into value investing:

Late one night in November 1996, while on a cardiology rotation at Saint Thomas Hospital, in Nashville, Tennessee, he logged on to a hospital computer and went to a message board called techstocks.com. There he created a thread called “value investing.” Having read everything there was to read about investing, he decided to learn a bit more about “investing in the real world.” A mania for Internet stocks gripped the market. A site for the Silicon Valley investor, circa 1996, was not a natural home for a sober-minded value investor. Still, many came, all with opinions. A few people grumbled about the very idea of a doctor having anything useful to say about investments, but over time he came to dominate the discussion. Dr. Mike Burry—as he always signed himself—sensed that other people on the thread were taking his advice and making money with it.

Michael Burry’s blog, http://www.valuestocks.net, seems to be lost to the sands of time, but Burry’s techstocks.com “Value Investing” thread (now Silicon Investor) still exists. The original post in the thread hints at the content to come:

Started: 11/16/1996 11:01:00 PM

Ok, how about a value investing thread?

What we are looking for are value plays. Obscene value plays. In the Graham tradition.

This week’s Barron’s lists a tech stock named Premenos, which trades at 9 and has 5 1/2 bucks in cash. The business is valued at 3 1/2, and it has a lot of potential. Interesting.

We want to stay away from the obscenely high PE’s and look at net working capital models, etc. Schooling in the art of fundamental analysis is also appropriate here.

Good luck to all. Hope this thread survives.

Mike

Hat tip Toby.